Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com. The next order of business, if it pleases
Speaker 1: your Highness, is the issue of continued vandalism of the
Speaker 1: castle's east wall more graffiti. Well, what does it say
Speaker 1: this time? The details are not important, your majesty, but
Speaker 1: suffice to say that that the work criticized certain royal
Speaker 1: policies as well as the the Royal beard, the royal
Speaker 1: the royal beard. Well, I never well, what are we
Speaker 1: doing to combat the problem. We solve the west wall
Speaker 1: graffiti issue, yes, my lord, but but we're working to
Speaker 1: implement a constant God presence anti vandalism spikes and erratic
Speaker 1: paint scheme is aline. Well it worked here before, it'll
Speaker 1: work this. I'm well, yes, my Lloyd, but these solutions
Speaker 1: merely prevent the physical vandalism of a particular stretch of
Speaker 1: the wall at any given time. This is but a
Speaker 1: tame or a benign problem, you know, Uh, the overall
Speaker 1: issue of vandalism with the Kingdom. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: wicked problem, a problem sorcery. Fetch the witch. I'm to general, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: my Lloyd. Not so escery, not pervasiveness, complexity. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a public policy issue here, one with roots and economics, law, religion,
Speaker 1: and other areas. We can't simply pull up the weed,
Speaker 1: because the roots are tangled throughout the soil, and indeed,
Speaker 1: treating one underlying cause is likely to disrupt other areas
Speaker 1: of royal interest, alienate supporters, or force us to face
Speaker 1: unflattering facts about ourselves. The royal beard is above reproach. Certainly,
Speaker 1: my lord, Certainly, a finer beard has never been grown
Speaker 1: in God's creation, no question there. But what is in
Speaker 1: question is the very nature of the problem. Is it
Speaker 1: the mere physical act of vandalism? Is it the perception
Speaker 1: of the crown, poverty, a lack of religion or education.
Speaker 1: This is a wicked problem. Yes, my would the wickedest.
Speaker 1: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamp and my name is Christian Seger. And as
Speaker 1: you can guess from our little audio play at the
Speaker 1: beginning there, we are talking today about wicked problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a fascinating sort of overview topic. Um that,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't really familiar with this terminology Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wasn't either. I actually stumbled across this a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago. In particular, I was one of the resources
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about today about mains sort
Speaker 1: of political science approach to wicked problems popped up on
Speaker 1: my radar and I read that and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is a really interesting way for us to sort
Speaker 1: of approach science for the show. And it's it's a
Speaker 1: way that we don't usually talk about science, right, like
Speaker 1: science podcasts usually have, like such a reverence for the
Speaker 1: institution of science. Science is the great problem solved, or
Speaker 1: it's the thing upon which we have built everything we
Speaker 1: hold dear, It is the it is humanity's backbone in
Speaker 1: a way. In a lot of ways, science is treated
Speaker 1: in the same way as religion is by some people, right,
Speaker 1: Like I know plenty of people who aren't religious, but
Speaker 1: they turned to science as having the answers and and
Speaker 1: and it's definitive for them, right. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: a really interesting way to approach that because it gets
Speaker 1: into the deeper complexities of using science as a way
Speaker 1: to solve the world's problems. Yeah, And it gets into yeah,
Speaker 1: it basically deals with our inability or certainly are difficulties
Speaker 1: with tackling complex problems, complex issues, um, throughout our our culture. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna try to approach you know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: tell you what a wicked problem is, first of all.
Speaker 1: But the way that we're going to try to approach
Speaker 1: it here is sort of on this scale. There are
Speaker 1: macro wicked problems which we're gonna talk about, which are
Speaker 1: sort of like our large scale societal ills, I guess.
Speaker 1: And then we're gonna talk about it in a relation
Speaker 1: to science and the science community. And then we're gonna
Speaker 1: bring it down to the human level and talk about it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know in the way that it's most applied in theory,
Speaker 1: which is in the workplace. Uh. And it's the model
Speaker 1: of wicked problems is used, uh basically as like a
Speaker 1: management technique. And you should probably should probably also take
Speaker 1: a moment to discuss its ties to Boston area dialect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so okay, this is worth mentioning. And we played around
Speaker 1: a little bit of the audio play I'm from New
Speaker 1: England originally. Uh, And you know, most people probably don't
Speaker 1: notice that because I tried not to affect my accent
Speaker 1: on the air, but Whenever the word wicked is the
Speaker 1: into something, it might seep out a little bit here there,
Speaker 1: so you might hear me losing some rs here there,
Speaker 1: or changing the way I pronounced things. As we're going through,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to try to hold it together. Well.
Speaker 1: I I admit that when I was reading the material,
Speaker 1: I would about this, and reading some of the papers,
Speaker 1: I would come to the phrase wicked problems, and I
Speaker 1: would often hear hear it spoken in my head in
Speaker 1: the voice of Julianne Moore's character and thirty Rock, which
Speaker 1: he played the Boston She did a great job with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's either Julianne Moore or like uh, Mark Wahlberg
Speaker 1: in The Departed, like doing his his best Dorchester accent. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: wicked problem? What is it? You're probably wondering what the
Speaker 1: heck are we talking about? We sort of introduced you
Speaker 1: to the basic idea throughout that little uh the play
Speaker 1: that we enacted. But here's the breakdown. A wicked problem
Speaker 1: is a social or cultural problem that's difficult to solve
Speaker 1: because of incomplete or contra dictory knowledge uh and usually
Speaker 1: the number of people that are involved in the interconnected
Speaker 1: nature of this problem is part of other problems, right,
Speaker 1: so they're all connected. Uh, and often it's just written
Speaker 1: off as too cumbersome to be something to bother with.
Speaker 1: So this is gonna seem familiar to all of you
Speaker 1: as especially uh citizens in the United States as we
Speaker 1: are in the middle of a crazy the presidential cycle. Uh,
Speaker 1: and all of these things are coming up and are
Speaker 1: frequently being talked about with you know, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: very little concrete answers because they're wicked problems, right yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's basically a standard aspect of politics. Nobody's
Speaker 1: getting up there and stumping and campaigning and saying, uh
Speaker 1: on the on the topic of poverty. This is a
Speaker 1: complex issue and we probably will not be able to
Speaker 1: solve it. We're gonna throw our best minds at it.
Speaker 1: But every time we try and fix it, we're probably
Speaker 1: going to change the problem. Nobody's saying that. People are
Speaker 1: saying I have a plan I have or I'm gonna
Speaker 1: throw some really uh you know, classy people at it
Speaker 1: to fix it. Uh. Nobody nobody is is campaigning um
Speaker 1: on a platform of wicked problem. But I think like
Speaker 1: the more mature approach and probably for some candidates maybe
Speaker 1: once they're in office. The approach is, hey, look like
Speaker 1: these are problems that are so big we will never
Speaker 1: solve them, right, but we we can if we can
Speaker 1: sort of understand them on a larger level like that
Speaker 1: and use that framework, then we can approach them in
Speaker 1: a different way that's healthier and maybe can make them better.
Speaker 1: Maybe not solve them, but make them better. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about poverty, sustainability, equality, health wellness, racism, are failing
Speaker 1: education systems, terrorism, you name it. All that stuff falls
Speaker 1: under sort of the rubric of wicked problems or multi
Speaker 1: headed snake monsters in the swamp. Go back to our
Speaker 1: hydro episode, because even the hydra, of course, the idea
Speaker 1: of being that you every time you chop up ahead
Speaker 1: two or more grown its place. Even Hercules, son of
Speaker 1: a god, took on this task, and the best he
Speaker 1: could do was limited to one undying head and just
Speaker 1: sort of hide head under a rock, which is perhaps
Speaker 1: a telling metaphor for like, even the best attempts to
Speaker 1: tackle a wicked problem, all you can really do is
Speaker 1: like clear cut and barry and and hope that people
Speaker 1: forget that this was a problem. I guess I think
Speaker 1: the hydro metaphor is gonna work well throughout this is
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not quite sure what order we're gonna
Speaker 1: release season, but yeah, so, Uh we also talked to
Speaker 1: this week about hydros on a different episode, and hydras
Speaker 1: are a great example for it, because you you can't
Speaker 1: solve the hydro problem, right, you could at least the
Speaker 1: mythic one. Yeah, you cut off one head, two more
Speaker 1: heads grow to replace it, right, and so you But
Speaker 1: I think maybe like the angle of wicked problems is
Speaker 1: knowing what the two heads are that are going to
Speaker 1: grow to replace it. Yeah, we're trying, yea, trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out, or certainly just being being conscious of
Speaker 1: the fact that complex problems are complex, that that the
Speaker 1: that many of the issues that are are not going
Speaker 1: to be easily tackled, and you're not gonna be able
Speaker 1: to solve them with a quick application of this policy
Speaker 1: or that policy. Uh, it's all you, That's why they
Speaker 1: are wicked. And not to mention, you know, the theoretical
Speaker 1: applications within the workplace. You know, I'm assuming most of
Speaker 1: you out there listening have jobs or have had a job,
Speaker 1: and know the frustrations that go along with that, and
Speaker 1: really you can use the wicked problem model at that
Speaker 1: level too, and I find uh that it gives like
Speaker 1: a little bit of a sense of freedom and relief
Speaker 1: when you think about it that way, the frustration of
Speaker 1: employment issues. Yeah, and I think it's also important to
Speaker 1: remember that the wicked problem is in contrast to a
Speaker 1: tame or benign problem. The tamer benign problem is often
Speaker 1: just a simple, uh, mathematical problem, you know, like, what's
Speaker 1: what's two plus two? Well, there's an answer to that,
Speaker 1: and it's four. Um an engineering problem. What's the how
Speaker 1: do we build this thing so that it doesn't collapse?
Speaker 1: There's an answer, it can achieved. You have a you
Speaker 1: know what the mission is when you go into try
Speaker 1: and solve it, and then you solve it. Um. We
Speaker 1: love questions like that, and it's easy to look to
Speaker 1: wicked problems and and try to solve them like that,
Speaker 1: to want them to be solved like that. I've I've
Speaker 1: read you know, that's one of the reasons that the
Speaker 1: zombie um motif is so popular the zombie apocalypse, because
Speaker 1: in the zombie apocalypse, all problems become tame or benign.
Speaker 1: Zombie comes what do you do you shoot it in
Speaker 1: the head, you can cut its head off, you kill it. Right,
Speaker 1: those are relatively easy to solve problems, and it makes
Speaker 1: the relevance of the wicked problems go away, right Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you know, your better zombie h fiction has wicked
Speaker 1: problems in it as well. I feel like you look
Speaker 1: at like Walking Dad, they're attempting to to to graft
Speaker 1: in wicked problems into the narrative. But at heart, the
Speaker 1: very sort of video game or Donna the Dead level,
Speaker 1: it's all about tame benign problems. I was talking to
Speaker 1: a friend about this yesterday as I was researching it
Speaker 1: and saying, like, this is pretty fascinating stuff. You ever
Speaker 1: heard of this? And he hadn't, But he said, uh,
Speaker 1: well you know, and he may be like kind of
Speaker 1: a broaden the scale of it, but he didn't look
Speaker 1: at the research. He said, Well, life's a wicked problem,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Like when you come down to it, the
Speaker 1: human body is a wicked problem because no matter what
Speaker 1: we do uh to the human body, no matter how
Speaker 1: well we exercise, no matter what we eat that's healthy,
Speaker 1: something's always gonna pop up that we can't control. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that the self the mind is a wicked
Speaker 1: problems problem. I think back to you know, the old
Speaker 1: sound of music track. How do you solve a problem
Speaker 1: like Maria? It's kind of a goofy reference point, but
Speaker 1: how do you how do you solve a problem like Maria?
Speaker 1: How do you solve a problem like like the individual,
Speaker 1: like the self? Like that is a a complex situation,
Speaker 1: is not just you know, an A plus B equals
Speaker 1: see equation going on there. We spend our whole lives
Speaker 1: trying to solve this unsolvable problem. Yeah, and so the
Speaker 1: interesting thing out the wicked problem, I guess paradigm are
Speaker 1: as a as a Slavo says, peredigma is is that
Speaker 1: you know, that's the key to it is that is
Speaker 1: learning to approach it that way and to say, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's an that's unsolvable, right, That's not a thing
Speaker 1: that can be fixed by its very nature. But there's
Speaker 1: ways to mitigate it, there's ways to approach it differently,
Speaker 1: and having that very position put you in a better position,
Speaker 1: I guess to approach it. Right. So one major proposal
Speaker 1: that keeps coming up, and in fact, uh, if you
Speaker 1: google wicked problems, one of the first things that comes
Speaker 1: up is a website for a book called Wicked Problems
Speaker 1: that's by a design educational facility in Austin, Texas, and
Speaker 1: the whole books available for free. Actually you can read
Speaker 1: it online on the web where you can buy it
Speaker 1: and print. But they basically say, look like, the way
Speaker 1: to approach this is through strategic design, and it's a
Speaker 1: combination of using empathy, abductive reasoning, and rapid prototyping. Those
Speaker 1: are the ways that they sort of think about. You know,
Speaker 1: let's let's approach these first of all acknowledge that they're
Speaker 1: a wicked problem, but then you approach it afterwards. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, just as a reminder, because I had to
Speaker 1: remind myself. Abductive reasoning is that it is the opposite
Speaker 1: of deductive logic. Right, where there's a premise that leads
Speaker 1: to a conclusion with a solution, right, there's two premises
Speaker 1: lead to a conclusion in staid, Abductive is that the
Speaker 1: premise doesn't guarantee any solution, and in fact you have
Speaker 1: to work from inference and it's the most simple solution
Speaker 1: that's inferred that usually leads to some kind of uh,
Speaker 1: not a solution in this case, betterment, I guess that
Speaker 1: that makes sense in terms of what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: because one of the big problems is just even defining
Speaker 1: what the problem is. You know, you look at something
Speaker 1: like like poverty. Someone says, hey, we have a problem.
Speaker 1: There's poverty, and you say, well, what is the problem?
Speaker 1: Is it that people are poor because of the job situation?
Speaker 1: Is is it more cultural? Uh? Is it? Does it
Speaker 1: have to do with our laws? Does it have to
Speaker 1: do with enforcement of said laws? You know that there's
Speaker 1: some of one of those things like try to solve
Speaker 1: the laws, and maybe it makes another thing worse, right, Like, um,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of an example, but I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to like the interconnectedness of hunger and poverty.
Speaker 1: And then like I saw a really good in one
Speaker 1: of the articles about wicked problems. It was a really
Speaker 1: good example of why poverty is such a wicked problem.
Speaker 1: Like we think of it like, oh, we'll solve that.
Speaker 1: We've got this problem of poverty connected to people being hungry,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, we've got a problem of
Speaker 1: obesity in our society as well, And how are those
Speaker 1: things connected? You know, Yeah, I've been thinking about this
Speaker 1: food thing a lot recently, because I'm currently watching Michael
Speaker 1: Pollan's latest documentary series on Is on Netflix, and it
Speaker 1: has to do with cooking and where cooking comes from
Speaker 1: and then how the industrialization of food preparation preparation has
Speaker 1: changed everything. Um. So you you you see this situation
Speaker 1: where like one side is trying to make things easier,
Speaker 1: trying to correct problems, but that ends up creating other
Speaker 1: problems as well. Yeah. See, so it's it's actually really
Speaker 1: interesting how easily this can be applied. I go back
Speaker 1: to when I was in grad school. I had a
Speaker 1: professor who basically referred to stuff like this as like
Speaker 1: the model fits type analysis. Right. So you've got this
Speaker 1: model and you put it on top of something you're
Speaker 1: like does it fit? Okay, but then you've got to
Speaker 1: go beyond that and sort of synthesize them, you know what,
Speaker 1: what you've learned from it, and analyze and go further. Um,
Speaker 1: but let's start at the beginning. So where did this
Speaker 1: idea come from? Like or the origin of wicked problems? Right? Like?
Speaker 1: It just didn't it? Well, we've certainly had them forever.
Speaker 1: But but in terms of thinking about that exactly. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: the origination of the term is generally attributed to a
Speaker 1: pair of Berkeley professors in the nineteen seventies, Horst W. J. Riddle,
Speaker 1: Professor of the Science of Design the University of California,
Speaker 1: Berkeley and Melvin M. Weber, Professor of City Planning, Berkeley. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then occasionally you see people giving credit to philosopher
Speaker 1: and system science and see West Churchman largely for popular
Speaker 1: popularizing or modernizing it. But but basically it comes down
Speaker 1: to Riddle and Webber in particular. Riddle and web Webber
Speaker 1: really dove into the topic in the nine paper Dilemmas
Speaker 1: in a General Theory of Planning, published a published in
Speaker 1: Policy Sciences. Yeah, I uh for this episode. I went
Speaker 1: through and read that, and there were certainly many things
Speaker 1: that were relevant to the discussion we're gonna have today,
Speaker 1: But it was so grounded in the American politics of
Speaker 1: the early seventies that there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: was like WHOA, okay, but it was interesting too write
Speaker 1: to be able to look back at. Well, it kind
Speaker 1: of gets down to one of one of the things
Speaker 1: that will discuss that they point out about wicked problems,
Speaker 1: if it every wicked problem is different, to the point
Speaker 1: that if you're talking about wicked problems like just in
Speaker 1: the shadow of a particular area, if you're thinking if
Speaker 1: you're talking about wicked problems generally, but really in the
Speaker 1: back of the mind, we're thinking about a specific wicked
Speaker 1: problem that colors your your definition of what a wicked
Speaker 1: problem is. Now, I do want to read part of
Speaker 1: a quote here from them where they really get into
Speaker 1: the whole idea of why why they choose the word wicked,
Speaker 1: which tends to inspire of evil yea or or Bostonian inflection.
Speaker 1: They said that they show they referred to the problems
Speaker 1: as wicked. Quote not because these properties are themselves ethically deplorable.
Speaker 1: We use the term wicked in a meaning akin to
Speaker 1: that of malignant, in a contrast to benign or vicious
Speaker 1: like a circle, or tricky like a leprechn um. I
Speaker 1: love that we're able to always bring back monsters into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they and more of a it's a it's a fairy
Speaker 1: folk with it's an unnatural creature, So I think it
Speaker 1: counts um and they brought it up, not us says
Speaker 1: that door tricky like a lepricn, or aggressive like a
Speaker 1: lion in contrast to uh, you know a lamb, we
Speaker 1: do not mean to personify these properties of social systems
Speaker 1: by implying malicious intent. But then you may agree that
Speaker 1: it becomes morally objectionable for the planner to treat a
Speaker 1: wicked problem as though it were a tame one, or
Speaker 1: to tame a wicked problem prematurely, or to refuse to
Speaker 1: recognize the inherent wickedness of social problems. And so that
Speaker 1: right there, that last bit is what I think gets
Speaker 1: to the heart of what maybe the connection is today
Speaker 1: is the refusal to recognize what this is right for
Speaker 1: what it is. And that brings us back to that
Speaker 1: political analogy of everything that's going on right now. Now,
Speaker 1: whatever candidate you support or whatever candidate you don't support,
Speaker 1: all of them are up there. That's the inherent nature
Speaker 1: of the political system. Right when you're running for office,
Speaker 1: you pretend like you have all the answers, uh, and
Speaker 1: all of them are are are basically running on a
Speaker 1: platform where they're like, Oh, that problem, I have the
Speaker 1: answer to that. Yeah, that problem, I have the answer
Speaker 1: to that. But for me, I'm anti hydra elect me
Speaker 1: and I have don't worry, I have a plan. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna bring some very classy people to exterminate that high
Speaker 1: and it's it's worse than that, right, Like, you can't, man,
Speaker 1: how refreshing would it be to have a candidate come
Speaker 1: up and just be like, well, look like the problems
Speaker 1: that we're facing are so chaotic and so complex that
Speaker 1: we as human beings are just not equipped to be
Speaker 1: able to solve all of them. Well, there's your problem.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like a politician, that doesn't sound like somebody,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like some kind of philosopher or something.
Speaker 1: And we just shove that off in a corner and say, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's not authoritative enough for what we need. Yeah,
Speaker 1: actual contemplation of the wicked problems either comes after you're
Speaker 1: elected or it falls to the people who are charged
Speaker 1: with fixing things by the elected indivision. Yeah, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: And the very idea that you can't formulate a definition
Speaker 1: of what a wicked problem is is actually part of
Speaker 1: what Riddle and Weber came up with as their ten characteristics.
Speaker 1: So the bulk of their article was these characteristics that
Speaker 1: they lay down, and they basically say, look, these are
Speaker 1: not criteria a test to determine what the wickedness is,
Speaker 1: but their insights to help you to decide if the
Speaker 1: problem you're facing is wicked. So let's go through these briefly,
Speaker 1: and I'll note for those about you out there counting,
Speaker 1: there's actually eleven here in our list, and that's because
Speaker 1: Riddle and Webber. I keep going to call him Horsed
Speaker 1: because that's his first name. Riddle and Weber came up
Speaker 1: with ten. But then over the years, as people have
Speaker 1: written more about this and applied it to various things,
Speaker 1: they've come up with their own and so they're basically
Speaker 1: the same, but I tried to sort of merge them
Speaker 1: together here for for the purpose of the podcast. So
Speaker 1: I'll start with the first one, which is that wicked
Speaker 1: problems have no definitive formulation. They are all different and
Speaker 1: they can't contribute to solving one another in any complete way.
Speaker 1: You can't write a well defined statement of these problems.
Speaker 1: And this is a direct quote from the article by
Speaker 1: Riddle and Webber. The process of formulating the problem and
Speaker 1: of conceiving a solution are identical, since every specification of
Speaker 1: the problem is a specification of the direction in which
Speaker 1: a treatment is considered. Yeah, I think one example that
Speaker 1: comes to mind. Here is the war on drugs, right,
Speaker 1: like epidemic is a problem, and then it falls to heaven,
Speaker 1: how do you define the problem and then go after
Speaker 1: it if you end up approaching it from a purely
Speaker 1: you know, law enforcement, right when you brand it as
Speaker 1: a war and you have chosen the direction and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it's easy for us to look back now,
Speaker 1: look back at the eighties now and go, oh, why
Speaker 1: did we brand it as a war on drugs? Right?
Speaker 1: But at the time it seemed like a solution to
Speaker 1: a problem to them. Yeah, yeah, I mean hindsight twenty
Speaker 1: on that. But then but then once you've employed that strategy,
Speaker 1: you have changed the problems we'll discuss. So number two.
Speaker 1: Wicked problems involve many stakeholders, all of whom have different
Speaker 1: ideas about what the problem is and what its causes are.
Speaker 1: This again, in think of any any portion of the
Speaker 1: world where there's a lot of conflict, like my mind
Speaker 1: instantly goes to, uh, at least a couple of different
Speaker 1: corners in the Middle East. I think of Israel and Palestine.
Speaker 1: I think of the current situation in Syria. You have
Speaker 1: different stakeholders that are involved at different levels who who
Speaker 1: want different things out of this, but they want them
Speaker 1: in the name of solving the amorphous problem here totally
Speaker 1: and at the micro level, I think we're all familiar with,
Speaker 1: you know, being in a kind of work situation or
Speaker 1: involved in any organization. Maybe it's not work, maybe it's
Speaker 1: your I don't know, you're you're housing organization that governs
Speaker 1: the apartment complex you you're in. But you have all
Speaker 1: these different stakeholders. Everybody's got their own subjective position on
Speaker 1: these things, right, and they all have different goals too,
Speaker 1: um So that ultimately, even just recognizing that goes a
Speaker 1: long way towards making things a little bit better. All right,
Speaker 1: this is number three. It might be impossible to measure
Speaker 1: any kind of success with the wicked problem given their interconnectedness.
Speaker 1: The search for solutions will never stop. There's a very
Speaker 1: hydra portion of the argument here, because any any time
Speaker 1: you you actually try and solve a complex problem, you
Speaker 1: have to what extent is your solution creating new problems,
Speaker 1: um and then not addressing other areas that are all
Speaker 1: a part of the same issue. So, for instance, poverty,
Speaker 1: if you're just if you're just trying to solve the problem,
Speaker 1: the wicked problem of poverty by looking at jobs. That's
Speaker 1: that's gonna that's gonna help some people. That is gonna
Speaker 1: help everyone, is gonna erase poverty. No, okay, the fourth one.
Speaker 1: There are no true or false solutions to wicked problems,
Speaker 1: only good or bad subject It's all subjective, right, um,
Speaker 1: And everyone's judgments will differ, and the solutions can only
Speaker 1: be described as in that good bad paradigm or and
Speaker 1: this is from the Riddle and Webber thing, but what's
Speaker 1: probably better to describe it as is better or worse? Right,
Speaker 1: things got better or things got worse, not they're good
Speaker 1: now they're bad now? Yeah, Like I I think back
Speaker 1: to the War on drugs. Like you can imagine someone saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we applied this solution to the wicked problem. And then
Speaker 1: someone says, well, you put a lot of these people
Speaker 1: had drugs and they're in prison. Now they're off the streets.
Speaker 1: That's good, right. And then someone might say, well, it
Speaker 1: also means that our prison population is extremely overloaded with
Speaker 1: these low level offenders. That's bad. They say, that's bad, right,
Speaker 1: And the two things are like it's like a scale.
Speaker 1: It's like this like situation where you've got all these
Speaker 1: different scales that are attached to one another, and anytime
Speaker 1: you move one little thing, everything shifts a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like seating on an airplane. It's like, all right,
Speaker 1: they move their chair back, that's bad. I move mind back,
Speaker 1: that's good. But now the person behind me is uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and now the person beside me, and it gets everything
Speaker 1: gets out of whack, and everybody's miserable and there's nothing
Speaker 1: you can do about it. The domino effective misery. Yeah, alright.
Speaker 1: Number five, there's no template to follow when tackling a
Speaker 1: wicked problem. There's no way to determine right away if
Speaker 1: a if A solution is working. So yeah, this gets
Speaker 1: into just the problem of this is where we come
Speaker 1: back to the example you mentioned earlier where they mentioned
Speaker 1: rapid prototyping, which I guess would work in with certain
Speaker 1: types of wicked problems, but certainly larger issues out there,
Speaker 1: like how do you rapid prototype towards you know, dealing
Speaker 1: with crime, or dealing with poverty, or dealing with hunger,
Speaker 1: or or or or any number of what we could
Speaker 1: problems that pop up. It's especially on that scale it's
Speaker 1: especially difficult. Uh, we'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: I think what they meant by rapid prototyping, but it's
Speaker 1: essentially uh, the gist is that, like, rather than come
Speaker 1: up with one solution to approach a problem with and
Speaker 1: then see if that works, and then if it doesn't,
Speaker 1: then come up with another solution and keep trying them
Speaker 1: over and over again, they recommend coming up with multiple
Speaker 1: solutions and trying them all at once. But you know
Speaker 1: there's problems with that too, so not rapid in succession. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe they were like scatter shot exactly. That's the
Speaker 1: shotgun method like that, Okay. Uh. The number six is
Speaker 1: there's always more than one explanation for a wicked problem,
Speaker 1: and you can see that inherent in the examples that
Speaker 1: we've just mentioned as well. Yeah, number seven, Every wicked
Speaker 1: problem is a symptom of another wicked problem and there's
Speaker 1: no single root cause. So back to the interconnectedness and
Speaker 1: the hydra nature of it, right, And this one, this one,
Speaker 1: I think is one of the most important of their
Speaker 1: their ten characteristics here, specifically for us here it's stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. They say there's no way to
Speaker 1: scientifically test wicked problem strategies because they're all human inventions,
Speaker 1: they are outside of nature. Right, So when we're thinking
Speaker 1: about all these problems, like, let's go back to the hydra, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the hydra is a natural being that we are learning
Speaker 1: to understand by looking at through that. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the biological biological hydra, right, and we now understand how
Speaker 1: it's mouth opens because we looked very close slee at
Speaker 1: it with uh light microscope. But poverty is a human invention.
Speaker 1: Uh so, so how do we look at that with
Speaker 1: a microscope? Yeah, I mean the mythological hydra is of
Speaker 1: human creation changes every time you tell it exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't. So many of these problems you can't just
Speaker 1: apply physics, and so you can't just apply look at
Speaker 1: it from a fluid dynamics standpoint and try and figure
Speaker 1: it out. Maybe that can be helpful in some cases
Speaker 1: in figuring out a part of the problem if it's applicable,
Speaker 1: but but probably not. Number nine. Solutions to wicked problems
Speaker 1: are usually one shot efforts that minimize trial and error efforts.
Speaker 1: Every implemented solution has quant consequences that cannot be undone
Speaker 1: and this is where we get to um the fact
Speaker 1: that every time you try and solve the wicked problem,
Speaker 1: you change the problem, and now you have a slightly
Speaker 1: different problem you have to deal with. It's not like
Speaker 1: a mathematical equation where you like you figure out what
Speaker 1: X is right like every time in these situations, if
Speaker 1: you figure out what X is, then like it changes
Speaker 1: what the definition of all the other numbers are the
Speaker 1: original equation. It's kind of like this this Rubik's cute
Speaker 1: that is on the table in the podcast chamber we're
Speaker 1: we're recording right now. It's like if I try, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to solve this thing, but every time I move it,
Speaker 1: I cannot move it back to where it was. And
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just lost every time because each time
Speaker 1: I try to solve it, it is a new problem
Speaker 1: that I never get a second shot. It's solving the
Speaker 1: same problem. The rubikscube is a great metaphor for wicked problems.
Speaker 1: That would be maybe the Lament configuration. Okay, every wicked
Speaker 1: problem is unique. This is number ten. There is no precedent.
Speaker 1: So what this means is essentially that you can't look
Speaker 1: back to any previous wicked problem that you've tried to
Speaker 1: make better as like a template to say Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's try the same thing that we tried with that
Speaker 1: here and see if it works. Because they're so totally
Speaker 1: unique that there's no there's no model to work from.
Speaker 1: At number eleven, this is an interesting one. Designers attempting
Speaker 1: to address a wicked problem must be fully responsible for
Speaker 1: their actions. Yeah, so this one, Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I had trouble with it as much as just that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's essentially a mission statement by the authors
Speaker 1: here saying like, okay, so if you're going to approach
Speaker 1: this from a design policy standpoint, you have to own it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and certainly, I mean this seems like it it is,
Speaker 1: or at least certainly should be just part of the
Speaker 1: you know, any political attempt or military attempt or what
Speaker 1: have you to to tackle any kind of socioeconomic wicked problem.
Speaker 1: Is that. Yeah, anything you do, you should be held accountable.
Speaker 1: But as we often see that accountability here doesn't always
Speaker 1: spread to everyone in the scenario. It's also important to
Speaker 1: note here, like we can say though, that not all
Speaker 1: hard to solve problem is are wicked. Only those that
Speaker 1: have an indeterminate scope and scale. So let's go back
Speaker 1: to the Rubik's cube. Right, that's a hard to solve problem,
Speaker 1: but it cannot. Yeah, well, you have a clear objective
Speaker 1: to like, how do you solve this thing? Will you
Speaker 1: get I'll know it's solved when I have all the
Speaker 1: same colors on the same side. So, like wicked problems,
Speaker 1: you don't know at what point do you know it's solved.
Speaker 1: And there's also no instant feedback because the effects of
Speaker 1: trying to to to implement changes, say you know in society, Um,
Speaker 1: the you're not gonna get instant to feedback. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get feedback rolling in in waves over years, decades to come,
Speaker 1: like like we were just mentioning with the war on drugs,
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier for us now, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty plus years later to say that seems like a
Speaker 1: silly approach, or at least the branding approach to it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to criticize the methodology necessarily. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will discuss macro wicked problems, wicked problems in science,
Speaker 1: and micro wicked problems. All right, we're back. So we've
Speaker 1: been talking about wicked problems and how that it's a
Speaker 1: framework that we can sort of apply almost to anything. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: as I was saying before, I had a friend who
Speaker 1: was like, well, you can talk about the human body
Speaker 1: as being a wicked problem, but um, let's take a
Speaker 1: look at sort of the definition that it was originally
Speaker 1: assigned for. And what I'm calling for the purposes of
Speaker 1: this episode macro wicked problems, which are the things The
Speaker 1: best example I can think of to tie this to
Speaker 1: is the current political campaign, right, So uh, and maybe
Speaker 1: you're not American, but you're probably familiar with all the
Speaker 1: zan nous that's going on in our political process right now,
Speaker 1: or maybe wherever you're from, you I can't imagine that
Speaker 1: politics are all that much different. It's the same friend
Speaker 1: who mentioned the human body thing had recently traveled to
Speaker 1: Ghana and he was like, yeah, you know, over there,
Speaker 1: there was an election cycle in process while I was
Speaker 1: visiting there, and it was the same as it is here.
Speaker 1: It's just on a different level. So what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here are the stances of where these you know,
Speaker 1: these various politicians, I think that they have the one
Speaker 1: single answer to solve a problem that society is basically
Speaker 1: you know, arguing over right, the budget and economy, civil rights,
Speaker 1: rights of corporations, uh, crime, drugs, we've mentioned those already. Education,
Speaker 1: how we use energy and oil, the environment, uh, foreign policy,
Speaker 1: free trade, how we reform our government. That one alone, Wow,
Speaker 1: what a tangled mess that would be. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: did you mention climate change and the climate changes at
Speaker 1: the end here? Yeah, that's a big one, because I
Speaker 1: mean that one, it's all the definitions are talking about
Speaker 1: multiple stakeholders. Yeah, I mean that one. That one fits
Speaker 1: most of the criteria we've been discussing, especially multiple stakeholders,
Speaker 1: different views on what what success means and what the
Speaker 1: root cause is and what the problem is to begin with,
Speaker 1: gun control, same thing, right, It's such a complex issue.
Speaker 1: It's not just you know, it's always interesting to try
Speaker 1: to bring it down to a personal level. But you know,
Speaker 1: like I've I have friends who own guns and love
Speaker 1: their guns and are very uh very much wants to
Speaker 1: keep their guns and are against gun control. And it's
Speaker 1: not for them. It's it's not like a connected to
Speaker 1: crime at all. Right, they don't see that. But then
Speaker 1: there's the wicked problem of the connections between gun control
Speaker 1: and crime and drugs and education. You see, you see
Speaker 1: how they they all kind of span together. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean on the gun control issue. And we see
Speaker 1: it time and time again, Like the issue comes up
Speaker 1: and you know, one side says, oh, what's it's not
Speaker 1: a it's not a gun issue, it's a mental health issue.
Speaker 1: I just say, well, if you take all the guns away,
Speaker 1: you're still not people are still going to kill each other.
Speaker 1: I mean it goes back and forth with people. Uh
Speaker 1: people are arguing, and that the one thing that's becoming
Speaker 1: clear is that we don't even have a full graphs.
Speaker 1: Like the problem it's self is as a morphous and
Speaker 1: and just and shapeless, and all that these different voices
Speaker 1: are doing are all they're doing is trying to give
Speaker 1: shape to the problem. Yeah, exactly when you can't. Uh So,
Speaker 1: a couple of really quick other ones, right that you're
Speaker 1: going to be hearing about, or you're probably currently hearing about,
Speaker 1: homeland security, immigration, that's a big one, Jobs, social security,
Speaker 1: tax reform. Technology. Just just like this kept coming back
Speaker 1: to me because we work in the digital media industry
Speaker 1: and it changes so quickly that it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: how both policymakers and business people try to adapt with it.
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's impossible to sort of predict the
Speaker 1: wave of how it's gonna progress, right, Um, and then
Speaker 1: there's of course the good old war and poverty ones.
Speaker 1: So yeah, these are all huge issues that affect all
Speaker 1: of us. And I think like, based on the definition
Speaker 1: that we set up for you before the break, you
Speaker 1: can see how these are all wicked problems. All right,
Speaker 1: we've already discussed with the problem of trying to apply
Speaker 1: science to wicked problems that it's not uh an A
Speaker 1: plus B equalcy scenario. It's not like saying, oh, how
Speaker 1: do we get people to the moon? That's a hard
Speaker 1: problem to solve. We solved it because we knew what
Speaker 1: the problem was, and we knew what the destination was,
Speaker 1: and we knew how to know that we had succeeded. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely true. And so the this is actually the
Speaker 1: impetus for us talking about wicked problems here today is
Speaker 1: there was a great article earlier in the week that
Speaker 1: came out from the bangor Daily News, and it was
Speaker 1: written by a woman named Linda Silka, and she is
Speaker 1: a social and community psychologist at the University of Maine,
Speaker 1: and basically she was addressing how Maine as a state
Speaker 1: is coming together and trying to approach their wicked problems
Speaker 1: in a different way, uh, using science basically, And she says,
Speaker 1: and this is this is the key here, This is
Speaker 1: why I thought this really connected well to our show.
Speaker 1: She argues, Look, there's this popular culture image of science
Speaker 1: where there's a lab coded researcher and they prove a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea and h then you know they've solved it, right,
Speaker 1: They've solved a problem, or they've given humanity more knowledge
Speaker 1: about a thing the hydra. Right we we when we
Speaker 1: discussed the actual hydra and its anatomy in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: the way that we talked about it, I had that
Speaker 1: in my head. I'm I'm imagining that some of our
Speaker 1: listeners did, too, of people in lab coats looking at
Speaker 1: hydras under microscopes and going, ah, we solved it right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, we encountered this occasionally with with listeners
Speaker 1: and readers stuff about your mind, because there's that vision.
Speaker 1: But but science also involves getting it wrong, getting a
Speaker 1: wrong a lot like. That's how we helped define what
Speaker 1: we know and what direction research is going by making mistakes,
Speaker 1: mistakes that you you can you can't necessarily make in
Speaker 1: tackling a wicked problem. Yeah. I mean so like for
Speaker 1: some of the things that we work on here at
Speaker 1: how stuff works, this comes up again and again where
Speaker 1: we're tasked with answering how X works, right, and there
Speaker 1: isn't always an answer it the uh very often, especially
Speaker 1: like when Joe and I are writing for our general
Speaker 1: science video show brain Stuff. The answer is, well, science
Speaker 1: doesn't know yet, but here's what we do know, right,
Speaker 1: and there. I can't tell you how many times we've
Speaker 1: seen answers in the comments on social media or YouTube
Speaker 1: or something where people are like, well, why did you
Speaker 1: even bother to make this because science doesn't have the answer,
Speaker 1: And I think, well, the the the importance is like, well,
Speaker 1: when we cover what we do know, then we're able
Speaker 1: to sort of approach it differently, right, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it kind of gets down into that area too of
Speaker 1: this is something science doesn't know, but here are some
Speaker 1: theories is to how it might work. That's just that's
Speaker 1: is how we feel our way out exactly forward. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Silko's argument is that this lab coded research myth is
Speaker 1: becoming outdated and that we need to make efforts to
Speaker 1: ensure that research can help solve the societal challenges we have,
Speaker 1: like wicked problems, like all the things that we were
Speaker 1: just defining. But she's looking at it very much from
Speaker 1: a main perspective because she's working at the University of Maine.
Speaker 1: So she says, in order to solve these science needs
Speaker 1: to be approached in a more complex way. There needs
Speaker 1: to be interaction between scientists, decision makers and citizens. And
Speaker 1: you may have heard about this discussed elsewhere. Some people
Speaker 1: label it as citizens science. I know a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago I went to south By Southwest and that
Speaker 1: was like the big term that was being thrown around.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were creating apps that allowed everybody
Speaker 1: to be a citizen scientist and to go out and
Speaker 1: gather data with their their phones by like taking pictures
Speaker 1: and then it would upload to a particular scientists laboratory
Speaker 1: have various efforts to say everybody, like everybody take pictures
Speaker 1: of whale sharks the encounter and looking to a database.
Speaker 1: Everyone used a screen saver that enables Setty to search
Speaker 1: for intelligent lot. The library that I used to work
Speaker 1: at was part of the World Community Grid that contributed
Speaker 1: basically whenever the computers were uh in sleep mode, they
Speaker 1: were contributing their processing power towards solving scientific problems. Uh
Speaker 1: so yeah. So her argument is essentially that all of
Speaker 1: us need to know about the issues, and all of
Speaker 1: us need to be involved because we all have important
Speaker 1: roles to play. And she says, let's move away from
Speaker 1: what is called the loading doc approach to science, and
Speaker 1: the metaphor for that loading doc approach to science goes
Speaker 1: like this. You've got a scientist and they're basically acting
Speaker 1: like a factory that produces widgets, right, and they're not
Speaker 1: producing widgets for any particular person. Then they just put
Speaker 1: those widgets on the loading dock and they wait for
Speaker 1: somebody to come along and go, oh, that's something I
Speaker 1: have a use for and take it away right. Um,
Speaker 1: And I see this, you know, having worked in academia previously.
Speaker 1: Of course, like the way that that system is set up. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not always necessarily working conjunction to solve a problem.
Speaker 1: More often it's kind of like I need to get
Speaker 1: published that I can get right. Uh So, instead of
Speaker 1: the loading doc procedure, she says, we should create a
Speaker 1: product that is useful to people who actually need it.
Speaker 1: So science should try to work together to figure out
Speaker 1: the poor and the hungry issues that we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: or something that doesn't require people to necessarily have full
Speaker 1: access to the set of complications that are involved in
Speaker 1: scientific research. Essentially, I think what they mean by that
Speaker 1: is like, you don't have to have a PhD. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: So we already have really scared science resources, as we
Speaker 1: know from all the stuff that we cover for the
Speaker 1: show and for the other stuff that we work on here.
Speaker 1: How do we focus our solutions for the right kind
Speaker 1: of stakeholders? While in Maine, she says, researchers are trying
Speaker 1: to tackle this problem differently and specifically so that the
Speaker 1: way that they address sustainability. So they're bringing together shellfish
Speaker 1: harvesters with their policy makers and biologists and economists to
Speaker 1: all discuss the issues surrounding What I would assume is
Speaker 1: you know of farming shellfish for for food industry. Another
Speaker 1: example she gave was solving the decline in mains blueberry crops,
Speaker 1: which they see as also being connected to the collapse
Speaker 1: of their pollinator be population. Now, I don't know how
Speaker 1: many times in different forms are shows here at how
Speaker 1: stuff works. We've talked about colony collapse disorder. It's something
Speaker 1: that's on a lot of people's radar, but this is
Speaker 1: an interesting way to approach it, that it's not just Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a science issue we need to solve, but also, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got these blueberries over here that are important to
Speaker 1: our economy. What does that mean for this you know? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then ultimately her she says, there's also scientists who
Speaker 1: are going to argue against this, so be prepared for
Speaker 1: a backlash. And there's lots of scientists who claim that
Speaker 1: anyone who doesn't have formal training, they won't do any
Speaker 1: good research, right, They're not going to be capable of
Speaker 1: contributing to the discipline. It's what in academia is often
Speaker 1: referred to as the siloing effect, right where everybody puts
Speaker 1: themselves in little silos and they sort of have their
Speaker 1: their beefdoms that they want to fight over control full
Speaker 1: of her well, in Nane, this is exactly how the
Speaker 1: the Arrowhead facility opened up, that rift into the Todash
Speaker 1: darkness exactly. It's you know what, like the Mists would
Speaker 1: not have happened if we just approached things as a
Speaker 1: wicked problem. I know, all those people in that grocery store. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a tough time. You know what, That's a
Speaker 1: good uh segue for us to bring it down where
Speaker 1: we've been up. We've been up in the outer space
Speaker 1: of todash darkness, talking about the macro version of this,
Speaker 1: talking about the science version of it. Let's bring it
Speaker 1: down to the micro level, right. Uh. We've all worked
Speaker 1: for organizations, presumably right in our current society. That's how
Speaker 1: we can afford the devices that we have to listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts on. Yeah, even if you don't have to
Speaker 1: work for an organization, you're probably having to come in
Speaker 1: contact with organizations. You know. If that alone, hit man,
Speaker 1: you still have to work for the mafia. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: It's true. So what we found when we were looking
Speaker 1: at the wicked problem thing is, yeah, it's being applied
Speaker 1: in the science aspect up in Maine. But by and large,
Speaker 1: almost all the research that was showing up for me
Speaker 1: was management stuff or business review type magazines. And the
Speaker 1: big one that I looked to was a piece by
Speaker 1: John Camillis that was in the Harvard Business Review in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. Uh And basically, uh, he studied
Speaker 1: strategic planning at twenty two different companies. Then he looked
Speaker 1: in depth at seven of them, and he finally zoned
Speaker 1: in specifically on DuPont Pharmaceuticals, which has come up on
Speaker 1: the show before. I don't I can't remember at the
Speaker 1: top of my head was Alexander Shulgan who worked for DuPont.
Speaker 1: It was somebody like It wasn't, Yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: might have been shun Um. It wasn't really no, right,
Speaker 1: So he finally he zoned in on DuPont to kind
Speaker 1: of see how that company drew up its strategies to
Speaker 1: deal with uncertainty, and he used all of these to
Speaker 1: come up with ways to talk about taming problems within
Speaker 1: the workplace, the ones that can't be solved, the wicked problems. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: camillisit basically makes the same argument that those guys made
Speaker 1: back in the early seventies, but in terms of companies, right,
Speaker 1: So he says, companies are faced with constant, wicked problems
Speaker 1: in their increasingly complex and violent environment. So you're looking
Speaker 1: at changing the way that we look at strategic planning processes,
Speaker 1: which are very traditional. They don't address wicked problems in
Speaker 1: any way. So in fact, the actual processes that are
Speaker 1: used to approach the problems may and sell it may
Speaker 1: in fact be wicked problems themselves. Right every time you yeah,
Speaker 1: every time you change the structure of the business, potentially
Speaker 1: new wicked problem. Right. Yeah. I'm thinking of like every
Speaker 1: time like a company goes through a reorganization, right, or
Speaker 1: a restructuring pivots, Yes, the pivoting, which is something we
Speaker 1: hear about quite often. Um yeah, or uh you know,
Speaker 1: big surprise. This piece was written eight years ago, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like policymakers and companies have really acknowledged
Speaker 1: it yet. You know, I've I've worked here for three years.
Speaker 1: I've worked in the public sector, in academia and in libraries.
Speaker 1: I used to work for a publishing company before this,
Speaker 1: and then long ago, I was a graphic designer working
Speaker 1: in a sort of direct marketing world, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see it. Any of those businesses a sort of recognition,
Speaker 1: recognition of the like organizational principle of the wicked problem. Um.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I don't know. Maybe they're out there.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear it. If some of you out
Speaker 1: there listening work for a company that thinks about running
Speaker 1: the company in such a way let us know, because
Speaker 1: it sounds like it would be, I don't know, sort
Speaker 1: of heavenly place to work at. Um. Well even know,
Speaker 1: one of the issues is that I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of workplaces and I'm and i'm speaking you know,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to it to My history with with various
Speaker 1: employers over the years is that, um it's one thing
Speaker 1: to to have a meeting about a problem, to try
Speaker 1: and to find that problem in a way that's that's good. Like,
Speaker 1: that's how you should approach wicked problems, is to not
Speaker 1: just throw out solutions willy nilly and see what happens.
Speaker 1: You should discuss it. You should try and get figure
Speaker 1: out what are some of the route issues here, what
Speaker 1: are the different viewpoints. But a lot of times in
Speaker 1: a corporate environment, like that's all that gets done. Like
Speaker 1: you have those meetings, the results are are are typed up,
Speaker 1: and the wicked problem UM summary winds up on somebody's desk.
Speaker 1: Maybe there are some recommended solutions, Maybe some of those
Speaker 1: get implemented, maybe the safer ones get implemented. But does
Speaker 1: does anything ultimately change? Maybe not. Yeah, that's actually interesting
Speaker 1: because Camillus, you know, one of his recommendations is essentially uh,
Speaker 1: right at the top, he says, well, you got to
Speaker 1: involve your stakeholders and document everybody's opinions and then make
Speaker 1: sure that everybody's communicating about what those opinions are. And
Speaker 1: that's what you just described. But you're right, in a
Speaker 1: lot of situations just kind of stops there, right, Um,
Speaker 1: Like there, there isn't the action part that comes after it. Um.
Speaker 1: And he he actually came up with his own five
Speaker 1: system symptoms based off of all these other people came
Speaker 1: up with and they're fairly similar. Um, you know, we
Speaker 1: get the same thing with there's many stakeholders. They all
Speaker 1: have different values and different priorities. Of course, you see
Speaker 1: that in the workplace, right like some managers of some
Speaker 1: departments have their own values and priorities while another manager
Speaker 1: and another tier above them into the side of them,
Speaker 1: has a different set of priorities. It is not necessarily
Speaker 1: being communicated clearly or in the worst situations, you're you're
Speaker 1: one of those employees who find yourself with two or
Speaker 1: more bosses, figure out who am I listening to what
Speaker 1: and what is the priority? And just like the larger
Speaker 1: macro problems, you know, they've got complex, tangled roots their problem.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to come to grips with and every time
Speaker 1: you try to approach it it changes. I'm thinking like
Speaker 1: like I'm thinking of previous workplaces I've been at, where
Speaker 1: like there's been a problem employee, right, and it's just
Speaker 1: like a person that everybody knows is a problem, and
Speaker 1: you go the simple solution is just fire that person.
Speaker 1: But like in certain atmospheres, you can't just do that, right,
Speaker 1: because there's repercussions to that as well that subsequently tangle
Speaker 1: and lead to other problems too. I have unfortunately seen
Speaker 1: that many many workplaces. Um again, they have no precedent,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to indicate what the right answer is, right,
Speaker 1: there's no Like I love how we we all think
Speaker 1: of HR human resources is being like, oh, well they've
Speaker 1: got the answer, right, Like there's a handbook they go
Speaker 1: to school for that. So clearly there's there's gotta be
Speaker 1: a way to approach this in a particular way that
Speaker 1: has the answer. But I don't necessarily know that that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you get to say that they have a
Speaker 1: they have a system, they may have a guide, they
Speaker 1: may have a way to discuss a problem that arises,
Speaker 1: but ultimately the the I mean, we've all heard of
Speaker 1: situations with people we know where the the HR solution
Speaker 1: is not the best solution. Yeah, certainly, certainly. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting too because, like my wife has worked
Speaker 1: at all different kinds of companies as well too. I
Speaker 1: feel like between the two of us over the last
Speaker 1: fifteen years, we've had like this very broad spectrum of
Speaker 1: types of places to work at, and yet like we
Speaker 1: see the same problems that all of them, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in a way, it comes down to what
Speaker 1: was the famous Reagan quote about government, about government isn't
Speaker 1: the solution of the problems? Government is the problem? Which
Speaker 1: is you know, I think going a bit too far,
Speaker 1: but it does tie in to the basic idea that
Speaker 1: the body that tries to fix a wicked problem, be
Speaker 1: it you know, a large sweeping macro problem, more micro problem,
Speaker 1: the body that tries to fix something almost inevitably messes
Speaker 1: it up or messes it up for some people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's almost like you have to figure out, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: they're gonna mess this up, But is the mess that's
Speaker 1: going to be left afterwards better than the mess that
Speaker 1: we have, Yeah, what is my relationship to the mass?
Speaker 1: Want to be like I know, like you know, I
Speaker 1: know it's gonna be messy, but can I live with
Speaker 1: the mass. So let's quickly go through Camillis's solutions, which
Speaker 1: are beyond just like what you described, which is the
Speaker 1: sort of Yeah, everybody sit around and talk about a thing.
Speaker 1: We'll write it down and we'll put it in a
Speaker 1: document somewhere and file it away. Um, does this sound
Speaker 1: familiar for anybody out there? Define what your corporate identity is? Right?
Speaker 1: What what are the company's values? What is it competent at?
Speaker 1: And what are its aspirations. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: many places I've worked for that, uh that those aren't
Speaker 1: clear to all the employees. And yet like it seems
Speaker 1: like something that should just be relatively simple, right, even
Speaker 1: like when we see like fictional versions of companies and
Speaker 1: thinking like I'm thinking of what's the evil company in RoboCop? Uh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that's a perfect example. Like the people who worked
Speaker 1: there seemed to pretty much have an idea of what
Speaker 1: its values were, what they were good at building killer robots,
Speaker 1: and what its aspirations were, which is basically taken over
Speaker 1: the city of Detroit. Right, But you find in a
Speaker 1: lot of situations that there's there's like a vague sort
Speaker 1: of anxiety inducing uh, amorphous nous to what the company
Speaker 1: you work for is doing. Right, Yeah. I mean meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you go to like a your average kindergarten class and
Speaker 1: generally the rules are on the wall, right exactly. That
Speaker 1: would be great if we had that like on the
Speaker 1: refrigerator or something at all different corporations, like here's what
Speaker 1: it is, it's written in kran There's also, of course,
Speaker 1: like what Robert was mentioning earlier, you got to take
Speaker 1: action on things. And this connects to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about with the rapid prototyping. So instead of thinking
Speaker 1: through every option that's available before choosing a single one,
Speaker 1: they recommend what Camillis does in particular, experimenting with multiple
Speaker 1: strategies that seem like they're feasible, uh, and launch innovative
Speaker 1: pilot programs. And this is interesting to me because this
Speaker 1: is something actually at how stuff works. We've heard a
Speaker 1: lot in the last i'd say two years maybe, which
Speaker 1: is don't be afraid to fail, right, And there's a
Speaker 1: At first I had trouble struggling with that and now
Speaker 1: I sort of see, oh okay, so this is that
Speaker 1: approach that I don't know that rapid prototyping is the
Speaker 1: right term. The way I've often heard it described as
Speaker 1: the whole fail, fail quickly, and fail often, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is try a bunch of different things, which is
Speaker 1: you know sort of that's okay, then we know not
Speaker 1: to do that one approach. Yeah, Yeah, Like generally a
Speaker 1: b testing is is uh is that it's a great
Speaker 1: way to do this. You just roll it out for
Speaker 1: some people and you show them a you show them
Speaker 1: be figure out what works, and you go with that
Speaker 1: and you do this and you know, with without having
Speaker 1: to invest much more time and money in testing the product,
Speaker 1: and you bring it back to the macro level for
Speaker 1: a second here, and you go, oh wow, Like, there's
Speaker 1: no way that governments can act this way, right, because
Speaker 1: if they're just like, well, we'll just try twenty different
Speaker 1: things and if nineteen of them fail, at least we'll
Speaker 1: have found one thing that works. There's plenty of people
Speaker 1: out there who go, what about all my tax dollars
Speaker 1: that were just spent on the nineteen things that didn't work? Right?
Speaker 1: So there's an inherently a wicked problem there as well well,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of businesses or maybe maybe have a lot more in
Speaker 1: common with dictatorships as opposed to a democratic republic. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's a little more a little a little
Speaker 1: more complicated on on the macro level life well, spinning
Speaker 1: off your dictatorship metaphor. It's kind of interesting because dictators
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have this one particular communication orientation that Camillis recommends,
Speaker 1: and I like this. Uh, it really stems out of
Speaker 1: the basic necessity of all kinds of human communication, and
Speaker 1: it is to adopt what's called a feed forward orientation.
Speaker 1: So when you're trying to solve problems, don't just use
Speaker 1: feedback for communicating with your organization about what the problems
Speaker 1: are and how to tame them, because feed back rely
Speaker 1: solely on the past and what happened, while wicked problems
Speaker 1: all arise out of an unclear future, right, So remember
Speaker 1: that that indeterminable scope that they have, um, so you
Speaker 1: really need to envision that that future that's that's unclear
Speaker 1: and try to envision what you'd like it to be.
Speaker 1: So this gets back to the aspirations of what of
Speaker 1: who you're working for, and then communicate what that organization
Speaker 1: wants its future to look like to everybody involved in
Speaker 1: the organization. You know, it's interesting because some of these
Speaker 1: ideas regarding the corporate environment, they have spilled over into
Speaker 1: sort of family management uh scenarios there. For instance, in
Speaker 1: my family, UM, me and my wife and my son,
Speaker 1: we try and have a weekly meeting, and at the
Speaker 1: weekly meeting, everybody has to has to discuss what worked
Speaker 1: during the week, what didn't work during the week, what
Speaker 1: they would like to change in the coming week, as
Speaker 1: well as like what we would like to eat in
Speaker 1: the coming and things like that, uh and that. But
Speaker 1: that approach is based on some of the principles that
Speaker 1: have been bouncing around in the corporate world for the
Speaker 1: past ten years or so. Yeah, that is an interesting approach.
Speaker 1: And essentially what we're talking about here is just open communication,
Speaker 1: which surprisingly, you know, for human beings, which like one
Speaker 1: of our greatest assets is our ability to communicate with
Speaker 1: one another. We're not so good at at at doing
Speaker 1: it in these kind of situations where we're tackling these
Speaker 1: real world, big problems. Yeah, I mean, we did a
Speaker 1: workbook uh for it where we had to. We even
Speaker 1: had to come up with our own essentially our corporate
Speaker 1: identity for like, what our what's our motto? What are
Speaker 1: our values? I bet Bastion had a giraffe in there somewhere. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he was not he was not super helpful
Speaker 1: in the crafting the of of this particular document. But
Speaker 1: that sounds like good advice for for any you know,
Speaker 1: uh family unit. You know, so you know, who are
Speaker 1: we what what are we trying to do here? What's
Speaker 1: this little family? You know, let's get out of the
Speaker 1: moment to moment ing and just think a little a
Speaker 1: little broader. Yeah, I like that. That's cool. Well, it
Speaker 1: sounds like that you can take that and you can
Speaker 1: extrapolate it out words and apply it on the work level.
Speaker 1: You're can apply it on the science level, and then
Speaker 1: you can apply it on the sort of macro scale
Speaker 1: level that we've been talking about. So that really gets
Speaker 1: at the gist of wicked problems we weren't able to.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, obviously it's much denser than what
Speaker 1: we talked about today, and I feel like this is
Speaker 1: maybe a little denser than most stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind episodes are. But you know, we we at least
Speaker 1: covered the surface of this is what they are, this
Speaker 1: is how they apply to the real world that we
Speaker 1: exist in and science. Yeah, and I have no doubt
Speaker 1: that we will refer back to wicked problems in the
Speaker 1: future as we tackle other other topics, be they you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately scientific or or more likely cultural. So, those of
Speaker 1: you out there listening, uh, let us know. I'm really curious.
Speaker 1: I'm always curious to see what our audience has to
Speaker 1: say about our episodes, but in this instance, in particular,
Speaker 1: I'd like to see what you think about the theory
Speaker 1: of wicked problems, how it's applicable in your life, or
Speaker 1: how you could see it being applicable maybe on a
Speaker 1: larger scale. Or those of you out there, we know
Speaker 1: a lot of people who listen to the show are
Speaker 1: graduate students or actual scientists working in laboratories. How it
Speaker 1: affects the work that you're doing. Yeah, indeed, and how
Speaker 1: do you personally tackle wicked problems? I don't think about
Speaker 1: them because they're they're wicked problems that that exist. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know within a country. There we could problems that
Speaker 1: exist within a family. Uh, how do you dance around
Speaker 1: those and define them? So usual places to reach out
Speaker 1: to us and let us know your thoughts on these things.
Speaker 1: We've got Facebook, we're on Twitter, we are on Tumbler,
Speaker 1: we're even on Instagram. Now we're gonna start posting to
Speaker 1: that soon and you can start seeing pictures of things
Speaker 1: that we're taking and of us, and probably images I
Speaker 1: would assume of the podcast episodes that were distributing as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll blow the mind on there. I think currently there's
Speaker 1: just one picture of me with a third ey Oh okay,
Speaker 1: well that's a good place to start. Uh. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, how else could they reach out to us
Speaker 1: to just discussed their wicked problems. Oh, just get in
Speaker 1: touch with us the old facting way. Email us at
Speaker 1: below the mind at how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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