These are the slides (including the exercises) from a 1-day workshop I designed, which covered a range of skills and tools to help managers cope with an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world.

1. Management skills for a
Volatile, Uncertain, Complex
and Ambiguous World
Facilitated by:
Ian J Seath

2. Workshop Aims
 As a result of this workshop, you will be able to:
 Explain how planning needs to be adapted to cope
with a VUCA world
 Identify the key components of good planning and
prioritising
 Use a variety of practical tools and techniques to
improve work plans
 Identify personal actions to improve time management
 Apply a simple behavioural skills model to improve
face-to-face interactions
2

3. Workshop Agenda
Morning
 Introductions
 It’s a VUCA World!
 Planning and the
Management Cycle
 Short-term Plans
 How long will it take?
 Who’s responsible?
Afternoon
 Weekly and Daily
Planning
 Overcoming the Time
Stealers
 Win-win Communications
and Influencing
 Dealing with difficult
situations
 Personal Action Plans
3

4. 4
IT’S A VUCA WORLD!
“We are moving from a world of problems, to a world of dilemmas”

5. 5
VUCA
Volatility
Uncertainty
Complexity
Ambiguity
Increasing rate of
change
Less clarity about
the future
Multiplicity of
decision factors
There may be no
“right answer”
A term originated by a US
Military College to describe
the new challenges facing
leaders.

6. 6
What do you want from today?
 Identify some specific examples of VUCA
situations that impact on you and your day-
job
 What challenges or issues do you face as a
consequence?
 What will make today a success for you?
 Your Learning Objectives

7. 7
The 4 management environments
Simple
• Change a wheel
on a car
• Build a wall
• Prune a tree
Complicated
• Build a car
• Build an office
• Re-plant a fruit
farm with new
trees
Complex
• Design a new
car
• Design a new
office
• Manage an area
of outstanding
natural beauty
Chaotic
• Deal with a
multiple car
crash on a
motorway
• Deal with a fire
in an office
• Deal with the
aftermath of a
major
earthquake
Ordered Unordered

8. 8
The 4 management environments
Simple
• Known knowns
• Facts
• Right answer
• Domain of best
practice & rules
Complicated
• Known
unknowns
• Facts
• May be more
than one right
answer
• Domain of
experts
Complex
• Unknown
unknowns
• Patterns (not
facts)
• Many
competing
ideas
• Domain of
emergence
Chaotic
• Unknowables
• High turbulence
• No right
answers
• No time to think
• Patterns
• Domain of
rapid response
Ordered Unordered

9. 9
The Manager’s role
Simple
• Sense, categorise,
respond
• Delegate
• Standardise
processes
• Adopt best
practices
• Communicate
directly and clearly
Complicated
• Sense, analyse,
respond
• Set up panels of
experts
• Listen to conflicting
advice
• Encourage
challenge
• Identify good
practices
Complex
• Probe, sense,
respond
• Generate ideas
• Experiment: try
hard, fail fast
• Increase
interactions and
communication
• Encourage dissent
and diversity
Chaotic
• Act, sense, respond
• Look for what works
• Command and
control to re-
establish order
• Communicate
directly and clearly
Ordered Unordered

10. 10
PLANNING AND THE
MANAGEMENT CYCLE
“Plans are nothing, planning is everything”
[Dwight D Eisenhower]

11. 11
The FPOC management cycle
Forecast
Plan
Organise
Control
What might happen?
What do we
want to
achieve?
Who is
working on
it?
Are we
succeeding?

12. 12
A forecast…
Is made with a
particular
decision in mind
Is a statement of
expected future
circumstances
Should be
made at the last
possible
moment
Should be for
the shortest
possible period

13. 13
All plans should start with “why?”
Why: Set objectives
How: Decide activities
What: Assess/
allocate resources

14. 14
Bringing plans to life
Daily
Plan
Weekly
Work
Plan
Look-
ahead
Plan
Master
Plan
Overall
project
schedule
4-6
week
view
Next
week’s
plan
Today’s
plan
What should
happen
What can
happen
What will
happen
The right people, collaborating on the right level of plan, at the right time

15. 15
The Master Plan/Schedule
 The aims of Master Schedules are to:
 Give us confidence that the end-date and
milestone dates are feasible
 Develop and display overall execution strategies,
based on known, current facts
 Identify and schedule long lead-time items
 i.e. anything that cannot be planned within the look-
ahead window
 Divide the work into phases, identifying any
special milestones of importance to the client or
other stakeholders

16. 16
Tools to use

17. 17
The Look-ahead Plan
 Shapes the workflow sequence and rate
 Might range from 3-12 weeks depending on the overall
timeline
 A 5 or 6 week look-ahead is typical, where “Week 1” is next week
 Used to ensure all the
necessary resources will be
in place in time for the
planned activities to start
 Begins to develop detailed
plans for how the work will
be done weekly and daily

18. 18
CREATING SHORT-TERM
PLANS
“Man cannot control the current of events; he can only float with
them and steer” [Otto von Bismarck]

19. Put first things first
Schedule your priorities,
don’t prioritise your schedule
If something is really
important, make the time for it
19

20. What’s the priority of each quadrant and what
proportion of your time you should allocate to each?
HIGH
LOW
LOW HIGH
IMPORTANCE
U
R
G
E
N
C
Y
20

21. What’s the priority of each quadrant?
3
Distraction?
2
Plan
4
Waste!
1
Manage
HIGH
LOW
LOW HIGH
IMPORTANCE
U
R
G
E
N
C
Y
21

22. What’s your current workload in each quadrant?
 Identify 10-15 “things to do” from your current
work
 Write each one on the Urgency / Importance
grid
Do them in the sequence you suggested!
22

23. 23
ESTIMATING HOW LONG
TASKS WILL TAKE
Hofstadter's Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even
when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.”

24. Estimating: scenarios…
1. You have been asked to help a team in the early stages of a project
to build a new production facility in the UK which will use some
emerging technology that has only been used at pilot scale, so far
2. You have been asked to help a new manager who has to create a
45 minute e-learning course, to be delivered via the intranet
3. A Senior Manager, preparing a Business Case, needs help thinking
through the likely costs and times for an organisational re-
structuring project for a Department of 150 people, to achieve a
25% cost saving
 How would you go about creating an estimate of the likely
costs and timescales?
24

25. Some possible approaches
 Create a WBS or PBS
 Use this to build bottom-up costs
 Analyse the historical cost and time data from
a series of previous projects and use average
data
 Find an example of a similar project and
adjust the times/costs to allow for the
difference in technology/scale/objectives
 Ask some experts
25

26. 5 Estimating methods
26
Expert
Judge-
ment
3-point
Estimate
Comparative
Estimate
Parametric
Estimate
Bottom-up
Estimate
Perception Fact
High
Accuracy
& Detail
“Quick &
Dirty”

27. Which estimating method is being used?
Expert 3-
Point
Compa-
rative
Para-
metric
Bottom-
up
The team identifies a best, worst and
most likely case and averages them
The team asks two suppliers who
have done similar work before
The team uses a spreadsheet of
data from previous projects and it
calculates cost and time estimates
for them
Members of the team have been
involved in 4 previous projects and
know exactly how long each one
took and what they cost
There’s so much work to be done
that the team breaks the project
down into 150 work packages
27

28. Estimating methods in your day-job
 With a colleague, choose a current project or
work activity and decide which method(s)
would be most appropriate for creating the
best estimates
 or choose a past project and identify which
estimating method(s) you should have used
28

29. 29
ALLOCATING
RESPONSIBILITY
“All organisations are perfectly designed to achieve the results that
they do”

30. 30
The RACI Matrix
 Who is Responsible for doing
that task
 Who is Accountable for
ensuring it is done to the
required standard, on time
 Who should be Consulted
about the task, or be involved
in decisions about it (2-way
communication)
 Who should be Informed about
the task, its progress and its
completion (1-way
communication)
Tasks
Ann
Bill
Carol
HRDir.
Trg.Admin
Ops.Dept.
Finance
Develop
Objectives for
Service
A
R
R C I
Agree Budget R A I C
Create first draft
of Specification
A
R
C I
etc.
R = Responsible, A = Accountable, C = Consult
I = Inform

31. 31
WEEKLY AND DAILY
PLANNING
“Eventually, all plans must degenerate into hard work”
[Peter Drucker]

32. The 80:20 Rule
20% of the time leads to 80% of the results.
20% 80%
TIME RESULTS
32

33. Scrum Board for Weekly/Daily Plans
33

34. Percent Plan Complete
34
 A key metric for your WWP is the “per-cent plan complete” (PPC)
value
 It is calculated as the number of activities that are completed as
planned, divided by the total number of planned activities
 It is a measure of the accuracy and reliability of your WWP

35. 35
DEALING WITH THE TIME
STEALERS
“Events my dear boy, events”
[Harold Macmillan]

36. Scenario – where are the time stealers?
 Ian gets into his office, starts his computer and logs on to
check his e-mails. After 10 minutes he has a quick look
through his Twitter stream and checks his Facebook
page. He then spends 30 minutes preparing the first part
of a report which is due tomorrow. After attending a 45
minute meeting he grabs a cup of coffee and chats with
some colleagues. Back at his desk he notices he has 5
new e-mails which he decides to read and he replies to 2
of them. Returning to his report he spends 10 minutes
collecting his thoughts and another 30 minutes writing
before deciding it’s nearly time to break for lunch. He
makes a couple of quick ‘phone calls, then goes off for
lunch.
36

37. Time stealers
1. Procrastination/indecision
2. Ineffective meetings
3. Interruptions - visitors, telephone, e-mail
4. “Never say no”
5. Lack of delegation
6. Lack of planning before starting tasks
7. Waiting time - between meetings
8. Starting too many things and not finishing them
9. Changing priorities
10. Communication failures
11. Unclear responsibilities
12. Unnecessary Travelling
etc.
37

38. Dealing with your time stealers
• Step 1 - Individually, select the top 3 time stealers
that affect you, day-in and day-out
• Step 2 - Share your thoughts with the group
• Step 3 - As a group, identify and share some
possible solutions
38

39. What is “quality time”?
• A person’s average
uninterrupted time at
work is usually less
than 10 minutes
• Respect your
colleagues’ quality
time by not
interrupting them
unnecessarily
39

40. The four Ds…
Do it
Delegate it
Delay it
Dump it
Does it
require
action?
No
action?
40

41. The 2 minute rule:
Less than 2 minutes?
 Do it
More than 2 minutes?
 Delegate it
 Delay it
41

42. Delegate it…
“Tell me what you want
me to do and why,
then let me get
on with it.
If I make a mess of it,
coach me so I know
where I went wrong.
But, don’t fuss !!!”
A Subordinate’s Prayer
42

43. If it doesn’t require you to DO
something…
Dump it “I might need this later”
File it
43

44. 44
WIN-WIN COMMUNICATION
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it
has taken place.” [George Bernard Shaw]

45. 45
4 Communication styles
• Question
• Listen
• Summarise
• Withdraw
• Silent
• Apologise
• Inform
• Persuade
• Direct
• Attack
• Dominate
• Threaten
Aggressive Assertive
ResponsivePassive

46. 46
Communication in a VUCA World
Vision
Under-
standing
Clarity
Agility
Clear intent and
direction
Listening,
empathy and
sensing
Options and
recommendations
Try hard, fail fast,
learn [JFDI]

47. 47
Seek first to understand…
 Open Questions
– What, Where, When, Who,
Why, How
– To get the candidate talking
and open up discussion
 Closed Questions
– Did, Can, Was, Were, Is
– To confirm facts and close
down discussion
 Probe Questions
– “Why did that happen?”
– “How did that affect you?”
– To get behind the first answer
 Reflective Questions
– “You mentioned training, in
what way was...”
– “Challenging, how was
that...?”
– Reflects back the candidate’s
answer and leads to a further
question
– Demonstrates active listening
 Leading Questions
– “Do you prefer X or Y?”
– “You agree, don’t you?”
– Should not be used
 Multiple Questions
– “What... & was...?”
– Should not be used

48. 48
DEALING WITH DIFFICULT
SITUATIONS
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of
itself.” [Henry Ford]

49. PERSONAL ACTION PLANS
49

50. Say it, see it, write it…
 Identify from all of today’s inputs and
colleagues’ ideas, what you plan to do
differently
 Be specific and ensure the improvements are
measurable
 Be prepared to share your plan with the
group
Do it…
50

51. Facilitated by Ian J Seath
(2014)
ian.seath@improvement-skills.co.uk
07850 728506
@ianjseath
uk.linkedin.com/in/ianjseath