PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
i am a wicked product #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
The uncertainty of a problem should influence how we respond to it
Misdiagnosis of a problem can compound it
We frame our solutions through the lens of our social predisposition
Wicked problems can only be addressed by collaboration between different social types
hello
I’ve been a little obsessed this week with a paper exploring wicked problems and leadership by Keith Grint. He has a storied academic career researching leadership and management and is Professor Emeritus at Warwick University.
My original interest was to nail down a decent definition of ‘wicked’ problems. I see the term used so often by systems thinkers such as John Cutler, but must confess I had failed to grasp what the shorthand truly meant. If you take nothing else away, Grint provides a good working definition in his paper.
As I read further, I particularly liked Mary Douglas’ breakdown of four social types and their natural responses when faced with a problem. This framing, and Grint’s explanation with examples of why different types of response only work in certain contexts and for particular types of problem, was enlightening. It gives me some usefully different ways to look at the politics and effectiveness of decision-making and leadership. I hope you find it equally valuable.
To help me digest his points, I wrote myself a summary — no genAI here! :-) I then tidied and edited this a little for flow, added some further examples and have included it for you below. I commend you to read Grint’s original paper as well and have linked to it liberally throughout this edition of PRODUCTHEAD.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
Three Mile Island #
On 28 March 1979 at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the US, a malfunction in the cooling system triggered a chain of events that led to the partial meltdown of reactor #2.
The original problem (a pressure relief valve had opened correctly, but then failed to close again) was compounded by misleading instrument readings, which indicated the crucial valve had closed despite it actually remaining open. As a result, the plant operators were relying on incorrect information to diagnose and remedy the problems they thought they were seeing on their instruments.
The incident at Three Mile Island did not result in any injuries at the time, and despite causing a low dose release of radioactive gas (much less than someone would receive during a chest x-ray), long-term health studies showed that locals suffered no adverse effects.
Subsequent analysis of the incident revealed the following contributing factors:
» Faulty instrumentation failing to show what was actually happening
» The urgency of the situation adding pressure on the operators to respond decisively
» Attempting to solve for the wrong problem because of that misreporting, compounding the original problem
» Not questioning or triangulating with other sources of information whether the instruments were reading accurately
This is a pattern of problem misdiagnosis and ill-suited response that crops up time and again. In the world of corporate leadership, many “one size fits all” plans for organisational change fail because the nuanced context defies a generalised approach.
Types of problem #
A comparatively well-understood and self-contained problem with a known solution is a tame problem. An uncertain problem, which is dependent on interactions with a wider system, and for which there is no clear relationship between cause and effect, is a wicked problem. A critical problem (which crops up later in the paper) is highly urgent and highly certain, even more so than a tame problem.
When we speak of a complicated problem, we are really describing a collection of tame problems, which can be divided up and solved individually and sequentially. In contrast, complex problems are by nature wicked problems. They cannot be easily divided up and require simultaneous not sequential solutions to be effective.
While tame problems can potentially be solved by an individual, wicked problems by nature cannot be solved by an individual, assuming they have a solution at all. Even if they cannot be fully solved, the combined perspective and effort of a diverse collective of individuals can make progress against a wicked problem.
Misdiagnosis of problems #
A superficial analysis of a problem may convince us the problem is tame, when in fact it is wicked. “It can’t be that hard, it just needs a …,” is a typical response symptomatic of this kind of misdiagnosis. It often betrays a lack of understanding of the nuanced context and complexity behind the problem.
As in the Three Mile Island incident, this misdiagnosis can lead us to incorrectly apply a tame response to a wicked problem, often compounding the original problem with new ones.
For example, the creation of biofuel to replace fossil fuels (a tame solution) was originally seen as a way to solve the problem of climate change (a wicked problem misdiagnosed as a tame one). However biofuel manufacture created new problems such as significant depletion of global food resources to meet demand for fuel.
Similarly, the shift from internal combustion engined (ICE) vehicles to electric ones (another tame solution) is not simply a matter of providing viable electric vehicles (EVs) as an alternative. Progress is also dependent on addressing driver concerns over range anxiety, which in turn are dependent on pervasive and reliable charging infrastructure, and on delivering equivalent or better perceived quality of EVs at a comparable price point to ICE vehicles. Moreover, the increased demand for rare earth elements to create the batteries needed for EVs is already leading to environmental damage.
Possible approaches in response to problems #
Leadership can be defined as a leader facilitating a novel response to a novel (wicked) problem in collaboration with a collective.
Management, in contrast, can be defined as the process of an individual applying a known response to a known (tame) problem.
Command occurs in response to a highly urgent and highly certain (critical) problem, often by triggering a defined and well rehearsed set of emergency actions with minimal delay.
The appropriate response to a wicked problem (complex, uncertain) should be questions about the nature of the problem, reflect, and only then to act if sufficient certainty has been established.
The response to a tame problem (certain, with defined solution) can be a definitive answer, a clear decision to commence a remedial process.
The response to a critical problem (very certain, very urgent) is intended to be enacted immediately as ordered without question.
The pressure to respond decisively #
When we encounter an urgent problem, there is increased pressure to respond quickly however we do not yet know whether it is tame or wicked. This can influence the decision-maker to frame the problem incorrectly: “Because it is urgent, it must be critical, therefore I must issue a decisive command,” however this fails to take into account how certain the problem is, thus the response to act may be entirely ill suited.
Ironically, senior leaders and managers have come to be perceived as more valuable when they command rather than when they demonstrate leadership (by the definitions above).
In comparison with the Three Mile Incident, Grint highlights the response to the explosion suffered by the crew of the 1970 Apollo 13 mission (later dramatised in the movie of the same name starring Tom Hanks and Ed Harris).
Rather than jumping in with a decisive response, the ground engineers recognised the wicked nature of the problem and set about diagnosing what had happened and why, despite the urgency. With a clear understanding of the causes, the current situation and the resources available to the Apollo crew, they were able to guide them to fabricate a makeshift carbon dioxide scrubber, which addressed the most immediate problem of a dwindling air supply. This action bought the crew sufficient time to enact the rest of the plan to bring them home safely, against the odds.
Cultural framing #
How we respond to a given problem, whether critical, tame or wicked, is also driven partly by our cultural framing. Anthropologist Mary Douglas categorised social culture along two dimensions, grid and group:
Grid: Looser rules & roles <—> More rigid rules & roles
Group orientation: Individual <—> group (collective)
This results in a 2×2 grid:
To avoid over-simplification, note that these categories are not absolute or discrete — the grid and group dimensions are sliding scales.
Alone, each category (hierarchists, egalitarians, individualists and fatalists) will tend to favour a single frame of response to a given problem. This ‘single mode’ approach may work when the problem is tame or critical, and in some of those cases, the natural framing of a particular social category may even be advantageous. However for wicked problems such as climate change, no one social category by itself is adequately equipped to find an effective solution because of the framing of their response.
Hierarchist response #
“Rules and targets for reducing carbon emissions will tackle climate change; if they’re being inadequately enforced, increase the penalties for missing targets.”
The challenge the hierarchists’ framing is that when targets are the sole mechanism for change — whether encouraged by ‘stick’ or ‘carrot’ — they can lead to malicious compliance. This is when people do the bare minimum to comply with the letter of the rule, or intentionally subvert the rule, or game the system, rather than pursue the intended outcome.
An example would be the NHS (the UK’s National Health Service) target for Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments in hospitals to admit and transfer or discharge new patients within 4 hours, or risk funding cuts.
To avoid the threat of funding cuts, A&E departments responded by keeping patients waiting in ambulances outside so that they did not count towards the 4-hour target — clearly to detriment of patient health outcomes, which should have been of greater importance, but were not targeted in the same way.
Individualist response #
“Entrepreneurship, creative competition, technological innovation and market forces will cause solutions to climate change to emerge.”
The individualists’ expectation that market forces and technological innovation will cause a solution to climate change is appealing. However, (to generalise) economic markets tend to favour solutions that are perceived to be in greater demand, and so attract greater value. Unfortunately, what is perceived by people to be in greater demand is not necessarily rational, as evidenced by events such as the market crash of 2008 and more recent ephemeral market bubbles around cryptocurrency.
Market forces can also put us in the paradoxical situation of exacerbating long-term harm for short-term benefit. For example, the current focus on energy-hungry generative AI by Big Tech companies sets aside their environmental sustainability claims and undoes their previous progress towards carbon neutral data centres.
Egalitarian response #
“We need to rethink our approach to consumption and carbon emission and shift to decentralised and self-sustaining communities.”
Grint characterises egalitarians as being good at generating debates and oriented towards groupthink and displacement of responsibility, rather than biasing towards decision-making and constructive action. Their response falters in part because it is relies on starting again from a clean slate, when this is often unrealistic.
It ignores the inconvenient reality that, for example, communities are already centralised and lack sufficient incentive, support or practical means to uproot and disperse. Instead we must work with the current situation as a starting point for a workable solution to a wicked problem (as exemplified by the Apollo 13 response above).
Fatalist response #
“There’s nothing to be done; people are selfish and won’t change their behaviour; we’re all doomed.”
Fatalists are resigned to their fate and believe they lack agency, a sense which is only reinforced by both their inaction and any ineffective attempts at direct action. Grint expects minimal contribution to a solution from fatalists alone.
Collaboration is key for wicked problems #
If no one framing by itself provides an adequate response to wicked problems, creating a combined solution comprised of parallel contributions from hierarchists, individualists and egalitarians may permit progress. For this collaboration to work, each must accept they must give ground on their natural predispositions.
In the presence of a wicked (uncertain and complex) problem, hierarchists must switch from defaulting to a decisive but possibly counterproductive answer (command) as the initial response, to questioning and reflecting on the nature of the problem at hand before acting. (Again, compare and contrast the Three Mile Island and Apollo 13 responses.)
Individualists must realign from their own concerns to the collective goal. Only then can they support the response by constructively challenging the prevailing wisdom and offering innovative options as solutions, and by mitigating the inherent uncertainty through sense-making (discovering evidence, triangulating beliefs with data and establishing cause-effect linkage).
Egalitarians must rebalance their predisposition to reflection and debate with more decisive action. Their natural predisposition to the collective forces the collaboration to gain valuable and differing perspectives on the wicked problem through empathy, to respect the wisdom of the crowd rather than betting all on the brilliance of an individual, and to encourage a multi-disciplinary response to a multi-faceted (wicked) problem.
Egalitarians can also potentially harness even the fatalists by identifying a unifying cause for them to rally round, empowering them and transcending their inward-looking bias to see themselves as isolated individuals in a uniquely unsalvageable situation.
Conclusions #
When faced with any problem, we need to develop an appreciation of any underlying uncertainty and ambiguity to avoid making a superficial diagnosis and applying the wrong remedy.
For tame or critical problems, both the diagnosis of the problem and the effectiveness of the response are relatively certain. An effective solution can be applied providing there is sufficient competence at hand to do so.
Wicked problems are inherently uncertain, with complex interdependencies. The natural framing of different social groups prevents the response of each from being effective in isolation. Collaboration and compromise on each group’s predisposed behaviour are crucial to making any headway.
what to think about this week
Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions: the Role of Leadership
We know a lot about organisational change but despite – or perhaps because – the numbers of change models around most change initiatives fail. This article suggests that this failure might be to do with our framing of the problem and consequent approach to resolving it. It suggests that differentiating between Tame,Wicked and Critical problems, and associating these with Management, Leadership and Command, might be a way forward.
It then considers the role of default cultures and how these persuade us to engage ‘elegant’ – that is internally coherent – responses. These may be fine for Tame or Critical problems but Wicked problems need us to go beyond internally coherent approaches and adopt so called ‘Clumsy Solutions’ that use the skills of bricoleurs to pragmatically engage whatever comes to hand to address these most complex problems.
[Keith Grint]
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PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from mindmaps everywhere.