VUCA skills are on the rise!
Lectica’s Certified Consultants, Coaches, and Educators (heretofore Lappies) have been helping leaders build VUCA skills for 15 years. As Lectica’s learning tools have evolved, so have the VUCA skills of their clients. In other words, we’re getting better and better at helping leaders build VUCA skills!
What’s a VUCA skill?
VUCA is an acronym that represents four characteristics of highly complex decision-making contexts—Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. VUCA skills are the sets of skills most needed for effective decision-making under VUCA conditions. At Lectica, we’ve been studying and supporting the development of these skills since 2002.
The sample represented in the chart above is comprised of the 4,296 LDMAs taken and VUCA-skills scored since 2008.
A little background
Lectica has been working with an assessment called the LDMA (Lectical Leadership Decision-making Assessment) since 2002. It’s a formative open-response assessment, in which leaders are presented with a thorny dilemma and a series of prompts. In their responses to these prompts, leaders show us what kind of skills they bring into their deliberative process.
LDMA reports include three kinds of scores—Lectical, Clarity, and VUCA scores:
- Lectical Scores, which are sometimes called Complexity or CLAS scores, are measures of the hierarchical complexity of assessment responses. These are scored on a life-span scale that ranges from 1–1300.
- Clarity Scores are measures of the level of skill demonstrated on four dimensions of clarity, including framing, coherence, logic, and persuasiveness. These are scored on a 100-point scale ranging from no demonstrated skill (0) to the best we’ve ever seen (100).
- VUCA Scores are measures of the level of skill demonstrated on four broad VUCA skills, including perspective coordination, collaborative capacity, contextual thinking, and decision-making process. Like Clarity skills, VUCA skills are scored on a 100-point scale ranging from no demonstrated skill (0) to the best we’ve ever seen (100).
Clarity and VUCA skills are scored by humans with standardized rubrics.
You can learn more about VUCA skills in the article, VUCA unpacked (1) — Introduction.
Back to those growing VUCA skills
As shown in the chart at the top of the page, the VUCA skills of managers and leaders who work with Lappies have increased steadily over the last 15 years, with somewhat stronger growth since the introduction of micro-VCoLing and skill mapping in 2018. I believe this steady progress reflects growth in the effectiveness of Lectica’s learning tools, but I know it wouldn’t be happening without the skillful and creative implementation of these tools by our growing community of talented Lappies.
In the chart above, I have created three categories representing successive 5-year ranges. These ranges are periods in which we have employed different pedagogical approaches to supporting the development of VUCA skills.
2009–2013: During this period, we were primarily teaching Lappies about developmental theory and helping them learn to explain developmental theory to their clients. We thought that learning about the theory would inspire leaders to learn more about VUCA skills. Assessment reports contained learning recommendations that involved an abundance of reading and video watching. Their VUCA score average was just a tick above 40 at 41.
2014–2018: At the end of 2013, we knew that only a small proportion of LDMA test-takers had followed up on our reading and listening suggestions. Moreover, by 2014, because of other research conducted between 2009 and 2013, we had gathered considerable evidence that participants enrolled in learning programs rich in VCoLing opportunities (learning how) learned faster and better than participants in programs focused on learning about. Consequently, by 2014, we had revamped courses and reports to put more emphasis on VCoLing and added written VCoLs to LDMA reports as primary learning activities. The average VUCA score during 2014–1018 was 47—a 6-point increase over 2009–2013.
2019–2024: In the years leading up to 2019, we began building skill maps in an attempt to describe every single VUCA skill that could be practiced by leaders in real-time. Then, in 2019, we introduced a major redesign of LDMA reports, completely shifting their emphasis to suggestions for embodied real-time practice in the form of micro-VCoLing. We also entirely stopped explaining developmental theory in our LAP-1 course and LDMA reports. The average VUCA score during this period was 55—an 8-point increase over 2014–2018.
2025–2029: We don’t know what will happen during the next 5 years, but we have recently made a rather momentous change to our approach to teaching VCoLing skills. We’re working with a new tool called the Micro-VCoL Maker. It’s designed to help leaders and other humans build micro-VCoLing skills so they will be able to build all other skills faster and better. This year we began training Lappies with the Maker. I can hardly wait for the 2029 analysis!
The Micro-VCoL Maker is in development and a bit buggy, but right now, everyone who registers on our site gets to play with it for free.
If you are a coach, consultant, or educator who would like your clients to benefit from the kind of growth reported here, we’d love to see you in LAP-1 (Lectical Assessment in Practice).
If you aren’t a consultant or coach but want to learn how to grow your mind faster and better (while having more fun), we offer ViP (VCoL in practice).
