November 11, 2018
“The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today’s wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.”
The Designful Company (2008)
Marty Neumeier
(To the Reader: This essay is chapter 1 of a book titled Explorations in Wicked Problems: What They Are and Why They Are Important. The book includes 20-25 essays from this website and is scheduled for publication in the Summer of 2019)
“No one can resist an idea whose time has come,” wrote Victor Hugo in 1852. Hugo’s irresistible idea was the Goodness of the French Revolution. “The French Revolution is for all the world,” he wrote. “It is a battle perpetually waged for Right and perpetually gained for Truth…What can be done against a revolution which has so much right on its side? Nothing. To love it. That is what the nations do.”
As things have turned out, Hugo’s idealistic vision has largely been discarded and replaced by a more realistic view of geopolitics. Together with many other ideas from the 18th and 19th centuries (Phrenology for example), it has been tossed into what Leon Trotsky called the “dustbin of history.”
What has endured, however, is the phrase “An idea whose time has come.” This idea – that ideas emerge, expand in size and scale until they become so powerful that they cannot be resisted – has become itself An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Western societies have produced many examples: woman’s suffrage; a 40-hour week; an end to child labor; a rejection of the use of torture; outlawing of chemical warfare; the Civil Rights Movement; fair housing laws; desegregation in education; gender-neutral language; rejection of anti-Semitism; diversity in entertainment and the media. And in 2017-18, we have seen the #MeToo Movement suddenly emerge and grow into a powerful idea whose time has come. Relationships between men and women, especially at work, may never be the same.
Wicked Problems
There is another idea that over the past 45 years has grown in importance to the point where it too is becoming irresistible: The recognition, definition and importance of wicked problems. In the early 1970’s two professors at the University of California – Horst Riddle and Melvin Webber – introduced the idea that all important problems can be sorted into two categories: Tame or Wicked. While there are many differences between tame and wicked problems, the most important difference is that tame problems can be solved while wicked problems have no single, definitive solution.
For many years, the presence and prevalence of wicked problems was largely ignored. Even today most people continue to approach problems as it they are all the same. But as Bob Dylan once sang, “The times they are a’changin.'” More and more people are becoming aware of the existence and importance of wicked problems. Before beginning to address a serious problem, many are now asking the critical question: “Is this problem wicked or tame?” How that question is answered determines what should be done, by whom, when, and how long their efforts should continue. In short, the answer will determine everything that follows.
Why Wicked Problems Are Different
In their new formulation, Rittle and Webber identified ten essential characteristics of wicked problems. Here is a brief summary: every wicked problem is unique; they have no agreed upon definition; they have no single, correct solution; no solution is right or wrong, but only bad, good, better, best; they have no single or “root” cause, but multiple ones, some which can never be discovered; there is no rule for knowing when to stop working on them; they can never be truly “solved.”
“The world’s wicked problems crowd us like piranha,” writes Marty Neumeier in The Designful Company.” You know the list: pollution, overpopulation, dwindling natural resources, global warming, technological warfare, and a lopsided distribution of power that has failed to address massive ignorance or Third World Hunger. In the world of business, managers face a subset of these problems: breakneck change, omniscient customers, balkanized markets, rapacious shareholders, traitorous employees, regulatory headlocks, and pricing pressures from desperate global companies with little to lose and everything to gain.”
What Neumeier neglects to include on his list are the many wicked problems that directly and powerfully influence our personal lives: dysfunctional families; unsatisfying relationships; unresolved conflict with colleagues, friends or neighbors; noxious workplaces; and unresponsive governments to name just a few.
In other words, wicked problems are to be found wherever people come together and try to make things better.
Imagine that you are facing a serious problem that you have not seen before, for which those who are involved cannot agree whether it is a problem or not, or, if they do agree, cannot agree on what kind of a problem it is, or what should be done, and for which there is no single solution, no root cause, is constantly changing in form and substance, and cannot be solved. To make matters worse, when you try to “solve” it you discover that your efforts rely less on rational analysis and logic than on personal preferences, emotions, values and political judgements. As a result, your deliberations end up in heated arguments that few seem able to manage successfully. When you finally take the actions that you believe will solve the problem, you quickly learn that they problem has not been solved at all, but continues to make its presence known in mostly disagreeable ways. And then to further complicate things, you realize that your attempts to make things better have resulted in the appearance of four or five new problems that now need your attention.
Welcome to the world of wicked problems!
Wicked Problems Exist. So What?
In Wicked and Wise: How to Solve the World’s Toughest Problems, Alan Watkins tells of an encounter with a senior executive of a company for which he was hired as a consultant to help change the culture. “I have seen five ‘cultural transformation’ programs come and go,” the executive tells Watkins, “and I can tell you from first-hand experience that the culture has not changed one inch.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Watkins answers, and then adds, “Most of the time there is no real progress on these types of problems – mainly because we don’t understand the nature of the problem. And if we don’t understand the problem, there can be no progress. So ‘the problem’ is not really the problem – the real problem is our lack of understanding about the problem.”
These types of problems, he continues, for which there is no real progress, “are inherently wicked because they deal with societal problems, that is, problems created and exacerbated by people.”
And with this we can begin to understand why the existence of wicked problems is inevitable. When people grapple with problems that involve making important decisions, their hopes, desires, preferences and values are always are in play. And since from person to person, these hopes, desires and values are different – often widely so – dealing effectively with them is usually beyond most people’s capabilities. As a result, not only is the problem wicked itself, but the skills people bring to the conversation are insufficient and often inappropriate to manage it successfully.
The problems at the center of our most important conversations are almost always wicked – a fact of which many are unaware. When people find themselves in the middle of a conversation about a specific wicked problem and notice that things are not going well, falling back on habits and behaviors they relied on in the past is easy. A popular choice is “Trying Harder,” which frequently leads to pushing and prodding with ever more energy in order to move others toward one’s position. When the problem is wicked and things have bogged down and emotions have escalated, “trying harder” always makes things worse. A more productive strategy is “Trying Differently” – bringing to the table new knowledge, new insights and new skills that increase the chances for progress. Yet most people have no idea how to go about to changing their game.
In summary, most of us have found ourselves in the position of Watkins’ executive. No matter what we do, we seem to be unable to solve our most important problems. We become increasingly frustrated and cynical. What we have missed is that most of our serious problems are wicked and not tame. Unaware of the differences between them, our attempts to “solve” them rely upon flawed assumptions, unsound beliefs, and effectual tools. If we treat wicked problems as if they were tame, our best attempts will always result in failure. Unless we understand the nature of the problems we are facing, we are helpless to address them in constructive ways.
Daniel Yankelovich Looks Back – And Finds Wicked Problems
As he was nearing the end of a productive life of scholarship and service, Daniel Yankelovich, chair of Public Agenda and founder of the Yankelovich Center for Social Sciences at the University of California at San Diego and perhaps the preeminent social scientist in public life, examined the state of the nation and sounded an alarm. Things were dangerously off-track and were threatening the existence of our democratic society. As a nation, he believed that we were facing an array of problems that seemed intractable and overwhelming. The name he chose for these problems was “wicked,” and after identifying and naming these problems, he made them the central theme of his autobiography, Wicked Problems/Wicked Solutions: Lessons From a Public Life, published two years before his death in 2017.
“The thesis of this book,” he wrote, “is that with all the wicked problems the nation faces, it will be difficult to get back on track without a more thoughtful, more fully engaged public, and without a more public-minded philosophy than now prevails. Today’s public feels powerless, mistrustful, inattentive, and disengaged. This makes our wicked problems harder to resolve.”
What should we do, he asked? How can we navigate “through the wicked problems that have descended upon us like a thick, wet fog?”
His answer contains two parts: First, technology is not the solution: “Technology by itself cannot address – and solve – the wicked problems that confront us.” And second, addressing our wicked problems must begin with “arm[ing] a critical mass of Americans…with what used to be called ‘civic virtue’ – giving priority to the well-being of the larger society over the wilder excesses of individualism;” “…restore[ing] a greater fairness to our system of capitalism, so that it is once again democracy-friendly;” and “rebuild[ing] the moral authority of our culture and provide[ing] individuals with better tools for making life’s existential decisions.” Few will disagree that these goals are important. But each one is a wicked problem and few of us, including Yankelovich, know how to make the goals happen.
Michael Quick Looks Ahead – And Sees Wicked Problems
Sometime between April 1 and May 6, 2015, Michael Quick sat down at his desk and began to grapple with what was probably the most important problem he had ever faced in his academic career. On April 1, Quick, a distinguished neuroscientist and professor at the University of Southern California (USC), was named Provost of one of the great universities of the world. He knew that what he wanted to offer to the university was a compelling vision to guide it though the next several decades. His challenge was twofold: First, what should be the academic vision be for the future of the University; and second, how could he communicate this vision to the Board of Trustees, the president and other senior administrators, the faculty, and students in a way that would enlist and energize them in realizing this vision?
While we have no knowledge of when or how Dr. Quick arrived at his Vision for the Future of USC, we do know that on May 6, 2015, dressed in the traditional academic regalia appropriate for his installation ceremony, Quick stood at the podium and began to speak. After expressing his gratitude to the trustees of the university for his appointment he said, “It is time to get to work.” And it quickly became clear that meant naming and addressing the problems that concerned him. “We will only make USC the place it should be,” he said, “by continuing to say what needs to happen, and by continuing to say what is not working.”
He reminded his listeners that the University of Southern California is big and powerful with unlimited potential. “We have committed alumni, friends of the university, trustees, amazing supporters and tremendous financial strength…Shame on us,” he said. “Shame on this university if we are not the most influential engine of creativity and leadership for the 21st century.”
And then he posed the key question: “What is going to be USC’s unique and influential contribution?”
His answer: “I believe that we will have squandered our privilege if we are not the great private university that takes on the most intractable, difficult, multifaceted problems of our time. These are…called wicked problems [and include] poverty, food and water security, obesity, social justice issues, cancer, sustainability and climate change, terrorism, cyber security, aging and dementia. These are the big, complex problems facing the 21st century.”
The central focus and future direction of the university, Quick proposed, must be toward finding and addressing wicked problems. In this he echoed former Harvard professor and futurist, John Kao who, in Innovation Nation, published in 2007, argued that future successes for America will necessarily bet tied to its abilities to see its problems as wicked and respond appropriately. “…wicked problems hold the key to the most consequential breakthroughs of the twenty-first century” wrote Kao…”It is within our power to earn anew the status of ‘indispensable nation’ by be[ing] in the wicked problem business.”
Quick also wanted USC to be in the “wicked problem business.” He ended his presentation with a call to action: “Let’s work together,” he said to the administrators, faculty, and students “to…become the university of tackling wicked problems.”
Keith Grint Looks Around – And Discovers Wicked Problems
After developing an international reputation as a scholar in the sociology of work and machines and technology, Keith Grint, Professor of Public Leadership at Warwick University and former director of research at the Said Business, Templeton College, Oxford, in the United Kingdom, became more interested in leadership. Sometime between 2000 and 2005 in his third book on the topic, Leadership: Limits and Possibilities, Grint discovered tame and wicked problems! “…the leadership problem is inherently intractable,” he wrote, and then explained and emphasized the critical distinctions between tame and wicked problems: “A Tame problem is teaching your children to pass their driving test; a Wicked problem is remaining a successful parent to them. A Tame problem is ‘winning’ the war in Iraq; a Wicked problem is securing a just and lasting peace in Iraq. A Tame problem is heart surgery; a Wicked problem is providing unlimited health services to all who need them…Management might be focused on solving complex but essentially tame problems in a unilinear fashion: applying what worked last time; but leadership is essentially about facing Wicked problems that are literally unmanageable.”
Once Grint discovered the usefulness and power of defining some problems as wicked, there was no holding him back. In Leadership, Management and Command: Rethinking D-Day, published in 2008, he used the Tame/Wicked approach to problems no less than 59 times and incorporated it into his definitive model of leadership. In his introduction to Part Two, he let the reader in on his plan: “In this part of the book I will use the theory of Wicked Problems to try and explain the strategic decisions employed on all sides in the lead up to D-Day. As suggested in Chapter 1, Wicked Problems are designated as the responsibility of leadership…” He ends his most recent book, Leadership: A Very Short Introduction, published in 2018, in which wicked problems are mentioned and discussed 21 times, with the warning that it is in “the 21st century when wicked problems [will] appear to prevail.”
Hillary Clinton Looks Abroad – And Sees Endless Wicked Problems
Five years after Hillary Clinton became President Obama’s Secretary of State, she published Hard Choices: A Memoir, her account of the “crises, choices, and challenges” she faced in that position. In each chapter she identifies and discusses one of these crises and challenges.
Secretary Clinton identified her most difficult diplomatic challenge as the war in Syria. In Chapter 19, titled “Syria: A Wicked Problem,” she begins with these words: “I started referring to Syria as a ‘wicked problem’…to describe particularly complex challenges that confound standard solutions and approaches. Wicked problems rarely have a right answer; in fact, part of what makes them wicked is that every option appears worse than the next.” It is interesting but not surprising to note that each of the 25 chapters – from creating a working team in Foggy Bottom to Human Rights – examines a wicked problem.
Jonathan Haidt Signs On
Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and author of the best-selling The Righteous Mind (2012), was recently named as a “top global thinker” by Foreign Policy, and “top world thinker” by Prospect Magazine. In 2014 he reported that his discovery of the concept of “wicked problems” was “among the most useful concept I have encountered in years.” “Wicked Problems,” he wrote in 2015, “(like poverty, education, or racial inequality) activate all the post-hoc reasoning and biased searching for support I described in chapters 3 and 4 in The Righteous Mind. They are so different from tame problem (like curing cholera), which can be very challenging technically, but they just sit there and let the experts converge upon solutions. My hope is a better understanding of how moral psychology can help people to think clearly about economic debates, which usually are wicked problems with moral implications.”
Other Voices, Same Message
Daniel Yankelovich, Michael Quick, Keith Grint, Hillary Clinton and Jonathan Haidt are not alone. There are thousands of people in hundreds of organizations, institutions and governments all over the world who have also discovered wicked problems and found them to be important. Here we cite only a few examples from the many that have been recently published. While what follows may seem to be repetitive in their arguments and language, we include them to illustrate and emphasize the large number of disciplines and approaches to problems that have recently “discovered” and adopted the ideas of wicked problems and incorporated them into their strategies and plans, strong evidence that Wicked Problems is indeed an idea whose time has come.
Social Inequality
Several years ago, Chris Oestrereich and his colleagues established The Wicked Problems Collaborative, an organization with the single purpose of addressing the wicked problems in our society. “The big problems faced by humanity,” he writes, “…such as “war, climate change, and disease…resist change. Poke, prod, or pull and the end result tends to be the same; little if anything happens. Sure, you can make things worse without too much effort, but to move the needle in a better direction often seems impossible.”
Nevertheless, members of The Wicked Problems Cooperative decided to try and make a difference. The first wicked problem they chose to address was “inequality, a lever that pries civil society apart.” In their book, What Do We Do About Inequality, published in 2016, they describe their purpose: “An attempt to improve public discourse while promoting new, divergent lines of thinking…around inequality in an effort to encourage outcomes that are more just…than those currently endured.”
Overfishing. “Real Commerce”
In The Price of Fish: A New Approach to Wicked Economics and Better Decisions (2014), Michael Mainelli and Ian Harris write, “Wicked problems is a phrase popularized in the 1970’s by Horst Rittle and Melvin Webber, and we could use it to describe overfishing. Wicked problems are not the…tame problems most decision theorists love, for example, chess, game theory or puzzle solving. The real world is messy, circular and aggressive. Wheels within wheels lead to bigger messes and unintended consequences.”
“Wicked problems involve what we call ‘real commerce.’ Real commerce is what people do with each other every day. It includes the complex ways in which individuals, organizations, and societies communicate and deal with one another; and the ways in which complex interactions adapt over time. Real commerce [involving a wide range of wicked problems] drives society, politics, the economy and our future.”
Changing Society
We are facing a new class of socio-economic problems, writes Valerie Brown, in Tackling Wicked Problems Through the Transdisciplinary Imagination (2010), “one that challenges the very existence of the society that produced them. These problems fit the idea of wicked problems…’Wicked’ here refers to issues that prove to be highly resistant to resolution through any of the current existing modes of problem-solving. Since wicked problem are generated by the society in which they are set, their resolution will necessarily involve changes in the society that produced them.
“Work on wicked problems has taken many paths, from the design of cutting-edge information systems,” continues Brown, “to ‘righteous’ solutions to engineering designs and challenges to standard forms of system thinking.”
Wicked Problems in Marriage
“All…conflicts [in marriage] ranging from mundane annoyances to all-out war,” writes John Gottman et.al. in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, “really fall into two categories. Either they can be resolved, or they are perpetual. Unfortunately, the majority of…conflicts fall into the perpetual – 69 percent to be exact.” Gottman’s categories for problems in marriage – solvable or perpetual – correspond directly to Rittle and Webber’s tame or wicked. It is easy to see why marriage is such a challenge when 7 of 10 of the problems that couples grapple with turn out to be wicked and cannot be “solved.”
Higher Education and Organization Change
“Wicked problems…are a category of problems…which have innumerable causes, are tough to describe, and do not have a right answer,” write Pamela Baker and her colleagues in Tackling the Wicked Challenge of Strategic Change: The Story of a University Changing Itself. (2014). “Not only do conventional processes fail to tackle wicked problems, but they may exacerbate situations by generating undesirable consequences.”
While all attempts to change organizations lead inevitably to a confrontation with “wickedness,” efforts to change universities are particularly wicked. “The characteristics of universities as organizational environments for change,” write the authors, “contribute to the wickedness of the challenge.”
Social Problems: Segregation, Discrimination, Crime, Wealth Concentration, AIDS, People with Disabilities, Restorative Justice, Health Policy, Sustainable Food Systems.
“Wicked problems drive housing segregation,” write Rodney Hopson and Fiona Cram in Tackling Wicked Problems in Complex Ecologies (2018), as they do in “racial and gendered stereotypes and discriminations, disintegration of schools, rising crime rates, and decreased access to healthy food and its related health benefits…They are inherent in the alarming trends of wealth being concentrated among fewer and fewer people across the world. The wicked problems of humanity also affect the natural systems and have deleterious consequences for the fabric of global welfare.” For Hopson and Cram, the best way to begin to address these societal problems is to see them as wicked.
Hydraulic Fracking, Salmon Recovery, Forest Management,
Health Care
We can get some idea of the issues addressed by Edward Weber and his colleagues in New Strategies for Wicked Problems: Science and Solutions for the 21st Century (2017) from a sentence in their summary chapter: “There is no shortage of important wicked public problems, from fracking, to salmon recovery to forest management, health care, climate change, watershed restoration and beyond.”
In the Introduction to their book, the authors offer to their readers several aspects of problems that make them wicked: “Wicked problems are defined by three primary characteristics: they are unstructured, crosscutting, and relentless. First, unstructured means that causes and effects are extremely difficult to identify and model, thus adding complexity and uncertainty and engendering a high degree of conflict because there is little consensus on the problem or the solution. Second, problems are crosscutting in that problem space comprises multiple policy domains and levels of government…And third, wicked problems… are relentless. The problem is not going to be solved once and for all despite all the best intentions and resources directed at the problem…”
Habitat Loss and Climate Change
We are now living in the geologic era that many geologists are calling the Anthropocene, when human activity has displaced natural forces as the dominant influence on climate and the environment. In Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction, (2018) Erle C. Ellis states that the current environmental problems created by human beings are wicked: “To call Anthropocene challenges ‘wicked’ is not to call them evil (though some might be) but to highlight that they are perfect examples of what policymakers call ‘wicked problems’, characterized by the absence of agreed-upon solutions, the tendency of solutions to yield additional problems, for solutions to generate both winners and losers, and the difficulties of even determining what the problems are. Two simple examples are habitat loss and climate change.”
Leadership in the Information Age
The Anthropocene Era is also widely known as the Information Age. In Catalytic Governance (2016), Patricia Meredith and her colleagues write, “…the information age increasingly presents us with ‘wicked problems.’ A wicked problem has innumerable causes, is tough to describe, and does not have one right answer. It cannot be addressed with a purely scientific/rational answer because it lacks a clear definition of what the problem is; and it is difficult to tackle because effective and legitimate action requires that support of multiple stakeholders with widely differing perspective and priorities. Examples of wicked problems include climate change, health care, terrorism, inequality, and many business strategy issues.”
Business Strategy
John C. Camillus begins Wicked Strategies: How Companies Conquer Complexity and Confound Competitors (2016) with these words: “In business, some problems are easy, some problems are hard, and some problems are so complex, so intractable, and so threatening to organizations – or entire industries – that they are best described as ‘wicked.’ These problems resist easy interpretation or understanding; they pose questions which seem, to observers, to be unsolvable; they render traditional analytic tools of strategy virtually impotent, requiring new approaches to analysis. To the fascination and horror of managers, wicked scenarios, and the consequent wicked strategy problems that follow in their wake, are becoming commonplace. (Italics added)
“A wicked problem has many tangled causes, rather that a single, obvious cause,” he writes. “It often appears unprecedented, and its appearance is unpredictable, something no one has anticipated. The problem affects multiple parties, often with competing interests, and has no single demonstrable correct answer. Rather than appearing fixed, a wicked problem morphs constantly. Virtually all of these factors mean that traditional strategic planning processes simply cannot cope with wicked problems.” (Italics added)
Leaders and Leadership
The primary – some would say the only – work of leaders involves problems. “Solving problems – or more accurately, enabling others to solve problems – is the leader’s real work,” writes Donald Laurie, in The Real Work of Leaders. (2000) “By identifying and framing problems, a leader jump-starts the crucial process of marshaling the resources needed to eliminate them.”
In Leadership: Limits and Possibilities (2005) Keith Grint writes “…the leadership problem is inherently intractable – [it] is impossible or difficult to manage…[Especially] if the problems are essentially novel, indeed unique, if they embody no obvious resolution point or assessment mechanism, if the cause, explanation, and apparent resolution of the problem depends upon the viewpoint of the stakeholder, and if the problem is embedded in another similar problem, then the problem is wicked.”
Sara Parkin’s voice is clear, succinct, and to the point. “Wicked problems,” she writes in The Positive Deviant: Sustainability in a Perverse World, (2010) “are…intractable, definitely complex, involving lots of uncertainty, with no clear solutions that don’t generate even more problems. As the 21st century processes…the trend will certainly be towards…wicked problems.” (Italics added)
Public Administration and Government
In the opening pages of Organization Theory and Public Administration, (1986), Michael M. Harmon and Richard Mayer chose an idea to provide an over-arching structure to their explorations of administration in government. Tame and Wicked problems was their choice. In the opening pages they observe that “the kinds of problems that professionals in government were hired to deal with have in large part been solved – the roads are paved, the houses built, the sewers connected (albeit, not to everyone’s satisfaction). These malleable problems,” they continue…”have in recent decades given way to a different class of problems. These are problems with no solutions, only temporary and imperfect resolutions…these are ‘wicked problems.’ Most of the problems that government deals with…are wicked.” (Italics added)
Sports
There may no organized activity so fraught with scandal at all levels and in all forms as sports. Athletes, teams, college coaches, administrators, and nations have struggled and continue to struggle with performance-enhancing drugs, bribery, corrupt officials and referees, college officials who dishonestly protect and coddle their coaches and players, to mention only a few of the problems.
In 2016, Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, published a book about these problems: The Edge: The War Against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports. The central idea around which he organized his book was Wicked Problems. Put simply, “Many of the controversies facing sport today are wicked problems.” He relied upon the characteristics of wicked problems to describe the almost insurmountable problems that those who make the rules and try to enforce them are facing. His central explanatory principle for the many problems in sports, and the bases of his recommendations, is based upon one of these characteristics: “By definition, we can never really solve a wicked problem; we can only do better or worse at trying to manage it.”
Motivation and Rewards
Among the problems of human behavior that psychologists of all stripes and persuasions have debated for decades is the Motivation Problem. “How to influence people to make good choices?” is the question behind the debates, and implicit in that question is how to change people’s behavior. In The Designful Company, published in 2009, Marty Neumeier gives his answer to the Motivation Problem: It’s all about wicked problems.
At the end of his book, he offers 16 actions (he calls them “levers”) that when applied to situations will increase the probability of people changing their behavior. While his specific focus is upon business organizations, most of his suggestions apply across a wide range of situations.
Lever #1 is Take on Wicked Problems.” He believes that challenging issues and lofty visions is the most effective approach to the Motivation Problem. Begin by “painting a vision so beguiling and inclusive that it rivets the attention of everyone…then call for bold solutions to the wicked problems that stand in the way – especially problems that other companies have been too timid to tackle.”
Lever #16 is Reward With Wicked Problems. Neumeier then raises the stakes: Reward them with opportunities to take on more wicked problems! “While most employees appreciate public acclaim and the occasional monetary award, the highest achievers want something more. They want bigger problems. They want an opportunity to tackle mean, hairy challenges and make…significant contribution[s]…”
Global Warming
A number of climate scientists and scholars are convinced that climate change is not only our most important problem, but it is wicked as well. “Human induced climate change is not the sort of problem that lends itself to technological end-of-the-pipe solutions,” writes climate scientist Mike Hulme in Can Science Fix Climate Change? (2014) “It is not like asbestos in buildings – a hazard for which there is a technical solution. Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and needs to be approached differently, obliquely, if its dangers are to be defused,” he writes. “Failure to treat climate change as wicked has led to the search for global solutions that are inadequate, inappropriate, or obstructive.” The most serious mistake,” he believes, is to treat “climate change as a tame problem rather than a wicked one.”
Don Scranton, writing in Learning to Die in the Anthropocene (2015) agrees: “Global Warming is what is called a ‘wicked’ problem.'” And why wicked? “It doesn’t offer any clear solutions, only better and worse responses. One of the most difficult aspects to deal with is that it is a collective action problem of the highest order. The entire world has to deal with it to solve global warming…”
And its even more serious than that. “It’s a ‘superwicked’ problem,” writes Bryan Walsh is the August 17, 2017 issue of Time magazine. “That’s the way that many scientists have come to characterize climate change,” Walsh writes. “A wicked problem is one that is so complex, with so many different causes and stakeholders, that it is all but impossible to solve completely. Poverty is a wicked problem; so is terrorism. But those pale in comparison with what’s happening to our planet.” And what makes climate change a superwicked problem? “…nearly half the country denies it’s a problem at all. Hence the super.”
In Clumsy Solutions for a Wicked World (2011) Marco Verweij and his colleagues begin with the statement that “Global Warming is a wicked problem.” They add to this a statement of the purpose of their book: “…this book is about when and why attempts to resolve such a problem regularly fail…”
Why have attempts to “solve” global warming consistently failed? Mike Hulme believes he has an answer: It is because we have called it by the wrong name. If we hope to make progress with global warming (or any other wicked problem), we need to call it by its right name. In Why We Don’t Agree About Climate Change (2006), Hulme writes, “Failures to understand and treat climate change as a wicked problem” has led us astray. “We must recognize the ‘wickedness’ of climate change,” he writes. “[Since it]is not a problem that can be solved…we must find other ways to categorize it.”
More Wicked Problem Initiatives (Selected from hundreds of examples)
– In 2014, Deloitte US (one of the largest accounting firms in the world launched “Wicked Problems at Deloitte University.” Their introduction states, “The purpose of this initiative is to stimulate collective innovation and harness Deloitte professional passion to tackle some of the biggest challenges the world faces today…”
-Since the founding of Wicked Problems at Deloitte University, over 9000 professionals and community members have generated thousands of ideas in support of four major topics: Employee Wellness, Diversity and Inclusion, Bullying Prevention, and Mental Health.
– In 2004 Rachael Pritzker, of one of America’s richest and most powerful families, founded the Pritzker Innovation Fund. Its mission is “To support the advancement of paradigm-shifting ideas to address the world’s most wicked problems.”
– In 2015 and 2016, Dr. William D. Adams, then chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, lectured to faculty and students at the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of California at Santa Cruz on the topic, “Wicked Problems: The Humanities in the time of STEM.” (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
– “The Edge of Chaos,” is a program and a place at the University of Alabama, both designed to “create new things within the community.” Director David Hooks identifies “wicked problems” as its focus. “At The Edge of Chaos, we approach wicked problems – defined as those huge obstacles with no simple solutions – in a collaborative and collective pursuit. We combine academia, the business world and the community at large, and then allow their ideas to collide and create solutions…”
– In 2017, the University of Auckland, New Zealand, announced the creation of a new doctoral program titled “Serving Society: Creating Equity, Diversity, and Justice.” Its purpose was to “explore society’s ‘wicked’ problems and how public organizations [should] respond.”
– The headline in the May, 2017 edition of Inside Development was “Brazil to tackle ‘wicked problems’ with the new SDG lab.” The new “lab” or organization was founded on the pillars of “innovation, collaboration, governance, and concrete action,” and was designed to address the wicked problems faced in tackling Brazil’s “SDG’s, or Societal Development Goals, as part of the Brazil 2030 Plan.
-The “Denison Seminars” at Denison University in Ohio are designed to help students think about and grapple with wicked problems. In 2016, a Denison Seminar sent a group of students to the Netherlands to study the nature of such wicked problems as terrorism, immigration, and climate change. The goal of the seminar was to help students understand “that there are problems that are not solvable.”
“Wicked Problems” is Now a Meme
The concept of “meme” is both powerful and useful. Just as in biology where genes are carriers of information and are chemical and physical replicators, memes are ideas the appear in human culture and, in the words of biologist Richard Dawkins, “propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain.”
On September 28, 2018, Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, stood before the United Nations General Assembly and spoke of the hopes, aspirations, and achievements of New Zealand, and also of the challenges it faced. Among these challenges were globalization, climate change, the importance of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), generational change, and universal values. “The list of demands upon us is long,” said the Prime Minister. “Be it domestic, or international, we are operating in changing times. We face what we call in New Zealand ‘wicked problems.'” And then, with essentially no further explanation of what she meant by wicked problems beyond saying “they are intertwined and interrelated,” she ended her speech. Clearly, she assumed that those listening would understand when she used the words “wicked problems.”
A week later, October 3, 2018, an article in Cryptonews titled “EU Lawmaker on Crypto Regulation and ‘Wicked Problems'” reported that Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, a member of the European Union Parliament, while speaking to a session of Parliament on legislation to regulate the use of blockchain technology, said, “There are ‘wicked problems’ related to the Distributed Ledger Technology as well as other aspects of the blockchain technology.” Then, demonstrating her confidence that the hundreds of EU diplomats in the hall required no further explanations as to what she mean by “wicked problems,” she went on with her speech.
In Blockchain: Transforming Your Business and Our World, published in 2019, Mark Van Rijmenan and Phillipa Ryan write, “In this book, blockchain technology can solve problems we refer to as ‘wicked.'” Then they proceed to name the “Seven Wicked Problems” that will be solved by blockchain technology:
– “The eradication of poverty;
– Zero Hunger;
– Decent work and economic growth;
– Climate action [sic];
– Reduced inequalities;
– Peace and justice;
– Strong institutions.”
Several chapter later they add more wicked problems to the list: “Corruption, tax evasion and money laundering, Fair trade, Voting fraud and disenfranchisement, and Censorship.”
They leave no doubt about their purpose: “This book is about solving the many Wicked Problems our society faces.” And just to make sure that the readers understand what kind of problems they propose to solve, they make references to “solving Wicked Problems” over 30 times.
What they do not mention are the authors who first came up with the terms “tame and wicked,” nor do they provide a helpful definition of them. Their assumption, like the Prime Minister of New Zealand and the member of the Parliament of the EU, seems to be that those who read or hear the words will understand what they mean. They are mostly wrong. While many may have heard someone say “These are wicked problems,” few will have an in-depth understanding of what the words mean.
These examples are not unusual. “Wicked Problems” has become a meme. Hundreds of politicians, writers, and public figures use the term to refer to the problems that concern them. “Our problems are wicked,” they say, and then with no attempt to define what they mean, move on to suggest remedies or solutions. Their actions make clear they are confident that those who hear them understand what they mean.
We Are Faced With a Dilemma
In 1962, English philosopher and political theorist Michael Oakeshott wrote “to try and do something that is inherently impossible is always a corrupting experience.” Oakeshott was writing about the relationship between ideology and politics, yet his premise has a personal dimension as well. Many times in our lives we will be required to come to grips with something that is “inherently impossible” and be expected to take action. Here is how German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk describes this dilemma: “It is characteristic of being human that human beings are presented with tasks that are too difficult for them, without having the option of avoiding them because of their difficulty.”
Here, then, in a nutshell is a Universal Human Dilemma: If we desire that our lives become personally satisfying and rewarding (and who doesn’t?) and at the same time, contribute to the well-being of the society in which we live, we must necessarily face up to a number of dilemmas that are too difficult for us, in part because they are “inherently impossible” to solve, and yet cannot be avoided.
This challenge, simple to put words, is difficult to achieve:
How are we going to gain the knowledge and skills that help us address successfully those issues that are an important part of making our lives meaningful and satisfying even though they can never be solved, and at the same time avoid seeking easy, simple-minded solutions that can corrupt us into thinking that we have “fixed,” or “solved” the problems?
Wicked Problems Are Here To Stay. Now What?
When facing an impossible or intractable problem – a wicked problem – we usually choose one of three options, all of them flawed. First, we attempt to ignore it, deny it, or hope that it will go away; second, we repeat the same attempts to solve it that we have relied upon in the past; and third, we hope for a miracle.
There is a better way. It begins with naming: “What we have here is a wicked problem,” we say to ourselves and to others. And with that many new possibilities open up. We are able to see the problem from different perspectives which then allow us to engage in conversations with others about its nature and the alternatives that are available to us for addressing it. “Before we change things,” said Confucius over two thousand years ago, “we must call things by their real names.” And since one of our most important aspirations is to change things for the better, learning the real name of our problems is a necessary first step. Calling them “wicked” will not make them disappear, but it is a way to begin a productive process of addressing them.
After learning that our most serious problems are “wicked,” the better way continues with learning new ways of acting. We began this chapter by quoting Marty Neumeier: “The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today’s wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead we have to invent a whole new scale.” When it comes to the wicked problems in our lives, we are convinced that the old ways of playing the music of “problem solving” are no longer adequate nor appropriate. Our first challenge is to understand that our most important problems are wicked and not tame, and then our next one is to learn new ways of managing them.
The existence and importance of wicked problems is not only an idea whose time has come. Understanding this also opens doors to new and productive ways of thinking about problems and of taking actions to solve or manage them in ways that can help us move toward the kinds of relationships and societies we all desire.
What follow in the succeeding chapters are our best attempts at contributing to the invention of new ways of “playing the music.” Our goals include helping us understand that most of our important problems are wicked, and then follow that with beginning to identify those steps that, when taken, will lead to making positive differences in our relationships, our careers, and our lives.