This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Wicked Problems and Real Wicked Problems -- Glen Alleman has a good current piece on "wicked problems", which are defined by...
"...attributes that make them difficult to manage in a "top down" manner. And what does this mean an agile project manager? First is to recognize that problem solving is opportunity driven not plan driven. The challenge then is to create the opportunities...Wicked problems are primarily "issues" problems not "solutions" problems. They are "creation" problems rather than "assembly" problems. Solutions to wicked problem arise through intuitive processes rather than logical processes."
The idea of "issues problems" brings to mind the use of the TOC Conflict Diagram (aka Conflict Cloud) that helps to define problems in terms of their seemingly irreconcilable conflicts.
Such a construct helps bring the intuitive closer to the logical. Some practitioners have been known to talk about the TOC Thinking Processes as tools for "verbalizing intuition" via cause-and-effect relationships related to either clarifying sufficiency of causes for effects or necessity of pre-requistites for objectives. The conflict diagram falls in the category of "necessity" tool.
Getting back to Gene's "wicked problems." Despite the characteristics with which he starts his post, I find it hard to fathom such a problem that could not be defined in terms of some sort of irreconcilable conflict, driving us down one path to satisfy one (or more) objective(s) and at the same time requiring another action deemed necessary to satisfy an equally important objective but in conflict with the first action path, assuming that the objectives are also related to some larger common goal. Serious "wickedness" could be a factor of being a collection of such rock-and-hard-place conflicts, either related or not.
Addressing an "issue problem", in my mind, is hindered by invisible dogma -- by beliefs in the issue -- in the conflict -- and in the conflict as irreconcilable -- "there's nothing we can do about it," -- "it's always been like this," -- and perpetuated by the development of copingmechanisms alluded to by Glen. But if the irreconcilableness can be discussed in terms of necessity logic, there's a chance to question the underlying assumptions that keep it alive - that reinforce the "must have" necessity arrows of the diagram. It's not just a "creation" problem, it's also a problem of perpetuation. But if one of those assumptions can be invalidated in a way that allows both objectives to be achieved without relying on one or both of the conflicting actions, a potential opening move to a solution might be in the offing.
Warning: Major leap of context ahead.
OK. All that said, there are some situations that are truly "wicked problems" for which there is no common objective.
I thought I had written before about the difficulty of problems/conflicts that are based in other than what most of us can accept as rational (or at least discussable and "questionable") needs or requirements, but I can't seem to find it other than a reference to superstition. (Probably did so on some e-mail discussion group.) Along these lines, the same day I read Glen's piece, political columnist Andrew Sullivan described what might be an ultimate example in real wicked problems:
"This is what happens when religion takes over politics. Rational negotiation becomes impossible; victory becomes a theological mandate; no end becomes feasible except conflict; and in this case, some of the actors actually want that conflict to be apocalyptic. We have to understand the fundamentalist mindset we are grappling with. It is not rational in worldly terms. It is other-worldly - and rational only under those theological constructs. For those reasons, it is the biggest threat to Western freedom since the totalitarianisms of the last century; and easily the most mortal theat to Israel since its founding. It cannot be disarmed or reasoned with; it can only be defeated."
When the "top-down" "issues" of such problems are embedded in unquestionable assumptions and unquestionable requirements (aka inflexible dogma), there is little or no hope of rational solution that works for both sides.
I'll take Glen's wicked problems over Andrew's any day.
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