It took me a while to realise what a wicked problem was. It is evil. It’s a challenge.
“Wicked” in this context means resistance to resolution, rather than evil.
I looked to cooking. No two ingredients are the same. Even if you are cooking a thing for the 100th time, the factors of the day, the humidity, temperature, it’s going to be different.
This doesn’t sound like a wicked problem to me. I think a more “wicked” problem would be something like where you have to create a meal for a whole hall full of people. Now, you want to make a meal that everyone will like and you have a limited amount of resources, so you can’t create separate meals for everyone, but some people might be vegetarians, some might have allergies, some might want one type of meal in particular etc. There is a social complexity aspect to this problem. You cannot come up with a best meal because there are different stakeholders with strongly-held beliefs about what the problem is.
As a current example there is global warming and energy policy where people from the developed world have one set of views about what needs to be done, and the developing world has a completely different set of views. Nobody ‘owns’ the problem and no-one has a clear idea of how to work out the answers
The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution.
This is less about quantifying things and more about how requirements change or are only realized after the solution of the problem or part of the problem is implemented. For example, let’s say you are renovating a house and there are 10 people involved. Every time you change something like a chair you need to check that it still aligns with everything else. You might need to go through many iterations of having to change and rechange things.
Every solution that is offered exposes new aspects of the problem, requiring further adjustments to the potential solutions. There is no definitive statement of ‘the problem’: these problems are ill-structured and feature an evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints.
Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
How do you make sufficient stopping rules when there are conflicts over what the problem is?
Since there is no definitive ‘the problem’, there is also no definitive ‘the solution.’ The problem-solving process ends when you run out of resources such as time, money or energy, not when an optimal solution emerges.
Every solution to a wicked problem is a ‘one shot operation.’
Developing models, trying scenarios etc. all take effort and send you down a particular track in terms of the conception of the problem. I think that wicked problems are like the conglomeration of multiple problems or people’s conception of the problem. Each time you try to move forward on one part of the problem you kind of entrench yourself in seeing the problem that particular way and it also spawns new problems directly related to only that one conception of the problem.
Every attempt has consequences. This is the ‘Catch 22’ of wicked problems: you can’t learn about the problem without trying solutions, but every solution is expensive and has lasting consequences that may spawn new wicked problems.
Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.
A host of potential solutions may be devised, but another host that are never even thought of. Thus it is a matter of creativity to devise potential solutions, and a matter of judgement to determine which should be pursued and implemented.
this document agrees with my hypothesis about how to solve wicked problems. it says:
Lock down the problem definition. Develop a description of a related problem that you can solve, and declare that to be the problem. Specify objective parameters by which to measure the solution’s success.
Cast the problem as ‘just like’ a previous problem that has been solved. Ignore or filter out evidence that complicates the picture.
Give up on trying to find a good solution. Just follow orders, do your job and try not to get in trouble.
Declare that there are just a few possible solutions, and focus on selecting from among them. A specific way to do this is to frame the problem in ‘either/or’ terms, such as ‘Should we attack Iraq OR let the terrorists take over the world?’
Actually, if you read further the above is described as taming the problem, which is bad, and is not solving it.
Taming a wicked problem is a very natural and common way of coping with it. Instead of dealing with the full wickedness of the problem, people simplify it in various ways to make it more manageable and solvable
While it may seem appealing in the short run, attempting to tame a wicked problem will always fail in the long run. The problem will simply reassert itself, perhaps in a different guise, as if nothing had been done; or worse, the tame solution will exacerbate the problem.
There is a variety of ways that organisations try to tame wicked problems by handling them too narrowly. The most common way is locking down the problem definition. This often involves addressing a sub-problem that can be solved. If the problem is how to reduce violence in schools, for example, policy makers may focus on the more tractable, narrow problem of how to install metal detectors in school entrances. Or, if the problem is obesity in children, the more tractable but narrow problem could be removing unhealthy food from school canteens.
If policy and performance measures are limited to the sub-problem rather than the wicked problem, the problem can appear solved at least in the short-term. If the performance measure is that school canteens no longer offer unhealthy foods, for example, this may be achievable. An unintended consequence and a reassertion of the wicked problem may be that more children no longer buy their lunch at school canteens but instead miss lunch, save their lunch money, and buy junk food at the shops on the way home from school. This is also a good example of how a tame solution can exacerbate the problem—some children may now eat more unhealthy food than they did previously, and they miss their lunch! It is also another illustration of the unintended consequences that can result from interventions to address wicked problems. Unintended consequences tend to occur even more frequently if the problem has been artificially tamed, that is, it has been too narrowly addressed and the multiple causes and interconnections not fully explored prior to measures being introduced. This does not mean that at some stage in the policy formulation process it will not be necessary to identify the components of the wicked problem and possible practical solutions as part of a comprehensive and coordinated set of measures to address the problem. Obviously, the type of food offered in school canteens is part of the solution to childhood obesity. But this fragmentation of the wicked problem would ideally occur after all the interconnections and social complexities have been identified, discussed and addressed as part of a coordinated strategy.
Quotes from post and this: http://www.cognexus.org/Rotman-interview_SharedUnderstanding.pdf
“Wicked” in this context means resistance to resolution, rather than evil.
This doesn’t sound like a wicked problem to me. I think a more “wicked” problem would be something like where you have to create a meal for a whole hall full of people. Now, you want to make a meal that everyone will like and you have a limited amount of resources, so you can’t create separate meals for everyone, but some people might be vegetarians, some might have allergies, some might want one type of meal in particular etc. There is a social complexity aspect to this problem. You cannot come up with a best meal because there are different stakeholders with strongly-held beliefs about what the problem is.
As a current example there is global warming and energy policy where people from the developed world have one set of views about what needs to be done, and the developing world has a completely different set of views. Nobody ‘owns’ the problem and no-one has a clear idea of how to work out the answers
This is less about quantifying things and more about how requirements change or are only realized after the solution of the problem or part of the problem is implemented. For example, let’s say you are renovating a house and there are 10 people involved. Every time you change something like a chair you need to check that it still aligns with everything else. You might need to go through many iterations of having to change and rechange things.
How do you make sufficient stopping rules when there are conflicts over what the problem is?
Developing models, trying scenarios etc. all take effort and send you down a particular track in terms of the conception of the problem. I think that wicked problems are like the conglomeration of multiple problems or people’s conception of the problem. Each time you try to move forward on one part of the problem you kind of entrench yourself in seeing the problem that particular way and it also spawns new problems directly related to only that one conception of the problem.
this document agrees with my hypothesis about how to solve wicked problems. it says:
Actually, if you read further the above is described as taming the problem, which is bad, and is not solving it.
For a further explanation, see this document