Working with Wicked Problems

Shiftn, ©2010 www.shiftn.com 1

Working with Wicked Problems

Philippe Vandenbroeck, shiftN February 2011 www.shiftn.com


Picture: Calabi‐Ya Manifold Courtesy Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics

WICKED PROBLEMS A special class of problems ?


Our current predicament


Enter the Anthropocene


'Hockey sGck curves' abound


Planetary Predicament


Copyright: UNFCCC, 2010

Global Governance


Picture: The Intenet

ConnecGvity


But what does this mean? It's up to us to make sense of it ...


CriGcal uncertainGes

A trap is a trap only for creatures which cannot solve the problem that it sets. Man‐traps are dangerous only in relaEon to the limitaEons on what men can see and value and do. The nature of the trap is a funcGon of the nature of the trapped.

Sir Geoffrey Vickers (1892‐1984)


Reconfiguring the appreciaGve basis for our existence



RevoluGon

Return

Mindlessness

What happens beyond the 'stable state' ...



Engineering our way out


Nevertheless we have made progress


Cuban Missile Crisis, 1961 Kennedy AssassinaEon, 1963 Vietnam War, 1964‐1973

Moon landing, 1969 Student revolt, 1968 US urban riots, 1964 onwards Earth Day, 1970

The sixties


Kahn & Wiener 1968

Schon 1972

Meadows 1972

Toffler 1970

Ackoff 1973

Vickers 1972

De Jouvenel 1964

The late 1960s and early 1970s: a period of ferment


CriGcal uncertainGes Planning problems are inherently wicked: ill‐defined and reliant on poliEcal judgment. They are never

solved. At best they are re‐solved, over and over again.

Horst Ri]el and Marvin Webber, 1973

What decision‐makers deal with are messes, not problems. A mess is a set of

external condiEons that produces dissaEsfacEon.

Russ Ackoff, 1974

The policy process is 'a swampy lowland' where soluEons are confusing messes

incapable of technical soluEons

Don Schön, 1979


Wicked problems: •  Unclear causaliEes. •  Numerous intervenEon points. •  Data are scarce, dispersed and low quality. •  Uncertainty regarding costs and benefits of intervenEons. •  MulEple stakeholders with different, oeen incompaEble worldviews. •  FormulaEon is subject to conEnuous reframing and renegoEaEon. •  OpEmal soluEons to wicked problems do not exist. •  There may be path dependency associated to intervenEon strategies.

Super‐wicked problems: •  The scope is planetary and the potenEal downside is very large. •  Those most responsible have least interest to do something. •  The longer one waits to do something about it, the more wicked it gets.

Wicked problems


Based on Cynefin Model CogniGve Edge



System Dynamics Jay Forrester (1968)

Morphological Analysis Fritz Zwicky (1967, 1969)

Delphi Analysis RAND Corpora7on (1959, 1964)

Scenario Planning Bertrand de Jouvenel, Herman Kahn (1965, 1964)

Viable Systems Model Stafford Beer (1972)

Methodological innovaGons in the 1960s and 70s

Making uncertainty amenable to decision‐making

Gebng a hold on feedback structures

Codifying the laws underpinning viability of organisaGons

The coming of age of modern systems thinking


1998

1992

1989

The nineties


Twin Towers, 2001 Dot com crash, 2001 US occupaEon of Iraq, 2003‐2009

Hurricane Katrina, 2005 Financial crisis, 2008 ‐ Afghanistan, 2005 ‐ Social media revoluEon, 2001 ‐

The noughties



Soc Systems Methodology Peter Checkland (1984)

Systemic Governance Ralf‐Eckhard Türke (2008)

AdapGve Management C.S. (Buzz) Holling (1978)

TransiGon Management Jan Rotmans (1998)

Design Thinking Bruce Mau (2000)

Methodological innovaGons from 1980s onwards

Intervening as learning

AnGcipaGng non‐linear dynamics (Gpping points, regime change)

'Steering' large‐scale socio‐technical systems toward sustainability

Modifying objects so that they can modify the world


Pointers to relevant approaches


LUMAS‐model ‐

Learning for a User by a Methodologically‐informed Approach to a SituaGon

Courtey: P. Checkland and J. Poulter (2004)

Soc Systems Methodology


SSM

•  A pragmaEc approach to collaboraEvely improve (our understanding of) fuzzy problemaEcal situaEons.

•  Systems models are used as heurisEc devices, developed from an explicitly declared worldview, not as 'pictures of reality'.

•  The purpose of SSM is not to reach consensus, but to agree on a temporary 'accomodaEon', as a fleeEng consolidaEon point in a learning process. SSM = Learning for AcEon.

•  SSM has been deployed in very varied circumstances (governance, informaEon mgt, hermeneuEcs).


Generic Governance


Generic Governance

•  An approach to facilitate the design and conEnuous re‐design of social structures in complex governance semngs, where decision‐making power is devolved and dispersed and subject to different worldviews (e.g. ciEes, regions).

•  Generic governance integrates insights from several systems and futures thinking tradiEons.

•  It is a meta‐methodology to improve the adapEve capacity of an organizaEon: "It facilitates the creaEon of condiEons for sustainable governance, which in consequence aids addressing wicked problems – or even dissolving them."


AdapGve Management


AdapEve Management

•  Ecologists developed an iteraEve approach to govern complex human‐environmental systems. The methodology mixes rigorous scienEfic monitoring and characterisaEon of uncertainty with ongoing sense‐making, negoEaEon and insEtuEon building.

•  AdapEve management wants to contribute to 'resilience': adapEve capacity in the face of disturbances.

•  Inspired by insights from complexity science it tries to understand how systems may be subjected to catastrophic regime shies.

•  Panarchy: adapEve cycles are nested in a hierarchy across Eme and space (mulE‐level perspecEve).


TransiGon Management

BackcasEng

MulE‐level perspecEve

Fast and slow


•  A meta‐methodology that emerged from Dutch innovaEon policy, inspired by technology studies, evoluEonary economics and complexity science.

•  Focus on radical changes in large‐scale socio‐technical systems (energy, mobility, agriculture, health care) towards sustainability.

•  TransiEon 'Management' = an oxymoron. Change comes about as result of interacEons between different systemic levels.

•  Connects short term experiments with a long‐term vision in a conEnuous learning dynamic: goal‐oriented incrementalism.

TransiEon Management


Future Scenarios


Future scenarios

•  Scenarios have been conceived as an instrument to explicity integrate future uncertainty into decision‐making.

•  The methodology is extensively used, in a wide variety of semngs, from narrow decision‐oriented contexts to encompassing mulEstakeholder processes.

•  The approach conEnues to evolve. In this seminar we will explore the use of scenarios as a way of acEon learning, in conjuncEon with other tools, as an apempt to reframe our basic assumpEons about global environmental problems: RIMA scenarios.


Design thinking


Design thinking

•  Designers have expanded their reach beyond products and services, to include larger and more wicked dysfuncEonaliEes.

•  Design plays on the performaEve character of our physical and insEtuEonal environment. Design is fundamentally acEon‐oriented, pragmaEc, voluntarist, utopian.

•  The designer as reflecEve pracEEoner relies on meEculous, layered descripEon ('conversaEon avec une situaEon', cfr Paola Vigano), reframing of the problem situaEon and visualizaEon of alternaEve possibiliEes.


Working with wicked problems

From 'tools' to 'approaches' to ...

•  develop systemic insight •  make explicit normaEve choices •  pragmaEcally embrace acEon and experiment, hence provisionality and open‐endedness

•  support an ongoing dynamic of learning and sense‐making


"There is no quesEon of theory versus pracEce

but rather of intelligent pracEce versus

uninformed, stupid pracEce."

John Dewey 1859-1952



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Working with Wicked Problems