Thousands of small decisions shape our journeys, but a few overarching themes dictate the playing field. Understanding these themes helps us deploy our most precious resource — time — with ruthless precision.
These themes typically emerge from geopolitics, macroeconomics, or technology. Today, all three have collided to create something undeniable: extreme, unrelenting volatility.
So now we face a critical fork in the road. Is this temporary turbulence that will eventually calm, or have we entered a new reality where volatility is the steady state?
If you believe it's temporary, your strategy is clear: hunker down, take a breath, and wait for calmer waters. But if — like me — you believe volatility is our new normal, pausing is a death sentence. You need to engineer ways to thrive within the chaos.
Accepting volatility gives you a powerful filter for every decision. That's the good news. The harder part is that winning in volatility demands a completely different playbook than winning in stability.
Among the critical shifts you'll need to make, none will be more consequential than what you prioritize when hiring.
VUCA!
The military developed a powerhouse framework for our exact environment: VUCA — Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Born in the post-Cold War chaos of the late 1980s, it revolutionized how the U.S. Army prepared leaders for a battlefield where enemies blurred, alliances shifted overnight, and outcomes defied prediction.
What's fascinating isn't that they created this framework — it's what happened after they embraced it. They didn't just acknowledge chaos — they mobilized it. Leadership training pivoted from rigid doctrine to rapid adaptation. Command structures flattened, pushing decisions to the frontlines where information was freshest. Most critically, they built a culture that prized sense-making over certainty, transforming America's fighting forces into a machine purpose-built for asymmetric warfare.
This evolution isn't just military history — it's your survival blueprint. Correctly identifying volatility as our new normal isn't some academic exercise — it's the foundation for reinventing how you operate. Organizations clinging to stability-era practices face extinction, while those reshaping their entire model for turbulence will extract power from the very forces crushing their competitors.
Imagine if the Army had ignored this seismic shift and kept preparing for yesterday's wars. That's exactly what you're doing if you're still hiring with criteria built for predictable markets.
Easy to say, but...
So, now that we understand why it's imperative to recognize our operating environment and adjust accordingly, let's focus on the most critical adaptation: who we bring onto our teams.
Adaptability & Learning Agility: Hunt for people who thrive on disruption and devour new skills. In interviews, push for examples of when they abandoned comfortable approaches for better ones. The elite candidates don't just tolerate change — they chase it, describing shifts in strategy as opportunities rather than obstacles.
Resilience & Stress Tolerance: Find those rare individuals who perform better under pressure, not worse. These people don't break when projects implode; they immediately pivot to solutions. Look beyond simple resilience — the best candidates demonstrate emotional regulation, constructive problem-solving, and the ability to maintain perspective when everything is burning around them.
Ambiguity Tolerance: Treasure people who navigate uncertainty like it's their natural habitat. These individuals make decisive calls with incomplete information and remain unshaken when outcomes defy prediction. When you ask about fuzzy objectives or chaotic conditions, they should light up — this is where they shine.
Proactivity & Internal Locus of Control: Prize candidates who own outcomes rather than surrendering to circumstance. During crises, they don't wait for instructions — they seize initiative and forge solutions. Screen for examples where they spotted problems and independently architected fixes instead of merely escalating issues upward.
Cognitive Complexity & Creative Problem-Solving: Seek minds that turn chaos into clarity. These people thrive when there's no playbook, combining ideas from disparate domains to craft novel solutions. The standouts share stories of identifying hidden opportunities within market disruption that others completely missed.
To be clear: nobody was actively seeking non-adaptable people during stable times. But when capital flowed freely, we could tolerate someone who scored 7/10 in these areas. In today's environment, anything below 9.5/10 is a liability you cannot afford.
This standard is brutally simple to articulate but extraordinarily difficult to implement. Yet implement we must — because a team not built for volatility won't just underperform. It will collapse.
