So You’ve Got a Wicked Problem?

First, Give Me an Example of a Tame One…

A brief intro to wicked problems

I tend to think of attempting to solve a wicked problem as similar to trying to defeat the hydra. If you attempt to chop off a single head, two or more will grow in its place. The problem is that now, in the year 2016, after centuries of chopping off the heads of the hydra, we are now left with a hydra with a million heads. Nearly every problem is connected to it. So how to we go about taming the hydra? We start by noticing all the heads. We map out the hydra, get a sense of its physiology. How does the hydra work? And where are its weak spots? This is not a hack-and-slash operation. This is delicate work.

Hercules and the Hydra

In this bizarro world we (the humans of this planet) have made for ourselves (so global, so interconnected, so complex), you’d be hard-pressed to find any tame problem. The year 2016 has made that abundantly clear with everything from the numerous terror attacks on multiple continents, to Zika, to Brexit, to police shootings, to record-high temperatures, to Syria, and yes, to Donald Trump. Each one of these is a wicked problem, tangled among other wicked problems.

One example of a wicked problem is the gender pay gap. According to Conklin (who generalized Rittel’s definition for wicked problems in social planning and policy), the defining characteristics of a wicked problem are as follows:

1. The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong or true or false. They are only good or bad, better or worse.
4. Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique. A solution for one problem cannot be duplicated to another.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a one shot operation. There are no test runs or re-dos.
6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.

The wage gap is more complex than women simply making 79 cents on the dollar a man makes.

The wage gap is something we often talk about as one thing: equal work, unequal pay, women making 79 cents on every man’s dollar. Yes, that’s an accurate statistic. But it doesn’t encompass just how complex the wage gap really is, just how many intermingling factors there are at play. What makes this a wicked problem is its social nature. What often makes wicked problems so wicked is people. The wage gap isn’t as simple or as obvious blatant discrimination by business owners. But what it can be is social structures in place that incentivize discrimination. A private medical practice that hesitates before hiring female doctors because they might one day want to start a family. It’s a male employee who feels totally justified working late hours while his wife takes care of the kids, but a female employee feeling guilty for spending weekends at work when a “good mother” would prioritize her children. It’s the characteristics emphasized in the business world (competitiveness, aggression) which are praised in boys and frowned upon in girls.

The wage gap becomes increasingly complex when you see it as a problem not just about gender, but about race, class, privilege and other social and economic factors.

So, you see, it becomes about a problem greater than employers paying women less. It becomes a social issue in which the expectations of women are different than those of men. When you look at more statistics, like those related to women of color in the workplace or class mobility, you start to see just how far a wicked problem can reach. Here, at this point, we are still just coming to understand the problem with wicked problems. But as designers, we have to find solutions. And that’s the really sticky part. Policy makers push for more affordable childcare, paid maternity leave, and legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act. But these kinds of solutions really only address a symptoms of rigid workplaces. That right there, promoting greater flexibility in the workplace, could be one possible leverage point. But like with any wicked problem, once you’ve got a possible solution, there’s little you can do other than poke the hydra and see how it responds.

What makes a wicked problem? Look around hard enough, with eyes open wide enough, and you’ll find one, and then another, and then another, because (and I feel like I’m beginning to sound like a broken record) nothing exists in a vacuum.