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The VUCA Company
How Indian companies have faced Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity
Failure in itself is not a catastrophe, but failure to learn from failure, definitely is. It is not enough to merely train leaders in core competencies, without identifying the key factors that inhibit their use. Rather, it is resilience and adaptability that are vital in order to distinguish potential leaders from mediocre managers.
Authors Suhayl Abidi and Dr Manoj Joshi bring to readers The VUCA Company (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity), the first of its kind in India, on original case studies of 12 Indian corporate failures, since the time of economic liberalization. Each study has been the result of meticulous research over the years and provides insights into behavioural and systemic aspects of failures and underperformance. Through these engaging corporate stories, VUCA discusses how individuals and organizations can avoid, minimize and recover from failures.
SUHAYL ABIDI is a practitioner of Organizational Learning & Knowledge Management. He has spent the last 25 years with organizations such as Penguin Publishing, The British Council, Reliance Industries, Essar and Piramal Healthcare.
DR MANOJ JOSHI, PhD (Strategy), Fellow Institution of Engineers India, is a Professor – Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Amity Business School. He is the Asia Editor for the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Regional Editor, India for the Journal of Family Business Management.
Failure in itself is not a catastrophe, but failure to learn from failure, definitely is. It is not enough to merely train leaders in core competencies, without identifying the key factors that inhibit their use. Rather, it is resilience and adaptability that are vital in order to distinguish potential leaders from mediocre managers.
Authors Suhayl Abidi and Dr Manoj Joshi bring to readers The VUCA Company (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity), the first of its kind in India, on original case studies of 12 Indian corporate failures, since the time of economic liberalization. Each study has been the result of meticulous research over the years and provides insights into behavioural and systemic aspects of failures and underperformance. Through these engaging corporate stories, VUCA discusses how individuals and organizations can avoid, minimize and recover from failures.
SUHAYL ABIDI is a practitioner of Organizational Learning & Knowledge Management. He has spent the last 25 years with organizations such as Penguin Publishing, The British Council, Reliance Industries, Essar and Piramal Healthcare.
DR MANOJ JOSHI, PhD (Strategy), Fellow Institution of Engineers India, is a Professor – Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Amity Business School. He is the Asia Editor for the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Regional Editor, India for the Journal of Family Business Management.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 31, 2015
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May 17, 2016Business case studies: Its mostly a cut, copy and paste job from newspapers. Read just few case studies, could not push myself to complete the book.. Just see the index and do some google and read articles on the same company......
October 17, 2016
In my opinion, today we hear lot of management professionals using the word VUCA to create chaos in the minds of professionals. It is absolutely necessary to create the stress on the mind to identify the opportunity to sail from VUCA environment. I competed reading the book a month back and I would recommend this as one of the book to read for a business professional. Although the word VUCA was defined by the Americans during the war and much conceptualized by the managment proffesionals, The author has used Indian companies which underwent downside in the business and analyzed why these companies need to face turbulent times as well as closeout. The best part of the book, is the author has provided key insight on how companies can learn from these organizations failures to over come complacency. Following are the key highlights
# The life of S&P index companies has drastically reduced over the years. As leaders we must be absolutely clear that the reasons that helped us succeed in the past will not be why we will succeed in the future. The context has changed.
#Resilience and agility cannot be taught but can be learnt. Behavioral changes, rather than just acquiring new companies and skills must be emphasized.
# Failure ! The fear of failure is a world wide phenomenon, experiencing it is inevitable and running away from it is only human. It is said that if you want to learn about success, talk to a successful person, but if you want to learn about failures, talk to a very successful person.
# Leadership involves the readiness to make decisions, the courage to take risks the willingness to collaborate and to support others to support creativity and the ability to speak ones mind.
# In the VUCA world, resilience and adaptability are the two attributes that distinguish leaders from mere mangers.
# Failure is not a catastrophe, but failure to learn certainly can be.
# When you stop learning, you stop developing and you stop growing. Thats the end of a leader.
# If you do only what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you wont fail. You'll just stagnate and thats failure by erosion.
# Aristotle famously said, that the gods first send 40 years of propsperity to whoever they intended to destroy. It is well proven from the histroy of men that success leads to complacency which leads to decline. That is why one must be most alert and watchful at the peak of success. The successful organizations sows its own seeds of destruction.
# Ignorance and arrogance unforgivable to anyone or any organization.
# The path of success lies in the understanding the relevant trends, figuring out how your strengths and resources can capitalize on them and staking our a leadership position.
# KODAK - The success had blinded the company into denial that digital photography would replace the film roll. Kodak fits the classic profile of a twentieth century corporate dinosaur.
# Motorola - The arrogance of technological superiority is deeply ingrained in culture and iridium went forward single mindedly concentrating on satellite design and launch, brushing aside the challenges in marketing and sales.
# Lehman Brothers - Single minded goal to be no.1, he had little time and consideration for his clients and stakeholders.
# 3 C's are most important - Culture | Code of conduct & Control.
culture is critical. it is important to remain committed to your organisations mission, to define core values and to act with integrity in accordance with those values.
Arrogance leads to over confidence. Not only leaders become arrogant, but organization culture too starts taking the same he as dissentters are slowly eased out and debates disappear. overconfidence isnt a personality trait or a moral failing, but a natural consequence of success that affects almost every one . As we grow older and more experienced, we overrate the accuracy of our judgements.
# In a vuca world, the faster the world changes, the more firmly the organization should be anchored to its vision.
# Jain irrigation core lesson - Early success had blinded us and we thought we could do no wrong. Diversifying into unknown areas without required management bandwidth and eyeing disproportionate growth using debt is not sustainable.
# Top line is vanity, bottom line is sanity , cash flow is reality.
# Success can be achieved in two ways. One is like climbing a ladder. It is fast, but a ladder can be unstable and you can fall from where you started from. The other is climbing a mountain, where you experience descent as well as plateau on your way to the peak.
# The causes of failure can be classified into 1. Human or behavioral 2. Systemic or organisational. The behavioral causes - Arrogance or Hubris :- Most failures are self inflicted wounds that are allowed to fester and ultimately poison the leader and his organisation. Hubris, the sin of overweening pride or arrogance is invariably the basic condition that undermines societies and individuals. According to Tim Irwin, in his book derailed, he charter the highs and lows of Six CEO's there are 4 qualities that are tied to failures
Authenticity | Self Management | Humility |Courage
Derailed leaders progress through 5 stages
A failure of self / other awareness | Hubris : Pride before the fall | Missed early warning signals | Rationalizing | Derailment
# Assumptions, beliefs, mindsets and blind-spots.
- Successful people are more prone to assumptions as they start believing that they have somehow discovered the formula for success.
- poor leaders are hired due to poor competency framework
# The life of S&P index companies has drastically reduced over the years. As leaders we must be absolutely clear that the reasons that helped us succeed in the past will not be why we will succeed in the future. The context has changed.
#Resilience and agility cannot be taught but can be learnt. Behavioral changes, rather than just acquiring new companies and skills must be emphasized.
# Failure ! The fear of failure is a world wide phenomenon, experiencing it is inevitable and running away from it is only human. It is said that if you want to learn about success, talk to a successful person, but if you want to learn about failures, talk to a very successful person.
# Leadership involves the readiness to make decisions, the courage to take risks the willingness to collaborate and to support others to support creativity and the ability to speak ones mind.
# In the VUCA world, resilience and adaptability are the two attributes that distinguish leaders from mere mangers.
# Failure is not a catastrophe, but failure to learn certainly can be.
# When you stop learning, you stop developing and you stop growing. Thats the end of a leader.
# If you do only what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you wont fail. You'll just stagnate and thats failure by erosion.
# Aristotle famously said, that the gods first send 40 years of propsperity to whoever they intended to destroy. It is well proven from the histroy of men that success leads to complacency which leads to decline. That is why one must be most alert and watchful at the peak of success. The successful organizations sows its own seeds of destruction.
# Ignorance and arrogance unforgivable to anyone or any organization.
# The path of success lies in the understanding the relevant trends, figuring out how your strengths and resources can capitalize on them and staking our a leadership position.
# KODAK - The success had blinded the company into denial that digital photography would replace the film roll. Kodak fits the classic profile of a twentieth century corporate dinosaur.
# Motorola - The arrogance of technological superiority is deeply ingrained in culture and iridium went forward single mindedly concentrating on satellite design and launch, brushing aside the challenges in marketing and sales.
# Lehman Brothers - Single minded goal to be no.1, he had little time and consideration for his clients and stakeholders.
# 3 C's are most important - Culture | Code of conduct & Control.
culture is critical. it is important to remain committed to your organisations mission, to define core values and to act with integrity in accordance with those values.
Arrogance leads to over confidence. Not only leaders become arrogant, but organization culture too starts taking the same he as dissentters are slowly eased out and debates disappear. overconfidence isnt a personality trait or a moral failing, but a natural consequence of success that affects almost every one . As we grow older and more experienced, we overrate the accuracy of our judgements.
# In a vuca world, the faster the world changes, the more firmly the organization should be anchored to its vision.
# Jain irrigation core lesson - Early success had blinded us and we thought we could do no wrong. Diversifying into unknown areas without required management bandwidth and eyeing disproportionate growth using debt is not sustainable.
# Top line is vanity, bottom line is sanity , cash flow is reality.
# Success can be achieved in two ways. One is like climbing a ladder. It is fast, but a ladder can be unstable and you can fall from where you started from. The other is climbing a mountain, where you experience descent as well as plateau on your way to the peak.
# The causes of failure can be classified into 1. Human or behavioral 2. Systemic or organisational. The behavioral causes - Arrogance or Hubris :- Most failures are self inflicted wounds that are allowed to fester and ultimately poison the leader and his organisation. Hubris, the sin of overweening pride or arrogance is invariably the basic condition that undermines societies and individuals. According to Tim Irwin, in his book derailed, he charter the highs and lows of Six CEO's there are 4 qualities that are tied to failures
Authenticity | Self Management | Humility |Courage
Derailed leaders progress through 5 stages
A failure of self / other awareness | Hubris : Pride before the fall | Missed early warning signals | Rationalizing | Derailment
# Assumptions, beliefs, mindsets and blind-spots.
- Successful people are more prone to assumptions as they start believing that they have somehow discovered the formula for success.
- poor leaders are hired due to poor competency framework
January 4, 2018
I read the book as a part of the literature review for my masters' dissertation. It was a quick and easy read, very informative and provides many examples to link the theory with the real business environment.
Having said that, I believe that the book provides one side of the VUCA concept only. If we reviewing the body of literature back to 1990s, we will find that the original use for the VUCA concept came from the USA army when they used the acronym to describe the challenges in the battlefield in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
In my literature review, I found that people who discussed the VUCA concept utilized it in two ways:
Firstly, the VUCA term was used as a way to describe the combined challenges in the business environment. This group did not provide direct management strategies to deal with VUCA elements successfully; instead, they suggested solutions to an area that is changing and being affected by these conditions.
Secondly, the VUCA term was used as the core research topic, so this group provided detailed management strategies to face each element of the VUCA concept.
This book falls into the first category, which means it cannot bring insights on how to deal with each element of the VUCA concept individually.
The book illustrated some of the key concepts that should be tackled to manage under highly VUCA conditions such as adaptability and adaptive capacity, leader's resilience, vision, innovation and creativity, dynamic capabilities, dynamic planning, training and development and agility. However, if we need to understand how to deal with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in details, other books and resources are needed.
Having said that, I believe that the book provides one side of the VUCA concept only. If we reviewing the body of literature back to 1990s, we will find that the original use for the VUCA concept came from the USA army when they used the acronym to describe the challenges in the battlefield in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
In my literature review, I found that people who discussed the VUCA concept utilized it in two ways:
Firstly, the VUCA term was used as a way to describe the combined challenges in the business environment. This group did not provide direct management strategies to deal with VUCA elements successfully; instead, they suggested solutions to an area that is changing and being affected by these conditions.
Secondly, the VUCA term was used as the core research topic, so this group provided detailed management strategies to face each element of the VUCA concept.
This book falls into the first category, which means it cannot bring insights on how to deal with each element of the VUCA concept individually.
The book illustrated some of the key concepts that should be tackled to manage under highly VUCA conditions such as adaptability and adaptive capacity, leader's resilience, vision, innovation and creativity, dynamic capabilities, dynamic planning, training and development and agility. However, if we need to understand how to deal with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in details, other books and resources are needed.
March 7, 2017
Good book to read during bull markets. Compilation of case studies of companies gone bust. Common theme- Greed,short term focus financed with loads of debt.
June 16, 2017
With real world examples, 2/3 rd of the book is a great read on major corporate failures. Last 1/3rd of the book drags into usual management guru stuff so not much interesting.
July 10, 2018
reasonable critical thinking
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews