Definitions, Approaches, and Emerging Leadership Skills in the Era of Complex Problems
Globally, organizations face complex and dynamic challenges and problems that require a comprehensive and complete vision for their effective resolution. Therefore, they require the appropriate approach to be solved. The types of problems that organizations might face include simple, complex, and wicked problems, which require collaboration and the right combination of resources, skills, and assets.
Simple (Technical or Linear) Problems
Simple problems are those that have a clear and well-defined solution. They can often be resolved by applying an established set of solutions or techniques. These problems are usually predictable and understandable and can be solved by experts or authorities in the field. Some examples for technical problems in organizations, such as companies, universities and governments include:
Hardware or software issues: This could include equipment failure, software compatibility issues, computer security issues, etc.
Physical infrastructure: Problems with buildings, facilities, or physical equipment. This could include everything from plumbing issues to the need to renovate or replace outdated fixtures.
Inefficient processes: This could include problems with the efficiency of production or service processes, or the need to implement new systems or processes to improve efficiency.
Lack of skills or training: This could imply the need to train or retrain staff to use new systems or technologies, or to comply with new standards or regulations.
Financial or accounting problems: This could include problems with accounting or financial management, such as the need to implement new accounting systems or improve financial management practices.
Resource management: This could involve issues with human resource management, such as the need to improve hiring or retention practices, or issues with managing other resources, such as supplies or inventory.
Regulatory Compliance: This could include issues related to compliance with applicable rules or regulations, such as security, environmental or privacy regulations.
Quality issues: This could involve issues with the quality of products or services, such as the need to improve quality controls or implement new quality standards.
Logistics and supply chain issues: This could include issues with logistics or supply chain management, such as the need to improve logistics efficiency or resolve supply chain issues.
Communication problems: This could imply the need to improve internal or external communication practices or implement new communication technologies or systems.
Complex (Adaptative) Problems
In contrast, adaptive or complex problems are those that do not have a clear or easily defined solution. These problems are often ambiguous, uncertain, and multifaceted, requiring adaptation, innovation, and knowledge to be solved. They often involve a change in people's attitudes, values, or behaviors. Adaptive problems may include:
Cultural change: The need to change the culture of an organization can be a significant adaptive problem. This change may be related to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, improving work ethic, fostering innovation, etc.
Technological change: The rapid evolution of technology may require organizations to continually adapt to new ways of doing business, interacting with customers, or conducting internal operations.
Organizational change: This may involve restructuring the organization, implementing new ways of working (for example, remote work), or adapting to mergers and acquisitions.
Leadership challenges: Developing effective leaders, managing leadership change, and fostering effective leadership styles can be a major adaptive problem.
Market change: Adapting to changes in the market or industry, such as the emergence of new competitors, changes in customer demands, or changes in industry regulations, can be a significant challenge.
Wicked Problems
Wicked problems are a subset of adaptive problems that are especially difficult to define and solve. They are inherently ambiguous, with many interrelated causes and effects that are difficult to separate or fully understand. Solutions to these problems often involve significant changes to existing systems and structures, and there is often disagreement over what is the best solution. Also, solutions to wicked problems often have unintended or unexpected effects, and solving one part of the problem can exacerbate another part. Wicked problems could include:
Climate change: Businesses, governments and universities face the challenge of how to reduce their carbon footprint, adapt to changing conditions and participate in broader efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Economic and social inequality: Businesses may face pressure to improve working conditions and wages, governments must balance economic and social policies, and universities may face challenges around accessibility and diversity.
Public Health: Issues like the COVID-19 pandemic are wicked because they have numerous interconnected causes and effects and can require significant changes in the way organizations operate.
Education: Universities and governments can face challenges around education, such as how to ensure access to high-quality education for all students, how to adapt to emerging technologies, and how to prepare students for future jobs that don't exist yet.
Data Privacy and Security: In the digital age, ensuring data privacy and security while reaping the benefits of data collection and analysis is a wicked problem for all organizations.
Both adaptive and wicked problems are types of complex problems, but they differ in the degree of their complexity and in the nature of the solutions required. Therefore, they require a systemic and adaptive approach for their resolution. These problems can vary significantly depending on the context of the organization.
Approaches to Address Problems Depend on Their Nature
Addressing complex problems (adaptive or wicked) with approaches designed for technical problems can lead to negative consequences in organizations, including the following:
Insufficient or ineffective solutions: Complex problems often require creative and adaptive approaches that consider their multifaceted nature. Linear approaches may not address all dimensions of the problem, which may lead to solutions that do not effectively solve the problem or only solve part of the problem.
Missing experience and knowledge: Complex problems often require the contribution and collaboration of a variety of actors with different perspectives and knowledge. Linear approaches may not take full advantage of these resources, which can lead to less informed and effective solutions.
Increased resistance to change: Complex problems often require significant changes in attitudes, behaviors, or existing structures. Linear approaches may not adequately consider resistance to change, which can lead to resistance from members of the organization and make it difficult to implement solutions.
Ignorance of interconnections and side effects: Complex problems are often interconnected with other problems and can have unwanted or unexpected side effects. Linear approaches may not consider these interconnections and side effects, which can lead to solutions that create new problems or exacerbate other problems.
Lack of learning and adapting: Complex problems often require a learning and adapting approach, where solutions are tested, evaluated, and adjusted over time. Linear approaches may not encourage this learning and adaptation, which can make the organization less resilient and able to respond to future changes and challenges.
Frustration and discouragement: If attempts to solve complex problems using linear approaches continue to fail, this can lead to frustration and discouragement among members of the organization, which can negatively affect morale and productivity.
Therefore, it is important that organizations adopt approaches that are appropriate to the nature of the problems they are trying to solve or manage. Complex problems often require systemic, collaborative, and adaptive approaches.
The ability to handle complex problems, whether adaptive or wicked, is an increasingly valuable skill in the modern workplace. Some skills that are essential to develop in employees to address these types of issues are:
Critical thinking: This is the ability to objectively analyze information and make a judgment. Critical thinking involves the use of logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems.
Resilience and adaptability: Since adaptive and wicked problems can change over time and have no easy solutions, employees need to be resilient and adapt to new circumstances, approaches, and challenges.
Continuous learning: With complex problems, it is often necessary to learn as you go, adapt, and evolve as the situation develops. Employees need to be willing and able to continually learn and apply new skills and knowledge.
Collaboration and teamwork: Adaptive and wicked problems often require a collaborative approach and the ability to work effectively in teams. This involves communication skills, empathy, and the ability to manage and resolve conflicts.
Systems thinking: This is the ability to understand the interconnections and relationships between the different parts of a system and how they influence the whole. In the case of adaptive and wicked problems, understanding these systems can be crucial to finding effective solutions.
Creativity and innovation: Complex problems often require creative and innovative solutions. Employees need to be able to think outside the box and explore new ways of approaching and solving problems.
Leadership: The ability to guide, influence and inspire others is essential, especially in complex situations where solutions are not obvious, and it is necessary to mobilize a group to work in a common direction.
Decision making under uncertainty: Adaptive and wicked problems are often surrounded by uncertainty. The skills to make informed and well-reasoned decisions in such circumstances are critical.
Our Unique Approach
Acerola Strategies LLC developed the Dynamic Doers Lab to support organizations in understanding and navigating complexity by helping them develop the necessary skills and mindset. The Lab is more than a service, it is a committed partnership in achieving a common goal: sustainable innovation and long-term success. Through our workshops & trainings, guidance and frameworks we can help your team improve their knowledge and skills, improve their ability to handle complex tasks and challenges, and strategically address the complex problems of your organization. Our structured approach at Acerola Strategies LLC include:
Discovery Phase: This is the starting point of our process. In this phase, we work closely with your organization to fully understand your mission, goals, challenges, and needs. We carry out asset mapping to identify and analyze available resources and capabilities. The information collected in this phase helps us identify opportunities and threats and define a strategic approach to effectively address your challenges.
Scoping Phase: Based on the findings of the discovery phase, we develop a detailed scope for the project. This includes defining the project objectives, identifying the key deliverables, and establishing an action plan. We also establish success criteria, to make sure that all parties are aligned and that the project is on the right track towards achieving the defined objectives.
Minimum Viable Product Phase (MVP Phase): In this phase, we create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that represents the simplest and fastest solution to validate the feasibility of the project. The MVP is designed with essential features that solve the main problem and is tested on a select group of users or participants to gather feedback and make necessary adjustments.
Iteration and Incremental Development Phase: Once the MVP has been validated, we enter an iterative and incremental development phase. Here, we continue to improve and extend the solution based on user feedback and data collected during the MVP phase. This phase is characterized by repeated cycles of planning, developing, testing, and evaluating until the final version of the product or solution is reached.
Our methodology ensures that the solutions we develop are aligned with your organization's goals, meet user needs, and create real and lasting value. In addition, our intervention uses a novel approach called Strategic Doing, which involves a structured process that brings together diverse stakeholders to collectively identify and pursue shared goals.
Strategic Doing is a methodology that drives rapid and effective collaboration within organizations to achieve common goals through structured conversations. Developed by Ed Morrison and colleagues, this approach emphasizes the need to train people in collaboration skills, such as leading and designing conversations, and balancing divergent and convergent discussions.
Conversations play a crucial role in Strategic Doing as they foster collaboration, a vital element in tackling any challenge an organization faces. Conversations should be used to focus on opportunities rather than problems and explore potential solutions using existing resources in the organization.
To implement Strategic Doing, companies must learn and practice collaboration skills, and follow the 10 basic rules of the methodology, which include creating a safe space for deep conversations, exploring hidden assets among group members, and the development of short-term action plans.
Overall, conversation-driven collaboration helps organizations overcome challenges, quickly transfer knowledge and lessons learned, and increase productivity. Strategic Doing can be applied in all areas and in any organization, whenever it seeks to navigate complex problems through collaboration. The 10 Rules of Strategic Doing are a framework for creating and executing successful strategies. The 10 rules are:
Create and maintain a safe space for deep and focused conversation - This means creating an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their ideas and perspectives, without fear of judgment or criticism.
Frame a conversation around an appreciative question - This means asking a question that focuses on what you want to achieve, rather than what you don't want. For example, instead of asking "How can we reduce our costs?" you could ask "How can we be more efficient?"
Uncover hidden assets that people are willing to share - This means asking people about their skills, knowledge, and experience, and finding ways to leverage those assets to achieve your goals.
Link and leverage your assets to create new opportunities - This means finding ways to connect your assets with the needs of others to create new opportunities for collaboration and growth.
Rank all your opportunities to find your "Big Easy” - This means identifying the opportunities that have the greatest potential to help you achieve your goals, and then prioritizing those opportunities.
Turn your "Big Easy" into a result with measurable characteristics - This means defining your desired outcome in such a way that it is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and limited in time.
Define at least one Pathfinder Project with guideposts - This means developing a specific plan to reach your desired result, with clear milestones and checkpoints along the way.
Set up a 30/30 meeting to review your progress and make adjustments - This means scheduling a meeting 30 days after you start working on your Pathfinder Project, to review your progress and make any necessary adjustments.
Make a short-term action plan with each taking a small step - This means creating a plan for how you will achieve your desired short-term result, with each taking a small step toward that goal.
Push, connect and promote relentlessly to build your new collaboration habits - This means constantly encouraging and supporting others as they work toward your shared goals.
The 10 Rules of Strategic Doing are a powerful tool for creating and executing successful strategies. By following these rules, you can create an environment where people feel safe to share their ideas, uncover hidden assets, and link and leverage those assets to create new opportunities. You can then use these opportunities to achieve the desired results by developing a specific plan and setting up a 30/30 meeting to review your progress. Finally, you can build your new collaborative habits by constantly encouraging and supporting others.
New Leadership Skills Emerge
Similarly to Strategic Doing, distributed leadership allows collaboration between team members to contribute their unique experience and perspective, thus the organization can make informed decisions and respond more effectively to challenges and opportunities.
Distributed leadership is an organizational approach that moves away from the traditional idea of a single leader at the top of a hierarchy. Instead, distributed leadership holds that leadership is not the prerogative of a single person but can and should be shared and distributed among different members of an organization. It can be especially effective in contexts where knowledge and skills are widely distributed among team members.
This approach views leadership as an activity that extends beyond the people formally designated as leaders. Instead of viewing leadership as a series of individual behaviors, it focuses on the interactions and relationships among members of the team or organization.
All organizations form part of an ecosystem, which in the context of organizations and complex problem solving, refers to the interconnected network of individuals, organizations, and systems that interact with each other to achieve a common goal. This concept is based on the metaphor of a natural ecosystem, where all species and elements of the environment are interconnected and depend on each other for their survival and prosperity. Each part of the ecosystem has a role to play and can influence the functioning and health of the entire system. In an organizational ecosystem, this can include:
Individuals: Employees, managers, directors, customers, suppliers, and any other person who interacts with the organization.
Organizations: This can include the organization itself, as well as other organizations with which it interacts, such as other companies, suppliers, customers, partners, competitors, regulators, etc.
Systems: This can include the organization's internal systems (such as management systems, processes, organizational culture, etc.) as well as external systems that affect it (such as laws and regulations, the economy, technology, etc.).
In the context of complex problems, the ecosystem concept is especially relevant because it recognizes that complex problems cannot be solved in isolation. Instead, they require a systems approach that considers all parts of the ecosystem and how they interact with each other.
These approaches allow organizations to collectively identify and address the underlying factors that contribute to the problems, rather than simply treating the symptoms. It also allows organizations to leverage the relationships and interdependencies within the ecosystem to drive change and innovation.
