- Avoidance: The costs to benefits ratio of becoming deeply engaged in solving “wicked problems” are often unfavorable, even should you be successful. Unlike with the Middle East, the United States has never, for many reasons, invested much prestige or resources in remediating the legacy of 700 years of “Irish troubles” in Northern Ireland. Arguably, without any significant harm to our national interests whatsoever.
- New Eyes: If you must get involved, force yourself analyze the problem from a wide range of perspectives, the more non-traditional the better. Hone in on those perspectives that yield options with the greatest systemic effects even if those effects do not ” solve” the wicked problem per se.
- The Gordian Knot: Every social system-based “wicked problem” represents a dynamic that is difficult to solve in part due to the rule-sets under which the participants are operating or the rule -set interacting with a unique environment. You can consider swallowing hard and just cutting through the entire mess by rejecting the entire paradigm in a single bold stroke ( a ” Big Bang” system perturbation) that renders the problem irrelevant. This is of course, a risky move that invites replacing old problems with new and possibly worse ones.
- Rule set Reset: Somewhat akin to the Gordian knot, old paradigms are replaced with new ones because the advantages of so doing create a new consensus behind them. This is difficult but not impossible to pull-off. The Westphalian system of state sovereignty was a rule-set reset that reduced the geopolitical incentives for pursuing religious-dynastic warfare existing during the medieval world. The combined changes of nuclear weapons, the UN, Bretton Woods, and Cold War bipolarity was a partial rule-set reset from the diplomatic norms of the prewar era.
For “wicked problems” that are not intractable, wickedness is often in the eye of the beholder.
ADDENDUM:
More to come later tonight.
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Dave Schuler:
August 13th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
Thanks, Mark. And your comments are extremely good and relevant. One of these days I’ll need to post on problem patterns and the decision process for identifying what sort of problem you’re dealing with.
So far much of the commentary on my post has been from one of two tacks. The more insightful immediately proposed some variant of the “Gordian Knot” approach. As with the original story such a solution requires real hegemony.
The less insightful just insisted that all problems had engineering solutions, demonstrating that they didn’t understand the problem.
Remarkable how this rather abstract discussion provides a window into understanding the real-world approaches taken to solving certain problems, notably Iraq and Israel.
Jeff Medcalf:
August 13th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
I believe that there are three other ways of dealing with wicked but not intractable problems that should be noted: attenuation, decomposition, and accretion.
It may be that a wicked problem is not a single problem; indeed, in my experience, wicked problems are more often caused by the interactions between smaller inter-dependant problems than by a single problem being too large to solve.
In such cases, you can often work towards a solution by choosing critical subproblems and working to solve them. This will not solve the central problem, and in fact may make the central problem apparently worse. At the same time, though, the complexity of the total problem set goes down: the problem has attenuated somewhat by changes in its component parts. For example, the Middle East political solution in the 1970s was such a wicked problem. While the land-for-peace solution was ultimately incomplete, the problem’s complexity was significantly reduced by the attempt: Egypt and Jordan essentially made peace with Israel. In the process, the Palestinian problem was made nearly intractable, and the Hizb’allah were created. Yet the problem is arguably easier now than it was in 1978. The take down of Iraq’s government certainly reduced the problem set, and it’s possible that taking down either or both of Iran and Syria could solve the problem by making it possible for Israel to reach settlements with its neighbors that do not include killing off the Jews and destroying the state of Israel.
Similarly, if a wicked problem is caused more by the relationships between smaller issues than by the largest issues in the problem set, it may be possible to eliminate or reduce the wicked aspect of the problem by separating the subproblems from each other. For example, Saddam in 1991 tried to tie the invasion of Kuwait to the Palestinian problem, thus making the invasion of Kuwait much harder to reverse. The opposite approach, decomposing a large problem into smaller problems by removing the connections between them, can make the large problem more easily solvable, or at least can create a situation where the larger problem can be improved.
Finally, sometimes a complete rethink of the problem is necessary. Besides a “big bang” approach, there is another way of doing this: accretion. In other words, make the problem bigger by tying other problems into it. It is sometimes, though it seems paradoxical, easier to solve a larger problem than a smaller one. This may be a sub-class of “rule set reset” though.
mark:
August 14th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Hi Dave & Jeff,
“The less insightful just insisted that all problems had engineering solutions, demonstrating that they didn’t understand the problem”
That amused me -examples of self-referential behavior usually do
“Remarkable how this rather abstract discussion provides a window into understanding the real-world approaches taken to solving certain problems, notably Iraq and Israel.”
Indeed. That brings me to Jeff’s observations:
“in my experience, wicked problems are more often caused by the interactions between smaller inter-dependant problems than by a single problem being too large to solve.”
Very, very true. Interrelated and interdependent problems are are bitch to solve – esp. when some obviously negative behavior with a systemic impact actually makes crude sense for individuals operating at the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy.
“In such cases, you can often work towards a solution by choosing critical subproblems and working to solve them. This will not solve the central problem, and in fact may make the central problem apparently worse. At the same time, though, the complexity of the total problem set goes down”
Excellent observation.
I think that partly depends, however, on the observer’s perspective. Zeroing in on just Iraq, I could argue the complexity has risen but the magnitude of threat has receded as Iraq is obviously not going to build nukes or invade KSA in the near future – that wicked problem was resolved and replaced with others.
“Finally, sometimes a complete rethink of the problem is necessary. Besides a “big bang” approach, there is another way of doing this: accretion. In other words, make the problem bigger by tying other problems into it. It is sometimes, though it seems paradoxical, easier to solve a larger problem than a smaller one. This may be a sub-class of “rule set reset” though. “
I lean in that direction -excellent point on changing scales.