Wicked problems, mind mapping, and IBIS

Jean-Daniel Cusin:

May 21st, 2013 at 3:21 pm

Lynn, I enjoyed this article. I just wanted to add that while the mindmap artifact is extremely useful to characterize a wicked problem and make it understandable – we might even say necessary given the problem’s multi-dimensional properties, it is not sufficient. 

If the problem is truly wicked, it is unlikely that any single person will be able to come up with a definitive solution to it because any single solution will underestimate the underlying complexity of the problem and ignore the interactions between problem vectors or dimensions.

In designing e-Deliberation, a web-based process where groups of up to several dozen people get together to resolve wicked problems, we included the use of mindmaps to discover the wicked problem vectors, and the IBIS-inspired question/Idea/Pro/Con qualifiers. But we added, in addition, a facilitated thinking process which includes the use of several forms of feedback, to support the group in deliberation to come up with a solution set that has the requisite variety to match that of the problem vectors. 

In other words, it is unlikely that simple solutions can solve complex problems. Tools such as mindmaps help characterize the problem, but to work out solutions that can be expected to resolve the said problems and gain the adhesion and support of the community in deliberation, one also needs a powerful thinking process.

Jean-Daniel Cusin
http://www.e-Deliberation.com

Grurray:

May 21st, 2013 at 4:08 pm

Interesting stuff.

I’m a big fan of David Allen’s GTD and also lateral thinking 

I’m always looking for better problem solving methods.I just installed Freeplane and am giving it a whirl. 

Critt Jarvis:

May 21st, 2013 at 5:11 pm

Good stuff, Lynn.

Re: link to IBIS:

Rittel’s interest lay in the area of public policy and planning, which is also the context in which he defined wicked problems.

So it is no surprise that Rittel and Kunz envisaged IBIS as the:

[…]type of information system meant to support the work of cooperatives like governmental or administrative agencies or committees, planning groups, etc., that are confronted with a problem complex in order to arrive at a plan for decision[…]

I can agree with, as well as counter, 2 through 10, by reframing the context of social-political change to the local level of time and responsibility, tempo in the situation.

Re: Hopefully we’ll see more emerge in this area going forward.

“Hopefully”? I got an A-Team bringing it forward now. We’re in pre-launch mode, and will reveal as soon as appropriate. Then, will be asking readers of this thread for inputs.

Thanks!

tdaxp:

May 21st, 2013 at 7:39 pm

I used FreeMind mind-mapping software to map in great detail a dissertation I admired. I then used that map as a scaffolding for my own. Worked well.

Grurray:

May 21st, 2013 at 8:48 pm

…groups of up to several dozen people get together to resolve wicked problems

Ever think of getting a bunch of people together that don’t know each other in order to crowd source wicked problems?

I was reading this article the other day about how IQ tests over the years may have been fooling us all along. People may not actually be smarter, and, in fact, may be less intelligent than in the past:

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-victorian-era-people-intelligent-modern-day-counterparts.html

This sort of reminded me of the theory that life spans haven’t increased in thousands of years:

http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-constant-2-000-years.html

So, imagining for a moment that we aren’t really any smarter or healthier or even any better off overall than in the past (the chief argument for the success of modernism), the question becomes how are we really surviving?

Curtis Gale Weeks:

May 21st, 2013 at 9:35 pm

I’ve used CMAP Tools to map out characters for a novel (history, personality traits, motives, goals, etc.).  It’s a very easy-to-use, intuitive app, with a lot of utility.  I particularly like the fact that you can have several different distinct maps and link concepts between them.  For instance, for my character maps, I create separate maps for each character, but Character A is an ancestor to Character B, so I can draw an arrow from Character B, under family/history, to a the map of Character A, and vice versa.

Charles Cameron:

May 21st, 2013 at 9:49 pm

I’m very interested in all these ways of handling complex issues — I admire IBIS a great deal, having first run across it while thinking in a small DC tank in 1999, lateral thinking was the first such mode I ran across years (probably decades) earlier, e-deliberation I’ll have to look into — and I’m eager to see what both Critt and Lynn come up with.  
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Here’s my 2006 overview of the field, free from Scribd.
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My own main approach derives from Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, and essentially sees “multiple stakeholders” as “multiple voices” that need to be included, and this closely related to the musical forms of polyphony (literally “many voices”) and counterpoint (essentially the juxtaposition of sometimes clashing melodies to achieve a greater music than any one of them alone).
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As a result, I look to Bach for inspiration, and a lot of my thinking goes into “scoring” fugues in which concepts (whether visual, verbal, musical, mathematical or filmic) rather than melodies are the individual voices to be heard in juxtaposition.
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I’m also interested in developing a page for recording diverse opinions — once they’ve been expressed, debated, deliberated, clarified, condensed and collated — in a format to be based on the Talmudic page, as discussed briefly here on Zenpundit a while back. Anyone interested in this project?
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Lynn, Critt, Jean-Daniel and all — keep us posted here at Zenpundit. I’ll definitely alert you as Sembl gets closer to its eventual web-based launch — we’re now in the “seek funding for development” stage, having shown proof of concept in the National Museum of Australia’s Museum Game, albeit limited there to objects rather than ideas, and to the museum (physically) and its collection, rather than the open web.

Curtis Gale Weeks:

May 21st, 2013 at 10:35 pm

As for solving wicked problems, I’m wondering if anyone here has explored what is called “open-space technology” (not to be confused with open-source technology)?  I have not personally participated in such meetings, although I have done some reading.  The general ideas, principles and procedures behind OST could be adapted to online collaborative work utilizing concept-map software and other software.  (The aforementioned CMAP Tools apparently allows online collaboration, when it’s server-based, but I’ve never used it to collaborate.)

Stef:

May 27th, 2013 at 11:31 am

Lynn,

Great article. I couldn’t agree more with some of the points you are presenting. I consider my self a former mind-mapping skeptic, but now I can honestly claim: every problem can be mind-mapped. Even wicked ones.