Teamwork, Real Work and the Wicked Enterprise

By Deb Lavoy (@deb_lavoy) Nov 9, 2010

Some problems are such complex, entangled, multifaceted hairballs that we cannot approach them alone. They change and morph as quickly as our ability to understand them. They are known to academics as "wicked problems."

In modern enterprises, we need a new way to talk about these wicked problems, as well as new approaches to address them. Normal isn't normal anymore. Change is the norm.

Wicked Problems Are Wicked Important

Dr. Tom Ritchey has written this succinct review of wicked problems:

They are messy, devious and reactive, i.e., they fight back when you try to "resolve" them.

Wicked problems are entangled issues where no definitive or objective analysis of the root causes or ultimate solution is possible. These are problems where the number of people involved can make the problem worse. It’s the herding cats problem. Each tug at the issue changes the problems so that it evolves even as we try to fix it. The most obvious examples of such problems are world poverty or obesity.

Wicked problems are different from very hard problems. Putting a rocket on the moon is a very hard problem, but it's not wicked, because the goal is pretty straightforward. Righting a troubled economy — that's wicked.

The challenge at the core of nearly all business and government is around these problems. How to structure a business unit, how to design and build a product, how to build value in a dynamic and competitive market. These are wicked problems, too.

Why do we care that these problems are wicked? Because the inability to deal with wicked problems can be the undoing of an organization — keeping it forever stagnant, or worse, spiraling downward. These are the problems that can be so pervasive we barely dare try to solve them, or heroically throw ourselves against time and time again to little avail.

They do not respond well to divide and conquer solutions. What they do respond to are heterogeneous teams of people who transcend conflicting agendas and target their coordinated expertise — and ability to learn and discover — on the problem.

The Wicked Enterprise

Most organizations are hierarchical and inherently designed for divide and conquer. This pattern is optimal for finding algebraic solutions to the kinds of traditional problems that organizations were designed to solve. The problem is that core issues of strategy, positioning, product development, solution development, marketing are not divide and conquer problems. They require holistic approaches. They are never solved, they only get better or worse.

Businesses that handle these problems well, have tucked away a very good team somewhere in their leadership or in some other very influential role that is addressing the problems collaboratively. John Seely Brown's (Co-Chair of the Deloitte Center for the Edge and former PARC Chief Scientist) describes these teams as "marinating together in the problem space".

Without these teams and their diversity of perspective, you lack the intensity and pace required to make progress on wicked problems. Have you noticed the recent uptick in use of the vulgar term for a failure? It has the word "cluster" in it. I'm sure this is an instinctive knowledge that the entanglement of issues is the real issue.

Three Themes to Note About Wicked Problems

Change is part of the challenge. These problems are not static. They morph and wiggle away from any attempt to pin them down.
People are a source of (and the solution to) complexity. The more people, the more complexity, the more ability to comprehend and understand the wicked problems. It's confusing, but, while an uncoordinated crowd of people makes things complex and wicked, a coordinated team is required to make progress.
The concept of the social network is changing our approach to problem solving. There is some wicked cool thinking emerging around groups, teams, learning and change which could revolutionize the approach to solving wicked problems.

Enterprise 2.0 Is an Approach to Wicked Problems

We are to rising to the challenge of wicked problems by getting better at dealing with change and working as teams. We will be changing our divide and conquer mentality to marinate together in the problem space and to work jointly with our hands to produce tangible results that we can jointly examine, and manipulate into its next evolution.