VUCA Archives - The Certior Group

Crisis Creates an Opportunity to Focus on What Matters Most

March 20, 2020 by Avi Kantor

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl, Holocaust Survivor

A global pandemic. Panic buying of supplies. Stocks declining steeply. Schools and businesses closing. Cities under lockdown.

All of our lives have been disrupted.

Under these conditions, psychologists and neuroscientists understand and expect that many people will experience fear, anxiety, and an inability to focus and think clearly. They call this the “amygdala hijack”, singling out the emotional part of the brain – the amygdala – that triggers our primitive “fight or flight” response to perceived danger. With the whole world triggered by unprecedented events – events that could potentially spiral even further into uncharted territory – how might we keep from being amygdala hijacked? How might we remain calm, centered, and focused?

Of course, there are intoxicants of all forms and escapism that can temporarily distract our minds from current events. But keep us calm, centered, and focused? Probably not. Many have turned to mindfulness meditation, yoga, exercise, and other forms of relaxation. I’m an advocate of many of these disciplines. Our work, though, suggests that there’s another option.

"I am grateful for" written in a notebook with a pen.

Over the years, we’ve been very intentional about practicing Gratitude. Our experience has been that Gratitude has helped us, our family members, our colleagues, and clients appreciate the many blessings we all have and find the good in even the most challenging situations. This practice has never been more relevant and necessary for our collective wellbeing.

Through the lens of Gratitude, we have an opportunity to refocus our minds on what’s essential for our wellbeing; that which brings us happiness, fulfillment, meaning, and joy. We call this True Wealth. But regardless of what one calls it, there are enduring parts of our lives that persist despite the coronavirus, the stock market, and the disruption that’s affected us all. For most of us, this includes our family, our continued good health (if we’re currently blessed with good health), our Faith, the many diverse experiences we’ve had and continue to have, and the joy of contributing to the wellbeing of others.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Now is our time to choose…to choose Gratitude and True Wealth…and to help others do the same.

Experiential Learning Breeds Collaboration

October 7, 2019 by Avi Kantor

I often speak about collaboration as an important, often overlooked, element in the work that professionals do. Recently, my colleagues and I had an experience that suggested what collaboration looks like in action and how to create the conditions for great collaboration to occur.

Below is a picture of a climbing wall in Chaska, MN. At a conference at this site, a group individuals from various professions including myself and Certior Group colleagues Hal Hershgordon and Patty Totaro were tasked with scaling this wall in random teams of three.

We were supplied with safety equipment – helmets, harnesses, ropes, etc. – and organized in a manner that minimized the risk of a fall or accident. But there were several constraints that made the climb unique: each threesome was tethered together and the middle climber was blindfolded. Patty Totaro is the blindfolded climber in the picture below.

Below, I’m beginning the climb blindfolded, guided by my two teammates.

Below is a picture of the teams of supporters controlling the safety ropes.

The people on the ground did much more than just provide rope support. They also gave the climbers verbal encouragement and often, verbal suggestions about the next critical move to make.

The unblindfolded climbers were highly focused on assisting and guiding their blindfolded co-climber. Hal Hershgordon is the climber on the left literally helping the blindfolded woman move her left foot to her next foothold.

(If you look closely, you noticed raindrops in the picture above. The downpour that occurred during the event made for slippery conditions, adding to the difficulty and complexity of the activity).

Ultimately, most of the groups succeeded in reaching the top. But in some ways, that wasn’t the main takeaway from the experience. In fact, while the experience itself was exhilarating, climbing the wall blindfolded with teammates and supporters has for me become a metaphor for collaboration in business and in life.

There are so many parallels, analogies, and lessons embedded in the wall climbing experience. For this article, I’ll focus on just three. First, as advisors, we’re tethered to our clients, guiding them, and helping them take the next small step – the next critical move – along their metaphorical climbs in business and in life. Certainly there are others giving encouragement, making suggestions, and “holding the ropes” from time to time. But we’re there with them, helping them steward their True Wealth.

Second, sometimes it’s raining, the wall is slippery, the situation seems overwhelming, and the next move is unclear. We use the acronym V.U.C.A. (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) to describe these conditions and, by analogy, the world we live in. Yet, the learning is in the struggle to move up the wall (or forward in business and life). It helps to have guidance and support.

Finally, after climbing we all got a chance to celebrate not only our own accomplishments but those of others.

We often don’t allow ourselves to fully experience and celebrate the positive moments in our lives. A motto that came out in the aftermath of the wall climbing experience was “Savor the Good”. It’s something that I hope we can all adopt and grow into.

How to Navigate in a VUCA World?

August 7, 2019 by Avi Kantor

In the late 1980’s the United States Army War College developed the acronym VUCA to describe the conditions that would exist at the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. VUCA stands for “volatile”, “uncertain”, “complex”, and “ambiguous”. In hindsight, that did accurately describe what the world was like when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Since then, the business world has adopted the VUCA acronym to suggest the many challenges that business owners, executives, and managers face. For The Certior Group, because of rapidly changing conditions in the world – for example, in politics, economics, law, technology, social norms, etc. – we’ve adopted the notion that we all live in a VUCA world.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frank¹

Some people don’t fully appreciate the profundity of Frankl’s statement. Much of what’s VUCA in our world is beyond our individual control. We don’t control large technology companies or how they gather data about all of us. We don’t control the way government operates. We can’t control the way politics unfolds, or how the natural environment might be changing, or how social media may be changing how we experience our lives. Yet, as Viktor Frankl suggested, we have a choice; we can at least choose our attitude.

Our firm has taken this idea of choosing one’s attitude and artificially divided the VUCA world into two attitudes: personal reactions that are “not Gratitude” or responses that are “Gratitude”. This is clearly an artificial, abstract “map”² of the VUCA world that we live in, not the actual world of politics, Google, the internet, Facebook, Instagram, mobile devices, climate change, pollution, fake news, etc. But, as Viktor Frankl said, by choosing our way, we’re finding that following this “map”, leads to practicing Gratitude.

What does it mean to practice Gratitude? From our perspective, it means to respect, appreciate, and be generous in spirit with others and oneself. It is the ongoing practice of Gratitude that we’ve found to be one of the keys to thriving in a VUCA world. A growing body of research supports the idea that we can become more resilient, despite VUCA in our lives, when we become more grateful. How to practice Gratitude is the focus of our public events, workshops, and client work. Please join us in making Gratitude part of the antidote to a VUCA world.

(1) Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl, 2006.

(2) In 1932, Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski published an article in which he stated that “the map is not the territory”, meaning that abstract concepts help us understand reality but should not be confused with reality.

What Will The Future of Family Stewardship Be?

October 1, 2018 by Avi Kantor

In the late 20th century, the United States Army War College created the acronym VUCA to describe the conditions that would exist after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The acronym stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. The term has caught on with the military and, especially, in business, describing the general conditions that exist today in nearly every aspect of our daily lives: technology, culture, politics, economics, etc. Massive changes, simultaneous opportunities for greater abundance as well as disruption of our way of life, are the order of the day.

As science and technology inexorably advance, there may soon come a day when sophisticated tax, legal, accounting, financial, and other technical information and strategies will be widely available on demand to the general public at an affordable price. We will also face unprecedented disruptions in our traditional patterns of work, career development, family dynamics, aging, and retirement.[1] Perhaps these trends will eventually lead to a world where artificial intelligence, “big data”, and algorithms know us so well that our most sophisticated multi-generational planning is automated and personalized.[2]

With the inexorable advance of technology and its dominance in our everyday lives, what will the future of family stewardship planning be?

Charles H. Green, the author of the book “The Trusted Advisor” says:

“People rarely give over their trust to institutions; really, they trust other people…While companies are often described as credible and reliable…it’s really the people within the companies that make those companies what they are.”

The Trusted Advisor

In a rapidly changing VUCA world, we do our best to foster participation and engagement in experiences where people are in conversations with other people. We view our role as guiding people down the path of discovery through these experiences and conversations. The practice of Gratitude especially has, in our experience, transformed people’s experience of wealth and their experiences of other family members, making them more aware of their common bonds and shared values.

Stewardship involves building and developing leadership in future generations and committing to ethical excellence in the way we lead our lives and families. Stewardship and family leadership also involves intentionally being aware of and nurturing sustainable family culture (the traditions, rituals, ceremonies, and unspoken ways that families do things, interact, as well as the expectations that go with these activities). Family culture is often a missing element in trust and estate planning, especially when governance and structure are the primary emphasis in the planning process. We view this as our opportunity to make a difference in the effectiveness of the planning process, regardless of the state of the world, technology, or existing relationships with other advisors.

[1] “Reimagining Maturity”, Ken Dychtwald, American Society on Aging Annual Conference, General Session Keynote address, March 23, 2015.

[2] Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, Abundance 360, Livestream, September 14, 2018. During this video broadcast Kurzweil and Diamandis speculated that such capabilities might become widely available within the next 10 to 15 years because of what Kurzweil calls “the law of accelerating returns”.

V.U.C.A

September 20, 2016 by Avi Kantor

The military term “V.U.C.A.” – which stands for “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous” – was originallay created to describe the conditions that would exist with the collapse of the soviet Union. Eric J. McNulty illustrates in his blog post how the term has been adopted by advisors and consultants to describe the conditions that business and family leaders face today.

Leading in an Increasingly VUCA World

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

– Pericles

Today, global economic, political, demographic, and technological changes conspire to create potential VUCA conditions in our lives. As the author Eric J. McNulty states, “Constant change can set people on edge because we humans crave certainty.” We agree. In fact, in our work with clients we expand upon our understanding of VUCA by talking about the additional human desires for stability, simplicity, and clarity (i.e., the opposites of volatile, complex, and ambiguous).

To some extent, we also agree with McNulty that we can “create an island of certainty amid VUCA turbulence” by focusing on rock-solid values, clear decision-making criteria, and learning from mistakes. But we think there’s more to it. It’s a matter of mindset.

For us at Certior, having an optimal mindset is critical to the work we do and the approach we take with clients. Because of our training and experiences, we start with Gratitude as fundamental to the mindset we advocate. Research supports the notion that Gratitude can rewire our brains and help us to be at our best despite negative external circumstances. In addition to Gratitude, what our clients value most, especially what they value more than money – which we call “True Wealth” – informs much of the work we do. In nearly all cases, this involves a focus on family, health, and spiritual growth. Having a growth, lifelong learning mindset, as well as a generous spirit are all part of this optimal mindset for a VUCA world.

For our clients, we perform many financial, trust, and estate planning services. These are “what” we do and “how” we do it. But when we ask ourselves why we do what we do, it comes down to helping families protect, grow, and sustain their True Wealth. We want to help you thrive despite the VUCA world we live in.

Avi Kantor

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