If you understand the American military protocol VUCA that was designed for
- situations or contexts that are Volatile (prone to sudden change in real time) which are
- Unpredicatable (hard to read because of their dynamic nature and the lack of accurate information) and are therefore
- Complex rather than simply complicated (so cannot be navigated by a compass points that do not register any of the four directions or by linear logic)
- and so are ongoingly Ambiguous by their nature
– you will have an appreciation of and value a strategic perspective on the world as it exists now NOT as it was. In a VUCA world, old answers don’t work because the information – data – compass matrix is incomplete, missing or broken. This is the world you are living in. From a complexity science perspective VUCA protocol requires:
- acknowledging the new reality (where its unclear who are allies or enemies, where variables change in real time)
- identifying and observing variables (which might be influenced or might offer any kind of helpful information)
- testing, experimenting and probing
- whilst holding the ground
- until potential allies and practical solutions, which do not presently exist, emerge.
This is a protocol for dynamic, 360 degree holistic leadership – which is less about personal charisma and more about holistic husbandry – the capability of developing strategically conducive contexts that are regenerative and resilient. It is what is needed in this turbulent new era of politics.
A LOST LEGACY OF STRATEGIC WISDOM
The man who first identified and successfully practiced this in modern times was a warrior statesman who I suspect you will not be familar with. He has been written out of history due to his 21st century political incorrectness by the extremes of both right and left. However, it is time for his legacy and wisdom, which can serve Britain and the world once again, to be restored.
Until the age of 12 he had no education and lived as a goat herd. He later led his men, despite being greatly outnumbered, in successful guerilla wars against the British Empire. He advised Lloyd George to create the RAF after the first world war and was staunchly against the settlement of Versailles that led to the rise of Nazism. In 1926 he wrote a book about his holistic perspective of which Einstein predicted, along with his own work on relativity, would eventually become one of the key intellectual influences of the 21st century. He was later appointed Rector of Aberdeen University and Master of Christ’s College Cambridge. He became friends with Churchill whom he had previously taken prisoner in the Boer War and drafted the preface to the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights with Eleanor Roosevelt. He was a close friend of the Royal Family for many years, was admired by both Churchill and Clement Atlee because he was instrumental in the formation of the British Commonwealth. During World War Two, Winston Churchill said of him, “If I am killed he should take over the leadership of the allies due to his brilliant strategic intelligence”. His name was General Jan Christian Smuts who became Prime Minister of South Africa.
His holistic perspective and practice was a forerunner of the VUCA protocol. It allowed him to remain optimistic in the darkest of times and not only to trust that light would prevail but to respond strategically using a principled pragmatism to what he saw as the deeper cosmic reality that humanity has to find its utimate purpose in.
My colleagues and I, in our centenary celebration of his work ask what Smuts would have done if he were alive today? We suspect he would have adopted a VUCA complexity protocol and sought out potential allies like yourself.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO BRITAIN TODAY?
Some would say we are living through dark times once again. The United Kingdom has beeen a Dis-united Kingdom since the EU Referendum in 2016. After several failed Prime Minsters, a stagnent and stalled economy, the rise of MAGA and its unreliable extractivist leadership in the USA and in the face of a potential existential threat from Russia, the governing Labour party is not only facing a leadership challenge but a challenge to its direction. This offers an important opportunity to reset the direction of this country and reunite the nation by creating a new win-win strategy for 21st century politics. Many despair of the disharmony between left and right and have given up on the possibility of a united kingdom.
How would you unite the nation? This was a question a member of the BBC Question Time audience recently asked, to which not a single panel member had an answer. They merely perfomatively parrotted their tribal party line based on the defunct political compass of the old world as it was.
Smuts would have said the answer is not in moving more left or more right. The answer is also not in becoming more centrist more liberal or neo -liberal as Starmer and Reeves have chosen to do. Playing three dimensional chess is not possible on a two dimentional chess board. The way forward is above