Thinking differently to solve wicked problems...

Some of you may have seen my post last week about participating in the Operational Delivery Excellence development programme run by the Civil Service. I learnt so much that it was difficult to distil down into the three key reflections that I will share on this post. I hope you find them useful.

Firstly, for those of you not familiar with the Operational Delivery function within the Civil Service you can find out more here .

1. The Civil Service is vast, do we need to rethink how we engage?

To some this may feel like an obvious statement but I hadn't fully comprehended the scale and complexity of the organisation. Over half a million employees, across a huge number of departments, broken down into an almost inordinate number of teams, with multiple disciplines all needing to collaborate to solve a large number of wicked problems (more on those later).

As someone who is not steeped in experience of trying to lobby or influence Government I offer this reflection with an appropriate degree of caution and self awareness. I have a number of questions I will be asking myself moving forwards:

• Am I connecting with both policy and operational delivery teams
• Am I joining the dots making multiple connections on each issue so that I am not relying on the principle department I am engaging with to do my influencing behind the scenes?
• Am I demonstrating sufficient awareness not only of the implications of what I am influencing on but also the practical challenges of how any solution could be implemented?

In other words am I bringing both challenges and solutions?

2. Wicked problems, do we need to work and think differently to try and resolve them?

Interactive Design House define wicked problems as "a social or cultural problem that's difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature" or if you are open to a bit of flippancy that's Tuesday in the world of charities...

It was clear from the discussions we had that Government is concerned about solving these problems but my reflective question was - as charities are we over fixated on the symptoms of the problem and do we lack sophistication in connecting together on potential solutions?

I am used to seeing collaborations between charities concerned about the same issue e.g. mental health, homelessness, cancer. What I see less frequently, but sense could be more powerful, would be charities who are dealing with the symptoms of systemic challenges identifying how public policy could lead to a fundamental shift in prevalence or impact of a wicked problem...

?As an example, the current economic crisis is impacting people in a number of ways: mental health, food poverty, possibility of homelessness. Are we joining as a sector to identify the cumulative impact of this and also whether the same group in society is being consistently impacted? If we did could we make a more compelling case for intervention when the totality of the impact is shared rather than the component parts being offered up separately?

On the programme, we discussed ethical theories and a utilitarian mindset. This is where an individual determines right from wrong depending on outcomes. But there is a potential flaw when applied in public policy that links to the point above. Essentially, if we make decisions based on ensuring that the majority benefit (a factor we cannot be certain of as we cannot predict the future) do we run the risk of continually negatively impacting on the same group of marginalised citizens? ?And in turn, do those choices lead to a greater overall negative impact on society and/or a disproportionally poor outcome for those citizens when a more equitable share of the negative impact may have been a better course of action?

3. Fail fast and reflect differently...

I promise I will do a separate article all about Human Centred Design - I need a bit more time to think through what we covered. Instead, I will finish this post talking about the power of triple loop learning and agile thinking. I always try to encourage my teams to take calculated risks. My sense is that we have a responsibility as a sector to be pushing the boundaries looking for efficiency, effectiveness and innovation that can help us deliver more benefit, to more people. In doing this we will inevitably have some failure so it is important that we fail fast and learn important lessons.

My final reflection relates to challenging my approach to reflecting on lessons learnt and I have embraced the triple loop learning mindset based on Kolb's experiential learning cycle. Too often I am guilty of predominantly asking "Did we do things right?" (single loop). Sometimes I will progress that into "Did we do the right things?" (double loop). Following, the first residential I am challenging myself to more frequently ask myself and my teams "How do we know we did the right things?" (triple loop).

Smart, simple and the potential to improve both what I learn and how I continuously improve.

As with all development my key litmus test is whether the intervention has caused me to challenge my own thinking and practice. This programme has already caused me to fundamentally rethink a lot of things and I promise I will share a lot more as my learning deepens.

#OpDelExcel #reflections