Now that we know what VUCA means (thanks COVID!), I started to think about how we handle the uncertainty we are now living through.  What can we do now when facing such a huge wall of uncertainty?  I thought that it is probably best to think simply and focus on the things that you can control easily, just looking to take the best next steps we can take rather than making complex, multi-stranded strategies.  But keeping thoughts simple is not so easy, especially if, for years, you have been rewarded for solving super complex problems.  

Years ago I met the American beat poet, Robert Creeley.  He looked like he had walked off the film set of Once Upon A Time In The West with his dusty hobo jacket, cowboy boots and a ragged old satchel.  With his one remaining eye he scanned a notebook (that had just been ridden over by a posse of cattle rustlers) full of handwritten poems and read out what he described as the shortest meaningful poem ever written.  He read:

‘If. If’

That was it.  The shortest poem, a poem where everyone can fill in the gaps before and after the ‘Ifs’

If only I had taken a different route that day… If I had been a bit more adventurous…  I would have been rich if I … If I had known how to handle the kitchen blender I wouldn’t be at the dry cleaners today … 

You can do a lot with simplicity and brevity.  Take a look at La Linea cartoons on YouTube: a one line animated drawing of the adventures of a simply drawn little man.  The Italian artist Osvaldo Cavandoli keeps the lines and the humour super simple. But after 45 years since his creation, the humour still works because it’s simple.

I once had the pleasure (I use that word in the English sense – It’s a joke .. get it?) to work with the Chairman of a public health service in the UK.  After several sessions with his Board he was to deliver his future vision of the service in a short, powerful breakfast presentation.  I knew I should have given him more guidance about the words ‘short’ and ‘powerful’ when I saw him come into the meeting room with a plastic supermarket basket full of his handouts.  In fact the only bit that I must have explained right was the ‘breakfast’ bit.  So his presentation was super complex, far too long, too deep on topics and way too mystifying for this audience that he lost them along the way.

Like many people he was getting his comfort blanket from the complexity of the thinking and enormity of the production he had achieved.  Otherwise he wouldn’t be doing a proper job, right?  I guess some people asked Osvaldo Cavandoli to give his little man proper hands, shoes and some eyes.   Cavandoli knew that less is more … Bravissimo! 

So whatever situation you are now in, think simply, focus on the next steps … because by the time you have written a 10 page vision and action plan for yourself, the world will have changed anyway. You can always add the hands later!

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