VUCA World

My friend Jayanta Chatterjee, a prolific blogger, ex- banker, travel writer, a part time actor and photographer par excellence, yesterday introduced me to the concept of VUCA world while reviewing one of my blogs that talked about the matter of luck. I instantly told him that by appreciating me to VUCA world, he gave me an idea for another blog that I am proving by writing on VUCA.

VUCA in fact is an acronym representing four distinct words – Volatile, Uncertain , Complex and Ambiguous. This also is a much better substitute for another much used word these days – Disruption! Anything that does not go as per expectation but suddenly exposes us to unexpected challenges is a disruption. We in banking sector use disruption to explain all the new and recent challenges viz. new banking licenses, small and payment banks, digitisation, automation and artificial intelligence, relevance of brick and mortar structure in the form of bank branches, UPI, wallets etc. These changes in fact are quite volatile changing the face of banking in last 3-4 years, have led to uncertainty regarding the next move, ridden with complexity and in a sense fraught with certain amount of ambiguity. The pace of volatility is only going to go up and if the last transformation took 3-4 years, the next major transformation may happen anytime, thereby causing uncertainty. The next change could consist of layers of complexity and to that extent, the scenario is quite ambiguous. And this rationale can be extended to almost any field or walk of life and VUCA fits it too a tee, much more appropriate than disruption.

Next general elections are due in May and as the date approaches and political activities gather momentum, it will not be disruption, but VUCA. Thanks to Jayantada for familiarising me with this word, which is relevant, appropriate, precise and penetrative and much more versatile than oft used disruption.