Book excerpts - Ch2(E14): Decomposing Wicked Problems

Transforming Complexity into Pragmatic Solutions: The Things To Be Done Approach

Decomposing wicked problems

Wicked problems emerge when too many considerations and complications get entangled together - forming difficult enmeshments of ideas, practices, desires, and constraints.

Wicked problems evolve from subtle unattended dramas that make progress complicated through an evolution of messes, first by interfering with forming agreements on the problem's definitions, methods of engagement, capacities for resolution, and expected outcomes or impact of efforts. Then through the overwhelmingness of emotional and operational stresses that act as an inflation device for creative debt.

Achievement-based thinking can accelerate resolutions to wicked problems and re-introduce flow by expanding awareness towards critical prerequisites and evaluating fulfillment capacity or investments of creative efforts.

However, to maintain flow while attending to wicked problems, achievement-based thinking needs to be decisive and low effort.

According to Richard Buchanan, resolving wicked problems can only be done through engagements that involve formulating a theory of change and testing them to determine the actual constraints we need to attend to.

And this is where the Things To Be Done approach acts as a creative catalyst. First, by suggesting achievement-based thinking instead of action-based thinking as an observational point of view. Then, by highlighting simple and pragmatic interventions using three simple thinking exercises. And last, by drawing a clear path between accountabilities, achievements, and expected outcomes - that is easy to understand and evaluate.