VUCA: It’s Giving Chaos, But Make It Strategic
Holding space for the most HR-sounding way to describe the collapse of institutional trust.
I try not to traffic in millennial office speak. I swear I try. But, if I had a dollar for every time I said “circle back,” I could probably retire and fund a GOTV operation out of spite.
I’ve used bandwidth to describe mental energy. I’ve unironically said “let’s take that offline.” One time I even wrote “moving parts” in an email and had to close the laptop and stare into the void for twenty minutes just to forgive myself.
So when I got a text from a friend asking, “Have you heard of VUCA?”… my soul groaned. Out loud. I was sure it was going to be another eye-roller. One of those cute acronyms consultants drop to sound wise while selling you something in the midst of chaos.
But this time, I hadn’t heard of it.
So I looked it up.
And… damn if it didn’t land.
VUCA: Volatility. Uncertainty. Complexity. Ambiguity.
It turns out it wasn’t cooked up in a WeWork focus group. The term was first introduced by leadership scholars in the 1980s. And was then adopted by the U.S. Army War College to describe the post–Cold War world: unstable, fast-moving, hard to predict. In other words, a leadership nightmare.
And like all good military lingo, it got absorbed by the business world, regurgitated by TEDx talks, and now lives rent-free in every startup pitch deck and middle manager’s motivational whiteboard.
But honestly? It might be the best descriptor of 2025 I’ve heard.
Because if we’re being honest with ourselves, we are deep in VUCA country right now.
Volatility: The pace of change is dizzying. One minute the headlines are about debates, the next they’re about indictments, hurricanes, or shark batteries (again). Political norms are being eaten, digested, and posted on Truth Social.
Uncertainty: We don’t know what the courts will do (though we keep thinking they’ll do the right things). We don’t know what Trump will say next, or which court will pretend it doesn’t matter. Even the basics (like which maps we’re voting on) are sometimes up for grabs mid-cycle. It’s like playing Monopoly but the rules keep changing and also the board is on fire.
Complexity: Every issue is tangled up in a dozen others. You can’t fix education without fixing funding without fixing state government without fixing turnout without fixing disinformation. And somehow while all that’s happening, you still need to clean your kitchen and remember where you parked.
Ambiguity: Words don’t mean what they used to. “Parents’ rights” is code for censorship. “Election integrity” means voter suppression. And “freedom” might mean you’re about to be invited to a militia picnic.
That’s VUCA. And for better or worse, we’re living it.
But here’s what makes it worth “holding space” for it:
VUCA isn’t just buzzword. It can be a map.
It doesn’t fix the problem, but it tells you what kind of problem you’re in.
Most people respond to this kind of chaos by shutting down. They wait for things to return to “normal.” But that’s not how this works.
VUCA isn’t a storm that passes.
It’s the terrain right now.
And if you’re waiting for it to stop being volatile or uncertain before you get involved, **spoiler** you’ll be waiting forever. The good news? You don’t have to wait.
You just have to act anyway. Knowing it’s not going to be perfect. Knowing the path won’t be clear. Knowing it’s probably going to feel messy, complicated, and unrewarding right up until it’s not.
This is where organizers actually have the edge.
We don’t expect clarity. We build toward it.
We don’t wait for the courts to come through. We prepare for both outcomes.
We don’t panic when the waters rise because we’re already filling the sandbags.
Because in a worled all VUCA’d-up::
Consistency is radical.
Clarity is a form of care.
Follow-through is revolutionary.
It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be real.
Knock three doors. Write one letter. Host a lunch. Hold a sign. Hold someone’s hand.
Because while they want confusion and paralysis, you can offer connection and direction. No perfect answers. Just a steady voice in the fog.
So yeah, VUCA is an acronym.
And yeah, it’s the kind of thing that ends up on a ceramic mug in the HR office, right next to a faded poster of a waterfall labeled “Change is the only constant” that’s been hanging there since the Bush administration, passed down like an heirloom no one remembers buying.
But it’s also a good reminder that you are not powerless just because things are uncertain.
You are not broken just because the system is.
You are here.
In it.
And you know the weather.
So bring snacks. Find your people. Bring a raincoat.
And let’s build what we can in the storm.