A VUCA-Plus State
To put it bluntly, this state was not one or strength or credibility. As Kearns Goodwin (2005, p. xv-xvi) notes:
“When Lincoln won the nomination, each of his celebrated rivals believed the wrong man had been chosen. Ralph Waldo Emerson recalled his first reception of the news that the “comparatively unknown name of Lincoln” had been selected: ‘we heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build so grave a trust in such anxious times.’
Lincoln seemed to have come from nowhere-a backwoods lawyer who had served one undistinguished term in the House of Representatives and had lost two consecutive contests for the U. S. Senate. Contemporaries and historians alike have attributed his surprising nomination to chance–the fact that he came from the battleground state of Illinois and stood in the center of his party.”
All of this would suggest that Lincoln was likely to have an unsuccessful single term in office—especially given the major challenges associated with leading a country that was deeply divided.
Kearns Goodwin (2005, p xvi) offers “a different interpretation.” She proposes that it is precisely in the midst of these conditions that Lincoln exhibited his remarkable skills. He was equipped to artfully navigate a political environment that was not just complicated (with many parts) but also complex (these parts being tightly interconnected).
“When viewed against the failed efforts of his rivals, it is clear that Lincoln won the nomination because he was shrewdest and canniest of them all. More accustomed to relying upon himself to shape events, he took the greatest control of the process leading up to the nomination, displaying a fierce ambition, an exceptional political acumen, and a wide range of emotional strengths, forged in the crucible of personal hardship, that took his unsuspecting rivals by surprise.”
I would suggest that Abraham Lincoln was facing a challenge condition of what in contemporary times, we might call VUCA-Plus (Bergquist, 2020). This is a condition where volatility (V), uncertainty (U), complexity (C), and ambiguity (A)—as well as turbulence and contradiction—are reigning supreme. From this VUCA-Plus perspective, we might say that Lincoln already knew about and navigated through the conditions of volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity in his “crucible of personal hardship.” The VUCA-Plus conditions of volatility, ambiguity and turbulence were fully present. Uncertainty regarding the future of the United States (as a young country) was also present. Furthermore, contradictions were to be found in the positions held by all of the political factions.
Agility
Unlike many of his political rivals, Lincoln knew little about social status and privilege. He was not firmly connected to the entrenched political network of the Eastern United States, thus was free to navigate the turbulent waters of mid-19th Century America with cognitive agility. Furthermore, with all of the challenges he overcame with agility in winning the presidential election, Lincoln went on to exhibit the same agility in his appointment of men (not even Lincoln could bring himself to select women) to his cabinet. While the precedence up until his time (and frankly since his time) was to select men with whom the new president agreed – and often with whom he had worked during the presidential campaign—the decisions made by Lincoln defied this precedence. He brought in his rivals.
