Marcus Kirsch — Reimagining The World Of Consultancy
Marcus Kirsch is hoping to redefine the world of consultancy by bringing back the old concept of “wicked problems” and helping companies to understand how to tackle them. He is also the bestselling author of “The Wicked Company: When Growth is Not Enough” and is a host of The Wicked Podcast where they speak to thought leaders in a variety of fields.
What drove you to pursue a career in consulting and to found the Wicked Company?
My background is originally in design, technology, and innovation, and I spent a lot of time working in teams coming up with better ideas for products and so on. What I found is that in spite of there being plenty of smart and innovative people in companies, the ideas rarely got to where they should be getting, because the context of creating ideas and growing them and using those ideas to solve problems, wasn’t quite right. There would just be issue after issue until it got to the point where you would ask yourself: are we using the wrong engine, the wrong machine, the wrong system? That’s sort of how this whole thing started. These days I’ve moved into more of a consultant role, and I take a more strategic approach to organisations. Essentially, my goal is to transform companies into wicked companies that are better at solving problems.
How would you define a wicked company?
The term “wicked problem” was coined in the 50s by a German professor, who described it as a problem with a very specific set of characteristics. A wicked problem is very different to a tame problem. Tame problems are things like building a bridge, or mass production. Tame problems can be investigated, and enough information can be gathered to solve them. Once you’ve built a bridge, you’ve connected two points, people can now get from A to B, the problem is solved.
Wicked problems are inherently different, as you likely won’t have enough information to fully understand the problem, because by definition wicked problems are virtually impossible to fully understand. Another characteristic of a wicked problem is that they constantly change, so you can never truly solve them. Crime is a great example because whenever you do something about crime, it reacts by evolving, so you’ll never fully solve the crime, it will just shift. A wicked problem is a moving target, in simple terms. So what do you do when you have a moving target? You have to behave differently, you have a different risk level because if you apply a tame solution to a wicked problem, you will not be able to do anything about it, as by the time you’ve developed your solution, the problem will have changed.
Since the birth of the Internet, we’ve had a lot of problems which previously weren’t wicked problems, becoming wicked problems, and organisations simply aren’t set up for that, which is the big issue that I’m trying to tackle. So a wicked company is essentially an organisation that’s set up to better deal with the characteristics of a wicked problem, meaning they can identify and describe a wicked problem better, they can explore them better, react to them better, and solve them as best as they can.
COVID-19 has drastically changed how we live, but how have you had to adapt to help your customers tackle new problems?
The key is to help them tackle all of the wicked problems which are arising. We’ve accelerated a lot of things significantly because of the pandemic, and this has created new problems. For example, there’s no discussion around whether people can work from home anymore, they simply have to work from home. The problem is that people aren’t used to this, and companies aren’t set up for this, yet now all of a sudden the whole working day is completely different, and companies need to find ways to tackle this new problem. We’ve accelerated everything by a good ten years, and we’re in a very different environment now. So to start tackling the COVID-19 impact, companies need to become more flexible, because if you’re more flexible you’re more resilient. We need to change how we do things, and become more adaptable, in order to tackle wicked problems effectively.
What do you think is the purpose of organisations during the Coronavirus crisis?
We have to create some new types of organisations that actually take care of things differently. One part of this is to focus less on short term profit. The wicked problem-solving game is a long-term game, so short-term ideas will never work for this new way of thinking. Essentially, companies need to start redefining why they exist. Interestingly enough, I thought that companies are legally obliged to increase shareholder value, but that’s actually not true; it’s actually a decision a company takes, meaning they could change that decision at any time and decide to redefine the purpose of the company, in theory. In reality, internal politics makes doing that in established organisations virtually impossible, but that’s essentially the challenge, to redefine the purpose of organisations.
I think a lot of start-ups, particularly those run by young people, are starting to do this. Young people don’t necessarily want to create another Microsoft, they want to create something that actually helps people. There is a good chance for some older brands to do that too, as many companies started off with the right principles in place, but have allowed their waters to become muddy in their search for short-term profit. These companies need to go back to their roots and remember what the true purpose of their organisation was, and then use that to redefine how they will continue moving forward.
What’s the greatest challenge you’ve faced in your career and how did you overcome it?
I was working on a huge project at a multinational telecommunications firm, and we weren’t in a great place, the project really wasn’t starting to work out the way we thought it would. The big challenge for us was to turn the ship around. We had three months to really make a difference, otherwise, it would have been a failure. The way I overcame this challenge was actually through a change of mind-set. I had previously had the kind of managerial style where I would figure something out and then tell people what to do, but in this situation, I shifted away from that, and more towards enabling other people to do what they needed to do. These people were close to burning out, and the only way to get everyone through the project was to support others.
That’s what I found future leadership should look like — you need to understand what’s actually going on and not just delegate everything to other people, because you have to get your hands a bit dirty to really be able to help your team and be an effective leader. Ask people what they need and get it for them as quickly as you can, don’t just dump things on people. For me to completely switch my mind-set was really odd, but I learned to really like it.
There’s a reason I do what I do, and that’s because I’m curious and I want to solve problems for people. Being there for people when it pays off is an amazing feeling. I became a bit more humble through this project, and I was no longer interested in just being the smartest guy in the room. Shifting my mind-set helped to save that project, and it’s a project that’s now been applied group-wide so it’s been doing amazingly. I came out of it very happy. When it comes to keeping people in companies, it’s down to leadership. People don’t leave companies, they leave bosses. Engage and enable people, and you will become a better leader.
What do you want to be known for?
Bringing back wicked problems, which are a half-century-old idea, and reconceptualising them. I want to reshape what consulting looks like, because many consultancies are not delivering what their clients need. It’s another industry that’s in dire need of improvement because people are using tame solutions for wicked problems, and that isn’t helping to create more resilient wicked companies. I would like to be known for being one of the first people to significantly change that, and maybe be known for bringing the wicked problem into the organisational blueprint, basically creating a map that everyone can use to tackle wicked problems. That’s why I tried to write the book with as little jargon as possible, so everyone could understand it because this is something we all need to get better at.
Interview by Lola Sherwin. Find Lola on LinkedIn here.
