Why “Getting Back to Normal” is the Wrong Goal – And What to do Instead
When leaders say "when things get back to normal, we will..." or "I just need there to be a pause in all the changes...", they are demonstrating something important: they have not yet made peace with the VUCA world they are operating in.
That is not a criticism. It is a completely understandable response to conditions that are genuinely hard. But it is also a response that prevents people from developing the capabilities they actually need.
Because the pause is not coming. VUCA — Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous — is not a temporary state. It is the permanent condition of modern leadership and organisational life. The question is not how to escape it, but how to build the capabilities to thrive within it.
What VUCA Actually Means
Let's be precise about this, because the word gets used as a vague synonym for "chaotic" and that misses what's important.
Volatile describes the speed and rapidity of change. Like a snowball effect — once change has started, you cannot get in front of it and stop it. You can only navigate it.
Uncertain means unclear about the here and now and the impact of decisions. The law of unintended consequences operates at full strength. You cannot know with certainty how the changes you make today will play out.
Complex means multiple key decision factors operating simultaneously, and an inability to be sure how the different elements of a situation interconnect or will affect each other.
Ambiguous means a lack of clarity about the meaning of events. There is often no single right answer. Good leadership in these conditions requires the ability to operate without that certainty.
The VUCA Prime Response
The counterbalance to VUCA is VUCA Prime, and it is where resilience and leadership capability converge.
Vision is the counterbalance to Volatility. It is about Situational Awareness — using foresight to look up and around, notice what is happening and what might be on the horizon, and act accordingly. The behaviours that underpin it are openness, curiosity, sense-making and strategic thinking.
Understanding is the counterbalance to Uncertainty. This is about developing the mindset and attitude of "I am comfortable feeling uncomfortable." If leading often feels full-on, stretching and a little bit scary, the goal is not to reduce that experience. It is to develop the capability to function well within it. That requires highly developed Emotional Intelligence and the personal resilience to sustain it.
Clarity is the counterbalance to Complexity. This is not about control or micromanagement. It is about the high-quality conversations that enable others to understand the parameters within which they can exercise real ownership — delegation and coaching, not command and control.
Agility is the counterbalance to Ambiguity. Deciding on a course of action and being ready to change it when the situation demands. Note that this is different from Adaptability — Adaptability is the openness to change, the willingness to observe and remain curious. Agility is the decisive action that follows. Both are needed. Neither alone is sufficient.
How are you exhibiting “Commander’s Calm”? Photo Medien Sturmer Unsplash
The Four Capabilities and Five Skills
Developing genuine VUCA Prime leadership requires four specific capabilities:
• Commander's Calm: responding mentally, emotionally and physiologically in a cool, calm and composed manner under pressure
• Situational Awareness: perceiving the salient elements of a rapidly changing environment in order to anticipate, understand and act on future events
• Mental Agility: applying creative solutions to complex problems in a timely manner
• Learned Instinct: taking action based on intuition and learned behaviours that have become automatic through deliberate, repeated practice
Dr Louis Csoka, the occupational psychologist who brought VUCA into corporate leadership, summarised what underpins all four capabilities: "The ability to perform at one's best in extreme conditions comes from a combination of confidence, positive and adaptive thinking, a sense of calm and composure under fire, exceptional focus and concentration and the ability to envision success before it happens."
All of this maps directly to The Resilience Wheel — which is why the Wheel is the foundation, not an add-on. The five peak performance skills — Adaptive Thinking, Stress Management, Attention Control, Visualisation and Imagery, and Goal-setting — are the building blocks of every VUCA Prime capability. And every one of them is learnable.
Why This Matters Commercially
The ADP Research Institute found that only 17% of employees globally felt fully resilient — and leadership behaviour was cited as the primary environmental factor. The BSI Organisational Resilience Index found that people and process elements drove the greatest performance differences during the pandemic period. Research during COVID-19 showed that employees who received resilience training maintained higher productivity and lower stress than those who did not.
These are not incidental findings. They describe the commercial mechanism by which VUCA conditions either accelerate performance or erode it. Organisations that invest in developing VUCA Prime capabilities — through personal, leadership, team and organisational resilience — perform better than those that wait for conditions to improve.
The Goal: "There's a Lot Going On, and I Am Good"
Resilience, as I define it, is "Springing Forward with Learning." It is not about returning to who you were before the difficult period. It is not about forced positivity or pretending the challenges are smaller than they are. It is about developing the specific, evidence-based capabilities that allow you to function at your best in conditions that are genuinely hard.
The measure of that is simple. It is leaders who can say, with genuine meaning, "there's a lot going on, and I am good." Not because the environment has become easier. Because they have become more capable within it.
That is what The Resilience Wheel develops. That is what thriving in a VUCA world looks like. And it is built, dimension by dimension, through deliberate investment in personal, leadership, team and organisational resilience.
Ready to have a conversation?
Book a no-obligation introductory call at zcal.co/russellharvey/intro-call or email russell@theresiliencecoach.co.uk