Having been in this pandemic for a few months now, it becomes possible to see the experience that has been created. New ways to deal with the situation have been learned and have grown into habits.

When it appeared, the pandemic was a crisis. That is a turning point, decisive moment, or a difficult and unstable situation. Or said differently, a traumatic change in people’s lives.

Looking beyond this there is something else that people have not yet become accustomed to. It’s the crisis that comes alongside the pandemic.

The focus still lies in the hope that the pandemic ends or that individual freedom reappear. And it reduces visibility on the sense of crisis that came with the pandemic.

In 1987 the acronym VUCA appeared to describe situations that are volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Since then it has constantly become more and more popular. It’s showing how the world has shifted towards such an environment as we’ve stepped out of clear controversies the cold war allowed for. But it goes beyond our geostrategic future as economies also became much less predictable than they used to be. The disruption we’ve seen in the marketplace, the appearance of a huge number of startups as well as of large venture capital funds developed into more volatile and complex markets. Uncertainty and ambiguity are not far away.

It’s better called a durable crisis.

One that the pandemic has now connected with our individual situations. That it shows in the fact that plans constantly change as well as in the challenge people experience when making plans is only the tip of the iceberg.