"Wicked Problems: What are they and how do they impact Organizational Transformation?

 

In a previous previous articlewe told you about a little known organizational phenomenon called Fragmentation. In this article we describe its components and how they manifest themselves in projects and/or organizational initiatives, causing more than one headache for those who must lead and account for the progress of tasks, as well as propose solutions to emerging issues and particularities of each implementation.

In this article, we invite you to further explore one of the main characteristics of Fragmentation: the so-called "wicked problems". With a better understanding of this component, you will be able to identify more easily if there are fragmentation risks that can divert organizational change or transformation initiatives from their objectives and purpose.

Recall that fragmentation can be translated as a reality that affects organizational projects and initiatives, where the fragmented pieces are made up of different perspectives, judgments, intentions, assumptions and undeclared understandings of people that rarely emerge explicitly.

It is from this fragmented reality that the so-called "wicked problems" emerge.

But what are wicked problems and why can they bring us more than one headache?

Not all problems are "wicked". Therefore, in this scenario, it is useful to know their characteristics and thus be better prepared to define the most relevant strategies to address them. To this end, we will base ourselves on the approaches of Horst Rittel, one of the first to formalize a theory of "wicked problems", who cites 8 characteristics of this type of social problem:

  1. Each "wicked problem" is unique and they are not constituted in a definitive way. Let us visualize it with an example: the problem of poverty in Latin America is very similar but discretely different from that of poverty in the Middle East, so there are no practical and general characteristics that describe the phenomenon of "poverty" from a single configuration.

  2. It is practically impossible to measure our understanding in relation to a "wicked problem", as they tend to blend together, unlike traditional design problems, which can be posed and delimited with greater accuracy and specificity.

  3. Possible solutions to a "wicked problem" can only be evaluated by their quality (good-bad), not by their veracity (true-false). This is because there is no ideal state that can be reached. For this reason, the approach to wicked problems should be aimed at improving a situation, rather than solving and resolving it exactly and to the full satisfaction of all stakeholders. In a wicked problem approach, that is utopia.

  4. Formulas, steps, recipes or stories from the past that once guided and/or guided a problem fall short when dealing with a wicked problem, as there is no model to follow. Models are simplifications of reality and teams facing a wicked problem must literally invent and test as they go along.

  5. A "wicked problem" does not have a single explanation; the explanations often respond to the mental models of the person describing them. In many of these cases we can see that an individual perspective is not capable of integrating all the complexity of the phenomenon and even less, to advance in its approach without other perspectives that allow to strengthen the comprehension and understanding of the problem.

  6. A "wicked problem" is almost always a symptom of other "wicked problems". They are often interconnected phenomena that respond to the interdependencies of social, political and economic systems. For example, a change in consumer behavior would provoke new phenomena and problems in health and education.

  7. There is no definitive scientific evidence for mitigation strategies that we can define for wicked problems. Science is a discipline oriented to the understanding of natural phenomena, while wicked problems have their origin in human intervention.

  8. Intervening in a "wicked problem" is a challenging, one-shot effort. What does this mean? It means that implementing a "solution" alters the characteristics of the problem, to the point of limiting your ability to trial and error. It means that, once you intervene without success, it is counterproductive. The problem is no longer the same, and therefore neither is your understanding and comprehension of it.

Based on these characteristics, not all hard-to-solve problems are "wicked", only those with an indeterminate scope and scale.

But what risks do we run when faced with a "wicked problem"?

No one can doubt that investigating, studying and analyzing a relatively new and complex problem is a natural and certainly relevant approach. However, with respect to a "wicked problem", study will only lead to more study and will result in the condition known as "paralysis by analysis", generating a "loop" in which we cannot take action until we have more information, but we cannot get more information until action is taken.

In practice, approaching the problem solely from the study of the problem will almost inevitably lead to procrastination, as very little can be learned about a "wicked problem" through data collection and analysis.

This approach to problem solving will quickly run out of resources if it is a "wicked problem. "wicked problem". Such resource depletion can be understood as the end of financial contributions to the initiative or also as the end of a certain time allotment that had been given to teams to address a given problem.

The result is that excessive time can be spent studying and discussing options before a decision is made. And finally, by the time a decision is made to implement an alternative, the chosen option is no longer viable. This phenomenon is very common, for example, in the process of evaluating and selecting projects to be financed from the total number of projects that are part of the organizational portfolio, no matter how much analysis and studies are carried out to make a decision, an optimal answer will not emerge.

Hence, the "wicked problem":

  • They require an approach driven by the available opportunities

  • They require decisions to be made

  • Promoting experiments

  • Launch pilot programs

  • Testing prototypes

Have you faced wicked problems in your organization?

Do you think the "wicked problems" facing your organization could be fragmenting the execution of transformation projects and/or initiatives?

In order to generate some answers to these and other questions, we will be publishing a series of articles related to the phenomenon of fragmentation and its dimensions.

As a team The Change Labteam, we are convinced that our value goes beyond what we do. For this reason, we collaboratively seek knowledge transfer and the development of organizational capabilities in everything we do. We are convinced that we must contribute to help organizations manage their change and transformation processes with greater ease.

This is why we invite you to review the information of our International Certification in Change Managementsoon to start its 10th version.

SOURCE: Dialogue Mapping Book - Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems

About the Author

Andrés Zanetta is Managing Partner at The Change Lab.
Commercial Engineer, certified in Scrum framework, with postgraduate specialization in innovation management and project management - Master in Innovation (PUC, 2016) and Master of Project Management (The University of Sydney, 2018). 
Innovation (PUC, 2016) and Master of Project Management (The University of Sydney, 2018).
With extensive experience in project management at the organizational level, he has led initiatives in the field of technology solutions, process improvement and transformation initiatives of high complexity.