Assessing VUCA-Plus in Your Own Life

Given that we are living in the challenging world of VUCA-Plus, it is good on occasion to gain a perspective on the nature and strength of each of these specific challenging conditions. I introduce an inventory in Appendix A that provides you with a series of questions about the environment in which you are working and living. Please imagine that you are being interviewed about the challenges that you are facing and respond to the interviewer by offering (checking) one of five options as to the accuracy for you of a specific description. There is no one correct answer for everyone—especially given the many different settings in which people completing this inventory are likely to be working and living. The only correct answer is your honest appraisal of each statement.

Managing Life and Work Changes

Given these VUCA-Plus conditions, we must prepare for life and work changes. This means acknowledging the level and rate of change that is taking place and preparing for the physical and mental challenges associated with this change. An inventory, a series of questions and some concepts can be of use when we are reflecting on past changes, as well as preparing for future changes. The inventory I am providing (Appendix B) is an update of one prepared by Richard Rahe and his colleagues during the late 1960s. The focus of this Life Change Scale is on the transitions that we all experience in our lives and the stress that is associated with these transitions. We are asked in this inventory to reflect on current changes in our lives, to explore past and future transitions and to consider the ways in which these transitions are managed —successfully or unsuccessfully.

We can begin this assessment of life and work changes by briefly discussing the concept of transitions. In a study of the effects which various human relations training programs have had on organizations, Charles Seashore found that participants, whether individuals or organizations, are un­likely to alter the directions in which they are currently moving simply as a result of the training. A program can, however, enable them to manage more effectively the rate of change; major transitions in life can thus be either accelerated or decelerated. Seashore concluded that the effective management of transitions is a valuable skill, es­pecially in a world that seems to be changing at an increasingly rapid rate.

The work of Thomas H. Holmes and Richard H. Rahe also seems relevant here. In a 1967 study these two physicians found that specific changes or life transitions are direct­ly correlated with the occurrence of physical illness and emotional disturbance (findings that have only become more relevant and have been further substantiated by later studies). The greater the number and magnitude of major life changes in a one-year period, the more likely it is that physical and emotional problems will occur during the subsequent year. The effective management of transitions is something we can work on and vitally affects our lives, both physically and emotionally.

Given this introduction, we turn to the Life-Change Scale. After completing the scale and calculating one’s life-change score, there is an occasion for reflecting on the implications of the total score. In general, a score of 200 or more reflects a high level of transitions, though scores of 200 are rather common in our VUCA-Plus world. A score of 300 or more indicates that the respondent has experienced exceptional life transitions during the past year and might want to give serious consideration to the physical and emotional costs of these transitions. A score of less than 100 can reflect either contentment or a protected situation.