Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous quality

We live in a jittery world. Geopolitical and geoeconomic turbulence, extreme weather and social fragmentation are likely to worsen. Confidence that governing institutions can navigate this fragility is plummeting and being eroded by some nation states. This extreme fragility and uncertainty have called corporate plans into question.

How can you plan for such an uncertain future? 

Vince Desmond, CEO, CQI

Simon Caulkin, the business management journalist, writes that under the Trump administration, “management is being taken back to the, albeit AI-assisted, Dark Ages….” with “… a strong corporate pushback … on what can now be fashionably dismissed as ‘woke’ management…” and “a return to the brash ‘move fast and break things’ management style that some male CEOs seem still to pine for.” 

Responding to uncertainty with agility 

In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, many worry that by the time a strategy is built, the world will have already moved on, and the strategy itself will be outdated before it’s even launched. In this context, many organisations’ responses may be to sit tight, cut costs and ride it out, hoping for the best. This is not only a private sector response – governments from the USA to Vietnam are swiftly slashing civil servants and eroding public institutions.  

Business agility has been on the agenda for some time. Two years ago, we were pleased to have a speaker from the Agile Business Consortium at Quality Live explore the positive links between business agility, innovation and quality management. Ensuring quality management can react and respond with agility is vital.  

The VUCA environment requires a quality management system and, crucially, quality culture needs the ability to react thoughtfully and respond proactively. We need to make decisions for today that do not create problems for the future. 

Vince Desmond, CEO, CQI

The alternative is cutting investment in quality activity as part of a retrenchment response, especially if quality management is seen as a cost. Here lies danger.

Prioritising capability    

Continuous improvement has a compounding effect. In the short term, incremental improvements mean almost nothing. In the long term, this compounding effect of improving what organisations produce and how they produce can mean everything. De-investing in improvement will store up problems and leak competitive advantage in the long term.  

We also know from past economic downturns and, indeed, Covid-19, that cutting costs means cutting capability. When the time comes for organisations to maximise their position, they struggle. Organisations must maintain core capability internally and in their supply chains. This will mitigate short- and long-term quality problems and risks. 

Put all this together, and quality professionals and teams play a critical role in dealing with disruption and new management styles.

Vince Desmond, CEO, CQI

During Covid-19, the CQI created a managing disruption tool to help quality teams deal with VUCA. Now might be a good time to revisit it (available to CQI members in the Members’ Area).

Our ‘think differently’ World Quality Week theme and Quality Live 2025 calls for ‘dreamers and disruptors’ to join us as we reflect on and reimagine how we approach quality, together as a global community.

I look forward to hearing those responding bravely and innovatively to our contemporary context and at the conference in June and throughout the year.