A Leader's Guide to Navigating Wicked Problems

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NOT LETTING YOUR WORK PROBLEMS CONSUME YOU

We know that problem solving is a critical part of leadership life. We spend a lot of time on any given day solving our own problems, and helping our people to solve theirs. As you've no doubt learned, though, there are problems and there are… problems.

It's important to know how to leverage good problem-solving techniques. But of course, it's equally important to manage your headspace so that your biggest leadership problems don't take over your whole life.

Wicked problems don't come along every day, but when they do, they can totally dominate your emotional and psychological reactions to virtually everything. Your ability to compartmentalize will help you to keep things in perspective.

You can't let your biggest leadership problems consume you to the point where they detract from your ability to function properly and enjoy the other aspects of your life.

I start this newsletter by exploring the concept of wicked problems. As your career flourishes, you'll be exposed to these more and more often. I then take a look at some great guidance from Adam Bryant's latest book, The Leap to Leader, which offers some strategies for compartmentalizing problems, and I'll conclude with my tips for comfortably navigating wicked problems, without letting them suck the life out of you.

WICKED PROBLEMS ARE DIFFERENT…

I reckon that the best acid test for how leaders actually handle problems, while still maintaining their health, sanity, and some semblance of personal balance, is to evaluate how they handle wicked problems.

The further you go in your career, the more likely it is that you'll be exposed to wicked problems. If you can train yourself to compartmentalize and manage these, you'll be able to deal with pretty much anything that comes your way.

Of course, you need to start with much simpler problems first. The techniques you develop, though, are going to be identical.

The concept of the “wicked problem” was first formally defined in 1973 by mathematician Horst Rittel. Unlike most problems, wicked problems are messy, aggressive, and confounding. Quite often, they’re problems with the social system, which are ill-formulated and poorly understood… where the information is confusing… where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values… and, where the ramifications to the whole system are largely unknowable.

In other words, wicked problems are ill-defined and unique in their causes, character, and solution.

Rittel and his co-author, Melvin Webber, further define wicked problems this way:

"There is no definitive formulation for a wicked problem:

• Wicked problems have no stopping rule;
• They are continuous;
• Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false, but rather better or worse;
• There's no way to test a solution to a wicked problem; and
• Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem."

THE WICKED PROBLEM OF THE ENERGY TRANSITION

I was facing into a wicked problem during my time as CEO of CS Energy, as were many of my peers. I had to navigate a path through the wicked problem of decarbonization, and the transition from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy.

… and there was I, running a company that generated electricity from a portfolio of predominantly coal-fired power stations. As I used to say to people, “It's easy to turn your nose up at fossil fuels, except for one inconvenient truth: it's going to take decades to fully transition to a clean energy economy. Until then, lights and air conditioning are courtesy of us. You're welcome!”

But seriously, I don't use the term wicked problem lightly here. I want to take some time to develop this example because I really think it's worth getting a flavor for the complexity, before I lead you through some coping strategies that are going to help you to handle your own problems.

COMPETING PERCEPTIONS, COMPETING REALITIES

In the electricity market, the obvious competing factors of affordability, reliability, and sustainability were exacerbated by a range of much more subtle and complex social issues.

For example, even though consumers say they want their energy to come from green sources, they aren't prepared to pay any more for it… unless, of course, it comes in the form of a government subsidy, which is invisible to the consumer. As I like to say, that's a “victimless crime”.

Then, there's the information on fossil fuels, and the speed at which the essential transition could realistically occur. It's made people feel as though this is a debate pitting good against evil, rather than what it really is – which is simply the tension between what's possible in theory and the practical realities of implementing those theories.

The significant technical obstacles have been ignored or glossed over, as lobby groups on all sides of the argument cherry-pick selective facts to support their own agenda, and this largely saw the debate degenerate into a religious argument, where no one could even agree on what the salient issues were, let alone propose viable solutions.

And of course, most governments do what they do best. They follow the path that they think is most popular with their supporter base, in order to increase their likelihood of re-election. Sound cynical? Well, look, it may be. But unfortunately, I got a little too close to the machinations of government to be any more optimistic than that.?

As the late German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck once said, "Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.”

IT’S PROBABLY WORSE THAN YOU THINK…

To expand on this wicked problem, let me just focus on Australia for a moment, because I know that market the best.

Successive governments have poured countless billions of taxpayer dollars into schemes like solar panel rebates, industrial-scale green energy projects, and new transmission infrastructure.

One of the most ambitious and high-risk projects, the Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro Project has already blown out massively in both its cost, and the completion estimate. In 2017, the project was projected to cost $2 billion. When final approval was given in October of 2018, it was expected to cost $3.6 billion. But by August 2023, that estimate had blown out to $12 billion. That's six times the original estimate. The expected delivery date, meanwhile, has slipped from 2024 to 2028.

Some of the most recent estimates now project that the eventual cost, in nominal terms, is going to be around $20 billion, once you include the transmission infrastructure that also needs to be built.

This cost has increased tenfold over what was originally estimated… and it's going to be so late that the current retirement plans for coal-fired power stations may have to be delayed due to system shortages.

In the absence of clear policy guardrails, these government investments create market distortions, and produce a range of ugly, unintended consequences. For example, some impacts we've already experienced are:

• Consumer residential energy shortages and supply disruptions;
• Price increases due to massive price volatility in wholesale electricity markets; and
• Seeing manufacturing businesses decline into bankruptcy, as government-imposed moratoria on exploration resulted in skyrocketing gas prices.

The vast majority of government initiatives end up being really expensive, and many of them are ineffective because they incentivize the wrong behavior. In many cases, they just p!ss away taxpayers' money by either paying for things that would've happened anyway, or by propping up projects that never had the slightest hope of being commercially viable.

GOVERNMENTS TEND TO NOT DO WELL WITH WICKED PROBLEMS

I know it's easy to stand on the sideline and throw rocks, especially with a problem as intractable as the clean energy transition, but this particular wicked problem has shown us many manifestations of poorly-formulated, half-baked policy solutions.

I'm not saying a politician's job is easy, by any means. Don't get me wrong here. I did attend one consultation forum where, probably for the first time ever, I actually felt sorry for a politician... and, at the same time, I got a bird's eye view of the full extent of this wicked problem.

It was a policy consultation meeting held in Canberra, Australia's capital, with the Federal Energy Minister. He had invited an incredibly broad range of stakeholders:

• Traditional energy generators and retailers;
• Consumer representatives;
• Engineers and scientists;
• Wind farm and large-scale solar project developers;
• Heavy industry executives from mining and minerals processing;
• Manufacturing and farming lobby groups;
• Small business associations;
• Social welfare groups;
• Labor unions…

You name it, everyone was there. The range of vested interests was so wildly diverse, that it was virtually impossible to map a path to anything resembling a solution. The issues were so complex that a reasonably intelligent and well-informed person would struggle to make head or tail of them.

And, as I watched the minister walk out several hours later with a smile on his face, it dawned on me what he may have been thinking – with that broad a range of perspectives on what was clearly an intractable set of problems, he was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted.

Fortunately, as wicked as it is, the global decarbonization problem is a transitional one – we will decarbonize… green energy sources will become more technically and commercially viable... and we will see the cost of energy delivery in all countries come down

But we're going to need to be patient. As I said, for this to happen, we're not talking months. We’re talking decades.

COMPARTMENTALIZING, ADAM BRYANT STYLE

I hope that gives you a good flavor of how wicked problems manifest.

So, the question remains: “How did this not totally dominate my life as a CEO who had to steer his company through this maze?”

In my quest to find effective tools and techniques that we can use to navigate choppy waters, I'm always looking for good ideas. I found one set of principles in an excerpt from Adam Bryant's latest book, The Leap to Leader.

I didn't connect this at first, but I've relied on Adam Bryant's genius in the past. He was the originator of the concept of the leadership user manual. I mentioned him in Ep.257, which was one of my favorite episodes of last year. If you want to find out what a leadership user manual is all about, you can download a PDF template from our free resources page.

His recent article starts with an important premise. As Bryant says, "It's very easy to feel overwhelmed in leadership roles because of the demanding deadlines, the people problems that fill up your day, the second-guessing and criticism, the pressures to do more with less, and dealing with the crisis of the moment."

Let's overlay that with the confounding nature of wicked problems.

Bryant talks about solving these by compartmentalizing and his excellent advice boils it down to five key techniques:

1: Stay focused on what matters most

He talks about having a good strategy, and a scoreboard for success. This is the equivalent of my central leadership imperative, Deliver Value. Work out what creates the most value for your company at any given point… and just do that.

Let go of all low-value activity, and completely purge it from your team's work program. Once you've got clarity, take control of your calendar and start from scratch. As Bryant says, the art of compartmentalizing is being able to recognize the relative importance of everything that comes across your desk.

2. Don't get pulled down into other people's problems

This is such a common issue for leaders at all levels. Bryant says that as the leader, you often have to stand outside of someone's individual problem to be able to see holistically what's going on, so you can make the best decisions for the organization as a whole. This equates to my leadership imperative of Work at the Right Level. Do the job you're paid to do and lead your people to do theirs.

3. Delegate and ask for help

Once again, this is a key component of the Work at Level principle. It's much easier to do the job yourself than it is to lead someone else to do it effectively. You need to be constantly aware of that trade-off you're making between controlling the work, and leading your people to build team talent and capability… and every micro-decision counts here.

My build on Bryant's principle is, don't just delegate the work:

• Delegate the autonomy;
• Delegate the empowerment;
• Delegate the decision-making rights; and
• Delegate the accountability for delivering the outcome.

4. Give yourself a break

This principle says that you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. In a quaint turn of phrase that I really like, Bryant says, "Part of the learning curve for leaders is that the job shouldn't be like self-flagellation." In other words, don't beat yourself up.

He talks about embracing the principles of excellence over perfection and respect before popularity. These are fundamental principles for retaining your own sanity, and having a situation where you own the problems, rather than having the problems own you.

5. Do what's best for the company

This is a continuation of the respect before popularity principle. You tend to work out fairly quickly that the higher up you go, the less likely it is that you're going to be able to satisfy everyone. To retain your ‘North Star’ of integrity, Bryant encourages us to ask ourselves one simple question: “What's the best thing for the company?”

This will help to keep you at the necessary altitude to clarify whether you are indeed doing the right thing.

MY TOP FOUR COMPARTMENTALIZATION TIPS

I want to build on Adam Bryant's guidance on compartmentalization with four of my own tips. These really helped me to navigate the wicked problems that I had to face during my corporate career.

1. Don't allow leakage between the different aspects of your life

To tell you the truth, I found this pretty easy, for the most part. For example, I could step away from a barbecue on a Saturday afternoon to take a phone call from one of my GMs about a serious operational issue. I'd deal with it and then I'd be back, fully engaged with my friends and family immediately after hanging up the phone.

I figured, "Hey, I've done all I can do for the moment. I've given the best guidance I possibly can to support the GM on the call, and there's no point in me worrying about it any further right now."

I was quite expert at quarantining my time, and my headspace. Like anything else, this is just a discipline, and I developed a really good discipline of being present in whatever context I found myself. When I came home after work for dinner, by the time I walked through that door, I had completely decompressed from my workday, and I was ready to spend quality time with my family.

I cannot overstate how valuable this skill is, so it's absolutely worth working on.

2. Separate the things that you can influence from the things you can’t

With wicked problems, it's so easy to get completely overwhelmed by their complexity. It doesn't matter how smart you are, or how smart your team is. You have very little chance of getting across all of the issues that are at play. So you have to be really selective about what you choose to focus on and what you choose to ignore.

This is about making the information you deal with more manageable. Only spend your time and energy on the things that you can make a difference to. Let go of the cold, hard facts. Compartmentalizing the content you're dealing with is another core skill.

3. Ask yourself the question, "Am I problem-solving or am I just worrying?"

There will always be a timing component to the big issues – they can drag on for a really long time, absorbing every waking hour. You have to get good at working out when you're doing something that's a productive step towards solving the problem, and when you're just needlessly worrying, rehashing the same concerns in your head on an infinite loop.

Interestingly, I found this requires a certain amount of fatalism, but there's absolutely no point in worrying about the things that may never happen. It doesn't bring you any closer to a solution.

4. Rely on ‘problem incubation’

Some people call this set and forget mode, and it's particularly useful for highly complex problems.

Have you ever had the experience where you work all day on a particularly gnarly problem, and you're totally frustrated by your inability to solve it? Then you go to bed, and when you wake up in the morning, the solution is there in your head, absolutely crystal clear.

This is based on the principle that you let your brain go to work on a subconscious level… the alpha waves that your brain produces when you sleep are particularly useful for this. So, instead of staying immersed in a problem, becoming more and more frustrated at the lack of solution… let it go! The answer is often closer than you might think.

BUILD YOUR COMPARTMENTALIZING SKILLS BEFORE YOU NEED THEM

If you aren't yet accountable for navigating wicked problems, now is the time to start building your skill. I really hope you can take some inspiration from this newsletter, and adopt some of the tools, whether they're from Adam Bryant's guidance, or the four tips I just outlined.

The secret to staying in control of your own personal wellbeing and happiness begins with your ability to manage the most dominant pressures of your job without letting them leak into other parts of your life. Just remember: wherever you are? Be there!

The above article is from Episode 303 of the No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast. Each week, I share the secrets of high performance leadership; the career accelerators that you can’t learn in business school, and your boss is unlikely to share with you. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favorite podcast player.