Since I started my MBA @IIM Rohtak, I had the opportunity of seeing many leaders explaining the term VUCA.
VUCA signifies as to how the world around us is changing continuously and how we should tackle it. I was always curious to know that will all the situations,
Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity come in picture for us shortly. How the market will react to any such circumstance and how the current leaders will be facing the same.
If somebody had asked me 3 months back to opine on the market situation in India, I would have said the Indian job market and businesses wouldn't be facing any downturn in the coming days. However, the GDP was going down for the last few quarters. But as it has rightly been said, the only thing constant in this world is change, and the pandemic Corona has hit the world & changed all of our predictions and market conditions. The job market is going down, the world economy is trembling, and the IMF has already declared a slowdown. India being a developing country, will face an uphill task to combat this situation, and the flag bearers will always be the leaders of the businesses.
So what is the VUCA situation for Indian Business right now? The Corona Pandemic, which has lead to a
21 days lockdown in complete India.But the impact it has is enormous. Almost all the sectors are directly or indirectly impacted due to this Lockdown, but Lockdown was inevitable to avoid further damage. By the time I am writing this piece, the affected persons have increased to 1200+, and the deaths have crossed 25+ with a threat of further increase, and the Lockdown is 7 days up.
The impacted cases are going up daily, creating a volatile situation, and states like Maharashtra and Kerala are showing a perfect sign of profoundly affected areas in terms of numbers. The window of 14 days to detect the Corona disease has made it highly uncertain as no one would ever get any symptoms in these 14 days. The infrastructure India has in terms of Medical facility and the ratio of
Doctor to population (0.5 per 1000 population ), making it unpredictable for business to predict whether India is well equipped or not, and the later seems to be the case. Using data from the National Health Profile–2019, we observed that there are
7,13,986 total government hospital beds available in India. This amounts to 0.55 beds per 1000 population. The availability of beds for older people, which is most vulnerable to the Coronavirus in India is 5.18 beds per 1000 population. The number of tests being carried out till date is quite less considering the population of India.Not having a vaccine ready and not having enough test kits available, not well equipped for work from home deliverables, and many more factors are making the situation more complex day by day. The impact of the work, economy, the deliverables for IT, the changing consumer behavior on buying all will be making the problem more complicated in the coming days. Last but not the least possibility to control the outbreak and to see the scenario of Italy and Spain is making the problem more complicated. The growth plans, the debt repayment schedules, the commitments to clients and employees, and the big question of how many days this Lockdown will go on with news being spread that this may last longer than 21 days are making this the most ambiguous problem.
From one of my learning from Foundation of Leadership lessons in my Term 3 at IIM Rohtak from Prof. N.M Agrawal ( Guest faculty from IIM Bangalore), the curriculum was designed to make us ready to face the VUCA world.
For folks who've not been able to attend the legend's class or aren't familiar with VUCA there's this video to help you out.
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- So changing Volatility to a clear vision is the first step where leaders need to create a vision for the Best case and worst case scenario and create value for all your employees and stakeholders like Client and suppliers. If your employee is aware of your problems, they get ready to see them giving more efforts to help you in solving problems. He may come up with an innovative idea and help you solve some small issues. You were changing uncertainty to understanding what your competitors are doing ? how the world market reacted to this? Is there any opportunity to grow at this point?
- Few examples of making great opportunity in this time are given below
Earlier this week, Diageo had announced to produce around 300,000 litres of bulk hand sanitizer across 15 manufacturing units for use by public healthcare workers and donate 500,000 litres ENA to the sanitizer industry to enable the production of more than two million units (250 ml each) of hand sanitizers well this may not have a business-related motive. Still, it has created an excellent goodwill gesture for the company, which will have a long term impact. Ever imagined a United Spirits making sanitizers.
Coronavirus: Maruti Suzuki India to make ventilators, masks for Covid-9 patients, health workers-Automobile manufacturer Maruti Suzuki India Limited has agreed to produce respirators, masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) to support India's fight against the novel coronavirus or Covid-19.An arrangement with AgVa Healthcare (an existing approved manufacturer of ventilators) has been made to manufacture 10,000 ventilators per month, Imagine an automobile giant making Ventilators, which has a market share of around 50% in the Indian Market. Read more
here!
• Changing the Complexity to clarity Be clear what you are doing and what is your plans? Salary Cut to employees vs. Lay off and Hiring Freeze vs. Zero Hike to existing employees and whether to take interns or revoking the internships or to give unpaid work from home internships.Role of your stakeholders
Agility will be the key to face this unpredictable situation
• Stay adaptable to the situation, Lockdown now so being prepared to what to do after that, and can logistics be ramped up to stimulate and match the demand after the Lockdown, Can things go online and can the work from home facility be leveraged. Embrace creativity and make sure that it helps to improve productivity and Stimulate employee/stakeholder participation so that everyone is on the same page to handle the situation.
Few steps taken by India Inc are well described
here