Saint Theresa College of Tandag Inc.

Graduate School
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax (086) 211- 3046

EDUC-110/ CURRICULUM PLANNING

REFLECTION ON VUCA WORLD

Prepared by:

JOHN ANTONY Z. LLANO

Student/MAED 1

Submitted to:

LOVELEAH B. ALBARILLO,PhD
Professor

December 17, 2022

 Saint Theresa College of Tandag Inc.
Graduate School
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax (086) 211- 3046

VUCA WORLD TODAY

Many of us have talked about what it means to live in a VUCA world. All of our planning and
preparing is now taking on an entirely new meaning; it is now being “crisis” tested. Experience has
a way of deepening the meaning of the words we use.

One thing that seems important to acknowledge at the outset is that this conversation may be
premature for many leaders who are right in the thick of things, working 16-hours six and seven
days a week to handle the fallout of this pandemic.

I’m also hearing from leaders who find themselves with more downtime than they ever thought
possible, wondering “what do we do when we don’t know what to do?” So, this invitation to
participate in a virtual conversation will not be as linear as it might seem. With that said, there are
two things that have been illuminated for me that I hope will be useful to share here:
First, experience really is the best teacher. Living and leading in a VUCA world is no longer an
abstract concept to study, plan for, or read about in futurist scenarios. It is our daily teacher.

As we witness the drastically different choices many of us are making about whether to shelter-in-
place and practice physical distancing, or to consider this to be an over-reaction it occurred to me
that the same sort of dynamic plays out in our organizations. People identify with their “tribe” or
team, and collect information that supports their point of view, but we struggle to listen to and
collaborate across differences (aka silos).
Obviously the stakes are drastically different in the organizations we support, but we find
ourselves wondering what we can do to help leaders engage people to feel more connected to
one another and to a more collective view of their challenges.

That seems essential to being ready for or leading thru events such as this, but it also seems more
satisfying and productive too.

I also find myself wondering how it is that truth of our interdependence seems to wait on the
sidelines of our daily lives until there is a crisis. It was true on 9/11 and it is true now. As
devastating as such moments are, they also often bring us together.

Based on my experience as a teacher, rapid change is very evident and a lot us were feeling tired
and exhausted due to some reports and works given to us that sometimes we have no knowledge
about and things that we really don’t know how to execute because the work doesn’t belong to the
description in our job. It is really hard to accomplish all of those without proper orientations on how
and what to do to those given tasks to us.
I know I can say all of these and rant sometimes until I’ve heard this word VUCA World. It is my first
time encountering such a word. VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. After
reading the definitions and wants to imply of these words, I now understood that we live in a world
 Saint Theresa College of Tandag Inc.
Graduate School
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax (086) 211- 3046

of fast change and information overload. Technology changes the world we live in at a lightning
pace. The consequences are far reaching.
Technology changes the way we live on how we communicate with each other, how we create and
gather knowledge, how we travel, how we listen to music, how we do our shopping and even how
we start, build or terminate a relationship. We can hardly imagine a world like it was just a decade
ago. Slowly but surely century-old concepts such as family and nationality shift to a new reality.
VUCA reflects the increasingly unstable, rapidly changing world we live in. It means that at any
given time, and a lot more often than in the past, an unforeseen event may occur.
Experts agree that VUCA is now the new reality and we have to be able to deal with such a world on
a daily basis. The problem is that although, we live in this reality, the large majority of leaders are ill
equipped to face it.
It is true that living in this reality of life, even though we have already the knowledge about how the
world works now, acceptance really hits hard and still we can do nothing about it but to love
everything about it, to love our job and be used to it because I believe that if those tasks or problems
were provided to us, surely the answer and solution is attached to it. We have to expect the
unexpected. We live in a VUCA World.