Coronavirus pandemic: complex problem-solving in action
Every problem can be solved
The COVID-19 pandemic has consumed our attention like few other things in recent time. It has impacted everyone to some extent. The entire world is faced with this situation, and the entire world is also part of the solution.
It’s a global problem-solving exercise unfolding in front of our very eyes and in doing so, is providing a peek into the nature of complex problems and how they are solved in real-life.
Complex problems
Before looking at Coronavirus, it’s important to obtain a consistent understanding of complex problems. The word ‘complex’ can be used to describe a range of ‘complications and complexities’. In fact, “complex” is often a catch-all for anything that’s “not simple”.
The Cynefin model can prove helpful here. A conceptual model to aid decision-making, the model has 5 decision-making contexts or ‘domains’: simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder.
The HBR (2007) article, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making, co-authored by the originator the Cynefin framework, presents salient features of complex problems:
- The right answer is elusive.
- Decisions must be based on incomplete data.
- It’s the realm of “unknown-unknowns” where an external event has introduced flux and unpredictability.
In complex systems, cause and effect can only be deduced in retrospect. There are no existing immediate solutions and while some good practices can be applied, the solution emerges over time, while working through the problem.
At first encounter, Coronavirus presents itself as a complex problem. Over time, depending on the response (or lack thereof), it can move across domains, as different situations require different responses. For example, if there is an inadequate response, it can quickly move towards the chaotic quadrant (or disorder). Similarly, as cause-effect relationships are ascertained, it can move into the complicated quadrant.
“Complex systems — battlefields, markets, ecosystems, corporate cultures — are impervious to a reductionist take-it-apart and see how it works approach because your very actions change the situation in unpredictable ways” — Thomas Stewart (How To Think With Your Gut)
Solving complex problems
As per Worldometer, at the time of writing, COVID-19 has impacted 203 countries and territories. With this global spread, every country has been required to respond to this situation. The responses, while tailored to each country, have eventually centred on some key interventions.
The Coronavirus response illustrates three things about solving complex problems in real life.
- Certain conditions make it imperative to address complex problems.
- Solving complex problems involves undertaking a series of interventions to shift the problem from unorder towards order.
- Interventions have their own systemic impacts.
Right Conditions
Many complex problems are facing the world. Indeed, some may have even progressed to crisis level without getting any due recognition. Being multi-dimensional, complex problems are difficult to address. They are beset with a range of constraints, motivations, interests, priorities and indeed even different understandings of the issue. Their inherent complexity means that they either cannot be addressed at once or can be (conveniently) deferred to the future. Capability or motivation is often found lacking — the latter mainly.
With Coronavirus, the situation was different. Here we saw the right conditions come together at the right time to “require” a response.
COVID-19 poses a tangible threat that directly impacts every person, in the immediate horizon. Importantly, it also impacts the leadership in charge. There is a (damning) statistic impinging directly on the credibility of the leadership, and hence, their political survival. The virus is doing what it does — cause infections and claim lives. Country, infections, deaths. These have become a quintessential and inescapable scorecard of this pandemic. They cannot be hidden for long because either ground reality would betray them, or, concealing them could create other, even bigger, problems. There is also no scope for argument or denial.
Contrast this situation to say climate change which may have reached crisis proportions yet has seen little real action. Like COVID-19, it poses a tangible threat that impacts everyone. Unlike COVID-19 though, its horizon is not (perceived) as immediate. This is because there are (still!) counter-arguments which create doubt on this phenomenon. More importantly, there is no tangible scorecard for climate change. Pictures of starving polar bears or turtles wrapped in plastic move our hearts. Melting glaciers show reality even more grimly. However, despite being emotional these can be easily discounted. How many people understand what glaciers are? How many can relate sea life or polar bears? Even “harder” metrics like carbon footprint are esoteric and subjective. There is no direct, discrete and grave scorecard that brings to light its enormous personal impact.
COVID-19 statistics are real, personally relatable, undeniable and immediate. A complex problem with a ticking scorecard featuring a tangible and relatable metric motivates political will, which in turn mobilizes action.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin (American novelist)
Interventions
As the pandemic spreads, governments are trying various solutions depending on their situation and the experiences of other nations. They are probing various measures, sensing the impact and then adjusting accordingly.
Initially, the measures introduced (self-isolation, personal hygiene, thermal scanning at airports etc.) were situational and proportional, becoming more restrictive as cases rose. The conventional wisdom of proportional response, which works well in normal situations. For complex problems, the flux and nuance of the situation render it ineffective. The Coronavirus pandemic provided a great illustration. A peculiar aspect of this virus is its geometric progression. After a slow initial rise, cases can climb very fast. I liken the situation to trying to cross a road where we can see a car approaching in the distance, except that the road has no speed limit and the car is capable of instant and unlimited acceleration, or, can perhaps even slow down in time for us to cross.
In complex problems where the tipping point is not known, “calibrated” responses soon reach their limit. Since the problem can scale disproportionately at any time, the response must also be able to do so.
Given the peculiarities of the situation, many governments have elected to impose a lockdown. While the implementation has varied in scope and detail, the core premise is the same: to prevent spread through enforced social distancing. To ensure social distancing, the required service restrictions and border controls have also been implemented.
From a problem-solving perspective, a lockdown is a (pre-emptive) strike designed to achieve two outcomes simultaneously. The first is to prevent a complex problem from descending into the chaotic domain. The second is to steer the problem from the complex domain into the relatively more ordered complicated domain, where established practices and expert guidance can be engaged to resolve it definitively.
“Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German writer and statesman)
Systemic Impacts
Complex problems must be addressed in the aggregate. Given their inherent intricacies, they cannot be broken down into simpler sub-problems. The resolution strategy is to “shift” the problem, as a whole, from situations we cannot understand into situations we do. This is achieved through a series of interventions. Interventions aim to amplify things that work and dampen things that don’t work, to allow order to emerge in complex problem-solving.
Complex systems involve many interdependencies. While interventions are targetted at the overall problem, there is an impact on constituent and adjacent systems. Some systemic impacts can be anticipated. Some cannot. An intervention like a ‘lockdown’ might trigger hoarding; or despite essentials being allowed in lockdown, a scarcity can result if suppliers are constrained by unforeseen factors outside their control. Then there can be totally unexpected impacts like a mass exodus (on foot) of migrant labour!
Complex systems are characterized by multiple competing goals, which by definition almost, involve making trade-offs. A ‘lockdown’ for example, will have an inevitable trade-off with a significant economic slowdown in the short and medium terms. Given the all-important issue of human health, the gravity of the situation, and the graver consequence of it blowing into uncontrolled chaos, this trade-off has generally been very acceptable.
Complex problems are non-deterministic and develop dynamically over time. The link between cause and effect is not immediately apparent. The impact of decisions can only ever be ascertained in retrospect. Strategies must be made despite the inherent unpredictability of the situation and may need adjustment over time.
Action and inaction, both have consequences and systemic implications. In fact, doing nothing can create exposure to a bigger unknown risk. As this article illustrates, cities that ordered social distances measures earlier usually slowed infections and lowered overall death rates compared to those that did not.
Given the dynamism and flux of complex scenarios, the leader’s job, as Snowden & Boone (2007) say, is to embrace complexity and paradox and know when to look to the wisdom of the group and when to take their own counsel. COVID-19 is a complex global problem with differentiated local impacts. While interventions based on global good practice are being adopted, they are being tailored to prevailing (and anticipated) local situations. Paradoxes are inherent to complexity. An intervention like ‘lockdown’ illustrates this best where the socio-economic system is brought to its knees so that it survives to stand up again.
Paradoxically, we’ve had to stop so that we can carry on.
एवं एवं विकार, अपी तरुन्हा साध्यते सुखं / It’s best to fight a disease at the outset (because the cure only gets difficult with time) — Indian PM Narendra Modi quoting an ancient saying in his national address on the Coronavirus
The novel Coronavirus COVID-19 has captured our attention and mobilized action at an unprecedented level. The threat it represents requires this response, and at this scale.
Despite the grimness of the situation, from a problem-solving perspective, some encouraging positives have transpired. At the minimum, the COVID-19 experience will provide learnings, and hopefully, a blueprint for solving complex problems in the future. The world is more interconnected than ever and this experience may provide a trigger for globally coordinated responses to complex problems. Remarkably, the response to Coronavirus has shown that even the most complex problems can be addressed. It has shown that in times of adversity, we need to respond and that we are capable of doing so, at all levels — individually, community-wise, nationally and globally.
The most important lesson may well be that complex problems are best addressed actively, early, and persistently.
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