Monthly Archives: December 2014

Sustainability

Wicked opportunities in sustainability

While our world has become more dynamic and more complex, so have our problems. Wicked problems, such as climate change, terrorism, social inequality and destruction of natural habitat are extraordinarily difficult to deal with because they are almost impossible to define accurately. However, if we change our perspectives and reframe the issue in a new way we can overcome the wickedness of the challenge.

Wicked problems

“[Wicked problems are a] class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing”- Horst Rittel

The definition of wicked problems is as complex as the problems themselves. Wicked problems have been a topic of discussion since the 1970s when Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber published their article, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. The authors explained how wicked problems differ from engineering problems in that they are almost impossible to define.

To illustrate, let’s imagine that you have a rising drug problem in your city. The root problem appears to be a new gang that is importing large amounts of drugs to the city from overseas. After identifying the gang leaders, the city police finally apprehends the gang leadership in a large raid and confiscates all the drugs. For a while it seems that the amount of drug offences is decreasing. Surely the problem has been solved, right?

In reality the opposite is the case. In the following months a violent gang war ensues and the amount of people detained for drug abuse is actually increasing! The reason? By eliminating the dominant gang, the police created instability in the hierarchy between other rival gangs in the city and in the drug markets. This instability was then corrected by a violent power struggle between the gangs that remained.

The police had therefore introduced only a temporary solution to the drug problem. In fact, the real problem is not the use of drugs, which is only a symptom of the underlying cause. The use of drugs and other criminal activity were the result of a variety of other societal problems, such as poverty, racial issues and bad city planning. These underlying, systemic issues were not addressed by getting rid of one gang, which is why the drug problem only got worse.

Here are some other examples of wicked problems:

  • Climate change
  • Global terrorism
  • Nation-wide obesity
  • Acidification of the oceans
  • Deteriorating biodiversity
  • Poverty

All of the above problems consist of several interconnected parts. For example, climate change cannot be reduced to one problem definition with simple cause-effect relationships, because the climate itself is very complex and hard to understand. The climate is not a singular thing, like a mountain is, but the cumulative effect of all the streams of air, water and heat in our planet.

Understanding the nature of wicked problems is absolutely necessary for today’s problem solvers and decision makers because most problems worth thinking about are essentially wicked. It is easy to become paralyzed after realizing how challenging it is to solve wicked problems. However, I believe that by reframing the issue we can unleash our creative thinking and turn the problems into an opportunity

Wicked opportunities

What if I told you that climate change, inequality and other similar issues are only problems if we choose to define them so? In fact, I like to think of wicked problems as signals telling us that change is necessary – that we need to start doing something fundamentally different from what we’re doing now. It means that we need to design new and better economic, social, governmental and physical systems than the ones that are now in place. Therefore, our biggest challenge is in fact overcoming our unwillingness to change.

Change is sometimes very difficult, but whenever there’s fundamental change involved, there are also great opportunities. Furthermore, we humans are experts in change! Just think of how different our world is from a hundred years ago – or fifty, or even twenty years ago. The automobile, the airplane and the advent of ICT have all changed our lives and the society so fundamentally that our forefathers would think they’re in a different planet if they saw our world today. So there’s nothing new to systemic change – it is already happening all around us.

Therefore, what we need to do is reframe wicked problems as opportunities. They are opportunities for creating new value, new business and new, more sustainable ways of living. I am happy and inspired to see many companies, such as Demos Effect, Plantagon, MBA Polymers, Ecovative Design, Piggybaggy, RePack and thousands others, adopting this attitude.

There’s a lot to do, so let’s not waste time trying to solve problems because it leads nowhere. Let’s instead choose to change our perspective and begin creating the world we want to live in.

Here are some suggestions how you can reframe wicked problems:

  • If you or your organization are faced with a difficult challenge, ask yourself whether it’s really an opportunity disguised as a problem.
  • When dealing with a wicked problem in your own life, instead of trying to solve the problem, try to think of ways you can re-design your life.
  • If you hear someone talking about a difficult challenge, try to identify the social systems that are involved in the issue. Then try to think of how we could go around the problem by designing the systems better.

References:

Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1073). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences. vol. 4. pp. 155-169.

Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked problems in design thinking. Design Issues, vol. 8. no. 2. pp. 5-21.

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Systems Thinking examples

What can we learn from Finnish anarchists?

The clashes between anarchists and the police during the Finnish independence day have recently been a hot topic of discussion in Finland. A group of anarchists had started a riot on the evening of independence day, which resulted in destroyed public and private property. Destroying small companies’ property has especially been the subject of public outrage. But is there something we can learn from the anarchists?

It is very difficult to understand what the anarchists tried to achieve by breaking other people’s property. One way to look at it is that by breaking stuff the anarchists try to draw attention to issues in our society. What the anarchists probably don’t understand is that the violent actions themselves easily become the center of attention instead of the anarchists’ actual message.

However, shunning the anarchists helps no one either. Pointing fingers and demonizing the rioters only feeds our own egos and makes us feel superior. The reason we make the anarchists the bad guys is because it’s the usual knee-jerk reaction to violence and because it provides a simple cause-effect explanation removing us from any responsibility.

But is there an alternative? If the anarchists aren’t at fault, who is? The reality is that finding fault is irrelevant to begin with. Trying to find someone to blame begins with the false premise that there is in fact someone or something that can be identified as the single cause for our problems. Thus, the alternative to blaming the perpetrators is looking at the issue from a totally different perspective.

Systems thinking

Let me begin by quickly defining the opposite of systems thinking, which I will in this case call linear thinking. Using linear thinking we would conclude that because the anarchists were the ones wrecking places, the problem is in the anarchists. It provides a simple analysis: anarchists break places -> anarchists are the problem. Cause and effect.

Systems thinking would instead begin by trying to view the phenomenon as part of the whole society. According to systems thinking, in order to understand a single event it has to be observed in the context of the larger whole it is part of. In this case, the anarchists’ actions would be explained in the context of the underlying social problems that influence the anarchists’ behavior.

By understanding systems thinking we would realize that the anarchists’ actions do not represent the failing of an individual, but are the end result of some systemic structures in our society. The real issues leading to the events on independence day might have been developing for years, if not decades. Thus, issuing blame on individuals is useless, if not dangerous because it prevents us from understanding the real causes.

I am not saying that individuals shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions. Free will still exists and individuals need to take responsibility for their behavior.

What I am saying is that we need to start talking about the real issues rather than pointing fingers.

Creative Commons Skate and riots by Sergio is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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Systems Thinking

Events, behavior, structure

Why is it sometimes so incredibly difficult to change one’s behavior? Why do some events and outcomes seem to repeat themselves over and over regardless of our best attempts to change them? And why do some countries and areas have more crime, poverty and other societal issues than others? If you have read my older posts, you might agree with me that crime and poverty are not first and foremost the failing of an individual, but the results of system level problems. In this blog post I want to introduce an effective systems thinking approach for identifying the root causes of systemic problems.

The tip of the iceberg

We humans tend to become pre-occupied with reacting to events that require our immediate attention. I’m guessing this is partly because of our ancestors’ survival instincts. Our primitive ancestors were forced to react immediately – to fight or flight – to threats in their environment or perish. Being armed with the same instincts, our emotions guide us to quickly react to arising problems. This is a necessary skill if you want to survive in the nature, but the bias towards the immediate sometimes prevents us from understanding the real reasons behind certain problems. The problem is that our instincts are not always so good at recognizing which problems are truly important and which ones are merely urgent. This hinders our ability to see the bigger picture and to recognize slowly evolving changes affecting us.

With increased complexity, the issues we deal with as individuals and as a society require much deeper understanding than the problems our ancestors had to face. Quick fixes never work because the underlying root causes are left untreated. To make matters worse, our ancestors’ survival instincts cause us to over-react emotionally even when the problem at hand would require us to keep our cool. News and other media amplify this problem by giving emphasis on bad news. The media also tends to focus on reporting one-time events, celebrity news and entertainment, which distorts people’s world view and hides the real issues.

The over-emphasis on one-time events is dangerous. It prevents us from understanding the real problems behind issues and creates a quick-fix culture. If the economy is down, we blame the government. When there is disease, we treat the symptoms. Where there is poverty, we give money to the poor or blame the individual. What we need to understand is that events and the perceived state of affairs are the end results of complex processes instead of simple cause-effect relationships.  They are only the tip of an iceberg.

What is hiding under water?

How can we re-orient ourselves to understand the whole iceberg? Peter Senge, a well-known organizational learning expert and a systems thinker, tackles the issue in his book The Fifth Discipline. According to Senge, there are always multiple levels of explanation to a complex situation. Understanding the different levels of complexity can help us find the root causes of problems and prevents us from jumping into conclusions about a situation. Take a look:

Events

I recently read a news piece about a Finnish nickel mine company, situated in my home region Kainuu. The article stated that the company had failed the expectations of its shareholders and the people in the region. The article also described comments from the shareholders, many of whom were small investors and had invested large portions of their savings on the company’s stock. Most of the shareholders interviewed in the article complained that the company and the CEO had failed them, with some stating that the company had outright fooled them out of their money.

The shareholder’s view represented in the article is a demonstration of an event-level explanation. It provides a simple cause-effect analysis of the situation where the mining company and its leadership are seen as the cause for the shareholders’ problems. Losing money is seen to be the outcome of the company’s bad managing. It is extremely tempting to find simple causes behind problems because it protects our own ego and presents the path of least resistance. Unfortunately event explanations are usually based on quickly made conclusions and generalizations that tell more about our own prejudices and fears than about reality.

Patterns of behavior

The second level of explanation already goes much deeper than event explanations. Rather than fixating on single events, we can attempt to find patterns of behavior and long-term trends that affect our lives and our society. In the nickel mine example we might find that small investors are often financially uneducated, which is why they are more easily tempted to place their savings into single investments. The problem definition is now fundamentally different from the previous one. Instead of perceiving the company’s management as the root cause, we would accept that companies sometimes do fail and conclude that the real problem is our inability to take this into account when investing.

Here’s another example: suppose the occurrences of type two diabetes in a nation are rising. A reactionary response, based on an event level explanation would be to prescribe medicine for the disease. Understanding patterns of behavior would, however, enable us to see that obesity is the real problem, which would prompt a very different solution. Instead of treating the symptom, i.e. diabetes, we would try to influence people’s behavior in some way to reduce obesity.

Systemic structure

The third level of explanation is concerned with systemic structures. It essentially means identifying and understanding the structures that push us to behave in a certain way. Structures that affect our behavior include but are not restricted to:

  • physical structures, e.g. transportation infrastructure, architecture
  • cultural & social structures, e.g. social norms, social classes
  • legal & institutional structures, e.g. laws, organizations, regimes
  • economic structures, e.g. financial systems

All the above structures affect our behavior in many ways and are an extremely important to understand. A complex problem must be addressed in the context of the larger whole it is a part of. In the  nickel mine case we could try to identify structures in the financial and cultural systems that drive people to take too much risk. Perhaps there are structures in place that cause us to look for short-term gain or to be impatient with our investments? We could also ask questions about our current economic system: are there some key areas in our system that drive harmful behavior in publicly owned companies? Are we using the right metrics to measure companies’ performance and the economic system as a whole? These kinds of questions help us look at the bigger picture and identify the deeper  causes of problems.

Mental models

The final and the most important level of explanation deals with our mental models. Our human systems are ultimately a reflection our own thinking and the prevailing mental models in our society. Systemic structures are also an outcome – an artefact of sorts – of human thinking. Observing different cultures reveals differences in mental models. Time, for example is viewed very differently in different parts of the world, which has a major impact on the way people behave and plan their lives.

Because mental models influence everything we do it is the ultimate leverage when pursuing change. Therefore, instead of over-emphasizing the significance of one time events, we should observe our thinking habits and see how they affect systemic structures and patterns of behavior.

How to use the different levels of explanation?

Here are some suggestions for using Senge’s framework:

  • Next time you watch news, think about the behavior and the structures that might have caused the events being discussed.
  • If you find yourself blaming someone or something for a problem in your life, try to think of ways you could have prevented it with your own behavior. What could have been done differently? Try to find a structure that might have caused any potential un-beneficial behavior.
  • Observe your own thinking: can you identify strong mental models or mind-sets? If you can identify your mental models, try questioning them. Are they true? Why or why not? You can also try to think of ways your mental models are affecting your behavior.
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