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Wicked-Problem Solvers
- Amy C. Edmondson
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Companies today increasingly rely on teams that span many industries for radical innovation, especially to solve “wicked problems.” So leaders have to understand how to promote collaboration when roles are uncertain, goals are shifting, expertise and organizational cultures are varied, and participants have clashing or even antagonistic perspectives.
HBS professor Amy Edmondson has studied more than a dozen cross-industry innovation projects, among them the creation of a new city, a mango supply-chain transformation, and the design and construction of leading-edge buildings. She has identified the leadership practices that make successful cross-industry teams work: fostering an adaptable vision, promoting psychological safety, enabling knowledge sharing, and encouraging collaborative innovation.
Though these practices are broadly familiar, their application within cross-industry teams calls for unique leadership approaches that combine flexibility, open-mindedness, humility, and fierce resolve.
Lessons from successful cross-industry teams
Idea in Brief
The problem.
Cross-industry teams made up of far-flung participants outside the usual business ecosystem are necessary for radical innovation. But managing such diverse teams is challenging.
Why It Happens
Teams struggle to perform for a variety of reasons: Roles are uncertain; expertise, professional values, and organizational cultures are varied; and participants’ diverse perspectives and experience may cause conflict or even overt antagonism.
The Solution
Four leadership practices can help cross-industry teams meet their potential: fostering an adaptable vision, promoting psychological safety, enabling knowledge sharing, and adopting an execution-as-learning mindset.
Companies have long cooperated within their ecosystems, working with suppliers, partners, customers, and even competitors. But as the premium on innovating grows, especially for wicked problems—those with incomplete, contradictory, or changing requirements—more organizations are tapping the capabilities of new and far-flung partners. That such cross-industry collaborations can generate radical innovations is clear. How to build and run them is another matter.
- Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. Her latest book is Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well (Atria Books, 2023).
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Systems thinking made simple : new hope for solving wicked problems
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What Are Wicked Problems and How Might We Solve Them?
Have you ever come across a problem so complex that you struggled to know where to start? Then you might have stumbled upon a wicked problem. While wicked problems may not have a definite solution, there are certainly things you can do to mitigate any negative effects. When you learn how to tackle wicked problems, you learn how to improve the world and the lives of the people who live in it. Here, you’ll learn the ten characteristics of a wicked problem and five steps to tackle wicked problems.
What Is a Wicked Problem?
A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that’s difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. Wicked problems lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.
Classic examples of wicked problems are these:
Climate change
Homelessness
Sustainability
What is the Difference between Puzzles, Problems and Wicked Problems?
Let’s create an overview by first looking into the difference between a puzzle and a problem, and then afterwards we’ll examine wicked problems.
- Transcript loading…
Which Wicked Problems Do We Need to Deal with?
Many of the design problems we face are wicked problems, where clarifying the problem is often as big a task as solving it… or perhaps even bigger. Wicked problems are problems with many interdependent factors making them seem impossible to solve as there is no definitive formula for a wicked problem.
A wicked problem is often a social or cultural problem. For example, how would you try to solve global issues such as poverty… or education? What about climate change, and access to clean drinking water? It’s hard to know where to begin, right? That’s because they’re all wicked problems.
What makes them even worse is the way they’re intertwined with one another. If you try to address an element of one problem, you’ll likely cause unexpected consequences in another. No wonder they’re wicked! It’s clear to see that standard problem-solving techniques just aren’t going to cut it when you’ve got a wicked problem on your hands.
You’ll need to gain a much deeper insight into the people involved and learn how to reframe the problem entirely if you want to have any sort of chance at coming up with a valuable solution.
10 Characteristics of a Wicked Problem
As you can see, we need to dig deeper to understand the essence of wicked problems. Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, professors of design and urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, first coined the term wicked problem in “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” (1973). In the paper, they detail ten important characteristics that describe a wicked problem:
There is no definitive formula for a wicked problem.
Wicked problems have no stopping rule—there’s no way to know whether your solution is final.
Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false (right or wrong); they can only be good or bad.
You cannot immediately test a solution to a wicked problem.
Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation” because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error—every attempt counts significantly.
Wicked problems do not have a set number of potential solutions.
Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.
There is always more than one explanation for a wicked problem because the explanations vary greatly depending on the individual’s perspective.
The planner/designer has no right to be wrong and must be fully responsible for their actions.
We still face the classic wicked problems in today’s world; however, there are further examples we now have to consider. Business strategy, for example, is now often classed as a wicked problem because strategy-related issues normally meet at least five of the characteristics listed above.
From Wicked Problems to Complex Socio-Technical Systems
The rapid technological advancement of the 21st century has, in many ways, mutated wicked problems. In today’s hyperconnected world, it is difficult to look at problems in isolation.
Let’s look at sustainability, for example. Recycling is often considered as one of the solutions to achieve sustainability. Don Norman , in his two-part essay for FastCompany , examined recycling and remarked: “I am an expert on complex design systems . Even I can’t figure out recycling.”
He describes in detail how difficult it is for people to send their household waste to get recycled. There are different rules for different materials—paper, plastics, glass, metals. And within a category, say, plastic, there are different rules for different types of plastic in different places. Not all plastics can be recycled. Those that can be recycled, demand specialized equipment and processes that are not universally available.
“Recycling is a poor solution to the wrong problem.” — Don Norman
The complexity of recycling is a problem. But why do we need to recycle at all?
It's because most of the products we use in our lives are made from non-reusable materials. Consider smartphones—most, if not all, have batteries that cannot be separated from the device. If your battery no longer functions as intended, you must replace it with a new phone.
What if the iPhone had a removable battery, which could be fixed or replaced so that you didn’t have to throw out the entire phone, if (when) the battery died? What if phones weren’t built to crack or become obsolete within a short time?
What if companies considered alternate materials to manufacture phones, or government legislation made it mandatory for companies to take back all their material, and put them back into the manufacturing process? The piles of garbage on the planet are a part of what Don Norman calls complex socio-technical systems . Let’s hear more on this from Don Norman:
Wicked problems, or as Don Norman prefers to call them, complex socio-technical systems , are not isolated. They are intertwined in existing systems—manufacturing systems and economic systems, political, social and cultural systems, technological and legal systems. And each of those systems is connected with the other.
So, how can you start to tackle wicked problems, both old and new? Let’s look at how design thinking —more specifically, systems thinking and agile methodology —can help us start to untangle the web of a complex socio-technical system.
Wicked Problems and Design Thinking
The design theorist and academic Richard Buchanan connected design thinking to the innovation necessary to begin tackling wicked problems. Originally used in the context of social planning, the term “wicked problems” had been popularized in the paper “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking” (1992) by Buchanan. Various thought leaders following Buchanan continued on to suggest we utilize systems thinking when faced with complex design problems, but what does that look like in practice for a designer tackling a wicked problem and how can we integrate it with a collaborative agile methodology ?
A Combination of Systems Thinking and Agile Methodology Can Help You Tackle Wicked Problems
Design thinkers proceeded to highlight how we utilize systems thinking when faced with complex design problems.
Systems thinking is the process of understanding how components of a system influence each other as well as other systems—and therefore it’s pretty much perfect for wicked problems!
And it’s even better when combined with an agile methodology , an iterative approach to design and product development. Agile methodology helps to improve solutions through collaboration . This agile, collaborative environment breeds the ability to be efficient and effectively meet the stakeholders ’ changing requirements.
Together, systems thinking and agile methodology lead us to a better solution at each iteration as they both evolve with the wicked problem.
![wicked problem solving pdf Illustration showing the feedback loop, with users giving feedback and requests to the development team and the development team sharing demos and new releases to users.](https://public-media.interaction-design.org/images/uploads/user-content/22127/mJjpn1YvhF3QCyAauKMkkPk2ohFJJokgYlRPPxJJ.jpeg)
In an agile methodology, every iteration incorporates feedback from the previous release. This process can help you tackle wicked problems when it’s combined with systems thinking.
© Daniel Skrok and the Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
5 Ways to Apply Systems Thinking and Agile Methodology in Your Work
If you’ve been faced with a wicked problem in the past, you’ll have undoubtedly experienced frustration from not knowing where or how to begin. There’s no shame in that—issues which are difficult or nearly impossible to solve will do that to a person! The next time you and your team must tackle a wicked problem, you can use these five handy methods which are based on systems thinking and agile methodology:
1. Break down information into nodes and links.
You can utilize systems thinking if you break the information down into nodes (chunks of information such as objects, people or concepts) and links (the connections and relationships between the nodes). This will make your private mental models (your representations of external reality) visible to the outside world and help you face wicked problems more effectively. Jay Wright Forrester, a pioneer in computer engineering and systems science, put it nicely when he said:
"The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world, government or country. He has only selected concepts, and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the real system.” —Jay Wright Forrester
![wicked problem solving pdf Four sketches of people showing how they make toast. It's a way of showing how people think about process.](https://public-media.interaction-design.org/images/uploads/user-content/1445/9f1sYF5K9syVpaFu6vLVdelQbXOm6aFSPHaxx3oi.png)
In this illustration , the nodes are circled in red and the links are the red lines drawn between the nodes. All four illustrations are systems models that participants created from Tom Wujec’s workshops on collaborative visualization and systems thinking.
© Tom Wujec, CC BY 3.0
2. Visualize the information.
When you sketch out and place information into a physical space, it will help both you and your team take in and understand the systems at hand—as well as the relationships within and between them.
3. Collaborate and include stakeholders in the process.
Share your mental models to help other people build on your ideas, and vice versa. Your team can synthesize several points of view when you create physical drawings and group notes to produce different systems models.
4. Release solutions quickly to gather continuous feedback.
Feedback of success helps to solve problems which we don’t have one single obviously correct answer for. The more feedback you gather from your users and stakeholders, the more guidance you’ll have to get to the next step.
5. Carry out multiple iterations.
You and your team have the chance to utilize feedback at each iteration. The more iterations you do, the more likely you’ll determine what changes are needed to further improve the solution to your wicked problem.
![wicked problem solving pdf Sketch of existing solution to next iteration with a bridge with people on it between the two concepts.](https://public-media.interaction-design.org/images/uploads/user-content/84689/rBCjzuyefPHmXpbrT0ySw5WXvzhssAmsRQ5NfW9B.jpeg)
You’ll build a bridge between the existing solution and the next iteration when you combine user and stakeholder feedback with your team’s thoughts and ideas.
© Un-School MX, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The Take Away
As designers, we have the responsibility to generate the best solution possible even when the wicked problem itself is indeterminate and the best solution does not yet exist. A combination of systems thinking and agile methodology can help us tackle these wicked problems. It encourages us to utilize these practices and share them with others so that we can, together, get to the next iteration of the design process .
When you start to tackle wicked problems, you can start to improve the world and the lives of the people who live in it. As a reminder, the five steps to do this are:
Break down information into nodes and links.
Visualize the information.
Collaborate and include stakeholders in the process.
Release solutions quickly and gather continuous feedback.
Carry out multiple iterations.
References & Where To Learn More
Rittel, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences , 4(2), 155-169.
Buchanan, Richard. (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues , Vol. 8, No. 2, (Spring, 1992), 5-21.
Ana de Almeida Kumlien & Paul Coughlan, Wicked problems and how to solve them , 2018.
John C. Camillus, Strategy as a Wicked Problem , 2006.
Amy C. Edmundson, Wicked-Problem Solvers , 2016.
John Kolko, Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving , 2012.
Stony Brook University, What’s a Wicked Problem?
Tom Wujec, TEDGlobal, Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast , 2013:
Hero Image: © Diana Parkhouse, Unsplash License.
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Wicked Problems and Sustainable Development
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- First Online: 25 October 2018
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- Lorelei L. Hanson 2
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Complex ; Intractable ; Messy
Wicked problems are intractable social issues that defy traditional problem-solving approaches because they are characterized by high levels of complexity and ambiguity and involve multiple stakeholder groups with strongly divergent values and perspectives. While initially applied in a social planning context, sustainability researchers have increasingly utilized this lens to explain the multidimensions of many sustainable development issues and explore new ways for addressing these complex issues.
Introduction
In this entry, the origin of wicked problems as a concept and its ten distinguishing properties is discussed. These characteristics are then used to discuss vexing dimensions of sustainable development that are highlighted in the research literature. There is increased attention by sustainability researchers to how traditional decision-making approaches, management strategies, public policy responses, and education are insufficient...
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Hanson, L.L. (2019). Wicked Problems and Sustainable Development. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2_522-1
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The Problem. Cross-industry teams made up of far-flung participants outside the usual business ecosystem are necessary for radical innovation. But managing such diverse teams is challenging.
How Wicked Problem Solving Works. This interactive course and toolkit will teach you how to bring yourself or your team, from irresolution to resolution, using a simple, powerful, scalable approach to tackle any problem and make solutions visible. Watch quick videos, then get hands-on experience working through your problems in your companion ...
Part of the pain is a misunderstanding of the nature of the problems at hand. More precisely, the pain is caused by working on a special class of problems - wicked problems - with thinking, tools, and methods that are useful only for simpler ("tame") problems. Problem wickedness is a force of fragmentation.
e uncertainty challenges your decision-making, abundant information also is a key pro. lem. Information overload means you have too much to read or listen to in. too little time. 'Too much' refers to both the quantity and complexity of. information. Scientific evidence shows that information overload reduces decision quality. W.
A variety of authors writing about wicked problems stress that several factors are key to their resolution. Three of these stand out and, though they overlap and are in many ways interrelated, they merit individual treatment. The three factors are collaboration, shared understanding, and dialogue. These are used explicitly and intentionally in ...
Wicked problems de ned Rittel and Webber 1973 Proposition 1 There is no deÞnitive formulation of a wicked problem. Proposition 2 Wicked problems have no stopping rule. Proposition 3 Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad. Proposition 4 There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
Systems thinking made simple : new hope for solving wicked problems by Cabrera, Derek, author. Publication date 2015 Topics Problem solving, System theory, Résolution de problème, Théorie des systèmes ... Pdf_module_version 0.0.18 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20220712121853 Republisher_operator [email protected] ...
56 4 Extenics: A Methodology for Solving Wicked Problems approach to a solution. According to Rittel and Webber (Rittel & Webber, 1973)the concept of wicked problems is defined by ten common characteristics as follows: 1. Wicked problems lack a definitive formula. 2. There is no stopping rule for determining when a solution has been found. 3.
problem solving process. Merge needs and insights! Remember, all you can do regarding wicked problems is to embrace needs. And a fresh outlook seems essential since the old problem views were obviously fruitless. So, you also need new insights. Design thinking has powerful tools to ease the job.
The concept of wicked problems is applied in an effort to improve project definition processes. Based on collaborative argumentation and reflection processes, a project learning model is proposed to better manage the resolution of wicked problems in project definition. Particular emphasis is placed on considering project definition as an ...
As a result of such interdependency, wicked problem interventions often have unintended consequences and can even create new, unforeseen problems. The uncertainty dimension relates to the large amount of information missing for problem-solving. Wicked problems have low knowability and a large number of unknowns. As a result of this informational
term 'wicked problem' is used has grown exponentially (Head 2019). For the years 1973-2001, a Scopus search (conducted in January 2020) on 'wicked problem' returns less than ten papers per year; by 2017, this ... blem-solving approaches that are often taught in engineering education: approaches where students ...
The impact and origins of 'wicked problems'. Horst Rittel and Mel Webber's paper 'Dilemmas in a general theory of planning' ( 1973 ), which introduced the concept of wicked problems to a ...
Figure 1 The extended holistic problem-solving process. Wicked problems: Wicked solutions. Joseph Kasser. Temasek Defence Systems Institute. National University of Singapore. Block E1, #05- 05. 1 ...
A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that's difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. Wicked problems lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.
Title:: Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving: Author:: Kolko, Jon: Note: free online edition, ca. 2012 : Link: illustrated HTML with commentary at wickedproblems.com
The Rise of 'Wicked Problems'—Uncertainty, Complexity and Divergence. Abstract Rittel and Webber argued that scientific and technocratic approaches for tackling the difficult issues of social policy and urban planning were bound to be inadequate. A 'scientific' approach to under-standing the nature of these problems necessarily ...
Among many recent authors, Xiang argued that there are five core features of wicked problems: (1) indeterminacy in problem formulation; (2) non-definitiveness in problem solution; (3) non-solubility; (4) irreversible consequentiality; and (5) individual uniqueness.From a public policy viewpoint, Head argued that there are three essential and overlapping features of wicked problems: complexity ...
Coping strategies to deal with wicked problems derive from the basic model in Figure 1. Three questions prompt strategy selection. On the far left-hand side, we ask how much conflict is present in the problem solving process. If there is a low level of conflict, then we have a simple or Type 1 problem.
A reductionist approach devotes much attention to solving wicked problems based on firm-level performance variables, assuming that improvements to individual firm performance will innately create the change needed to tackle wicked problems. ... PDF/ePub View PDF/ePub. Get access. Access options. If you have access to journal content via a ...
Every wicked problem is a symptom of other societal problems. 9. Discrepancies between explanations of a wicked problem can be explained in multiple ways; each explanation frames the slate of possible solutions. 10. There is no public tolerance for failure in solving wicked problems (Rittel and Webber 1973).
Opportunity Driven Problem Solving A study in the 1980's at the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) looked into how people solve problems. The study focused on design, but the results apply to virtually any other kind of problem solving or decision-making activity - the kinds projects are fraught with.
Abstract. The concept of "wicked problems" has attracted increasing focus in policy research, but the implications for public organizations have received less attention. This article examines the main organizational and cognitive dimensions emerging from the research literature on wicked problems. We identify several recent approaches to ...