Why (organisation) life is difficult.

From the beautiful example of a pencil, a Dutch philosopher and a Californian consultant serve as our guide into "onbehagen" or uneasiness. This post answers partialy why "social innovation" is a challenge and opens windows for action. Social innovation is considered to be the gateway for the Netherlands to reach the top 5 of most innovative economies in the world (currently place 9), according to professor Henk Volberda in "Het Financieele Dagblad" 12/06/2007.

Ever wondered where a pencil comes from? Do you know how to make a pencil? Do you know someone who knows how to make a pencil? And how about a screw? Or a bottle? A plastic bag?

Do you know how many people are involved in making pencils? Loads. It is not just the bloke in some factory pushing the right button (or the left), but it involves also the guy who pushes the right button to produce the machine which produces the pencil. And the woman who pushes the button to produce the machine which produces the machine which produces the machine to produce pencils. And the man who... I think you get the picture. It does obviously not stop there. These machines need to be designed. And sold. And shipped. And raw materials need to be mined. And shipped. And pre-worked. And for sure someone likes to co-ordinate this. And international agreements need to be made about the use of timber and prohabition of childlabour involved. And national (or European ;-) ) standards need to be set for the size of pencils, or the recycling of them. The funny thing is, of course, that in this process people working on producing the pencil, also produce other props. If you produce a machine which produces pencil-producing-machines, you'll most likely also produce machines for production of other goods. So, the majority of this network will help produce other randomly used products as well.

And still you don't know any of them? (or do you?)

So, you are surrounded by, even indulged in, props you have no clue about their whereabouts. You don't know how to make them and you don't know where they come from. Even more so, you can not live without all these props. You, most likely, don't have the skills to live a life without bricks, phones, cars, electricity, or tapped water. And if you do have them, your life will definitly be a lot different from now. Unconsciously, we all live our life dependend upon goods about which we only know how to use it. And might even be quite skillful in that.

Have you ever solved the chicken&egg problem? Here is an other one. Do you know how many machines and tools in which screws are used are needed to produce a screw? Mining, shipping, steel-mill, machine factory, screw factory, etc and so on. Just image how many machines are involved. Think about the cars and buses the people use to go to their work and back. The computers they use to operate the machines and sell their goods. And there is probably no-one who is capable of producing without artefacts a screw. Now then, who was there first, the screw or the screw-producing-machine? Makes you wonder, eh? I've got the answer for you: the screw, produced by an earlier type of machine in which no screws where used. (Here is your answer for the chicken and egg-question too, if you did not solve it yet.)

So, there is not only evolution in nature, but also in machines. Machines evolve. Cars evolve, we know that. Think of the car your father drove when you were young. And think of the car you now have. What is the difference? .... That is evolution. And just like evolution in nature, evolution in machines also depends upon a '(re)production system' and 'offspring'. It was after all an earlier type of machine to produce the first screw. You could say that the production system is a fact, a given. And production systems can produce a new type of species, although that takes time. Think of your tellie. It is produced somewhere in a factory. When this factory first started up, many things where there already. Sub-assemblies, machines, robots and skilled workers. Even the first TV was dependend upon things being there; the first TV would not have been possible without steel mills being there. And that is an import fact. Inventions can only take place when the production system is nearly in place. The inventor of the blast-furnace surely did not think of an application like a TV.

And just like nature, technical evolution is senseless and without a purpose. Parts of the evolution might have a purpose, but the true breakthroughs are often the application of a technique in a new field. Photography had some purposeful developments, but that they were never aimed at the revolution they caused in the computerindustry, where photographic prosesses are used to produce computerchips (or actually the semiconductors which are part of them).

So, by producing the first tool the Neanderthalers have set in motion a new type of evolution. As more tools and machines come available, more inventions can be made, leading to more products, tools and machines, and so on. While this proces started off quite slowly, it keeps gaining momentum. We are the first of generations noticing the exponantial growth of invention. However, this only goes for goods produced by the industry. Were personal expertise or craftsmanship can not be substituted by pre-manufactured goods there is no evolution of this kind, even within material producution. A plumber or brickie might have new tools around to help him out, but has not developed his work in the sense that computers have developed.

Thus we not only live our lifes depending upon goods which we know nothing about, but there is even nobody who knows how to produce them from scratch. Thank goodness. That is what we call 'progress'. If there is any progress in the world, it will be material progress. A computerengineer does not need to know how the first type of computers was produced in order to develop the latest technology. When he enters the labourmarket after graduating he finds what is then 'state of the art' and will develop upon that. In your own life: you don't need to be able to understand the use of WordPerfect 4.2 to produce nice documents in OOo Writer or MS Word. It just makes no sense. We've all forgotten how DOS works, or have not even worked with it. We do not need it, we use what we have now, since that is the fact we are confronted with.

We are not so clever that we can make computers or go to the moon; we are only lucky to be here at the time when the technology has developed far enough. It is just a coincedence. Although the technical developments might make one think that we are more intelligent then our predecessors, there is no evidence for that. The technical development is almost cocooned in it's own sphere, building innovation upon 'stable' technology. Tasks which are not deployed by machines are performed hardly any better than before. For example: in diplomacy and governing there has been little progress; more people have been killed in wars and men caused famines in the 20th and 21th century than before. The reason for this is that there is no substrate to build upon, when we die (or change jobs, divorce or leave our parental home) knowledge is lost. There is no way of building upon human knowledge apart from the technological development. Some argue that institutions serve this function, like marriage, government and companies. Also codes of conducts and ethical codes are said to serve this function, but these institutions and codes do not have the same status as technological developments have. They are recreated by those who use them and dependend upon human reason and knowledge. Craftsmanship is opposed here to industrially produced. And under the term craftsman I do include all whose labour depends upon their knowledge, despite what intelligence is used for the labour and the nature of that labour itself. This does include consultants, managers, politicians and philosophers. Actually, almost each occupation could be named here, since most of the jobs have aspects which involve the use of reason. Reason has a pivotal role here.

Wicked problems and social innovation

So, why (organisation) life is often experienced as difficult. Let me explain. In life, whether it is at home or at your job, you are time over time confronted with the growing discrepancy in technological achievements and human limits. These limits are (thus) set by mortality (we just don't live long enough) and reason. The use of reason is a skill we all need to learn, and this learning is a slow process. It certainly does not stop after graduation, but only after death (as far as we know, that is). This becomes even more dramatic when you consider the social complexity involved in most of our decisions and the wicked nature of the problems we encounter. The Cognexus Institute has developed the idea of wicked problems and social complexity. They oppose tame and wicked problems. Tame problems are not necesserily easy problems, but they are well-defined, have a definitive stopping point, have a solution which can be judged wrong or right, their solutions can be tried and abandoned, they have limited alternative solutions. Finding the square root of 7358 or raising €10.000,- are examples. Now most of our heart touching decisions are not of that kind. They are "how do we raise our children?", "how do I lead this organisation?", "how do I do a good job in...?" etc. These are wicked problems:

1. you don't understand the problem until you have a solution;

2. they don't have a stopping rule;

3. the solutions are not wrong or right;

4. they are unique and novel;

5. they require a 'one shot operation';

6. there are no given solutions.

You can not go about and find "the" solution for your problem. There is none since you don't have a problem, i.e. a proper problemdescription. And you won't have it either. But, your solution will not be wrong too. It can be that your situation becomes worse, but that might have little to do with your problem and/or solution, but more with whose view is on the problem. You stop inventing a solution when you run out of resources (time, money, knowledge or space). You cannot try two options, i.e. raise your child twice.

The most common mistake that is made is to 'tame' the wicked problem. So instead of asking how you can bring down the aggression at schools, the question becomes how to install metal detectors. Or instead of asking how to turn the organisation into a healthy organisation, the question becomes how to measure workers output. These problems are much easier to work on. Although it might still be complex, you have a clear objective and output. It is temptative to do so, and I guess we all do this from time to time. Wicked problems do not fit in the classical idea of problemsolving: investigating the problem, clarifying options, choosing options, implementation and evaluation. But instead of the traditional or classical way of problem solving, which follows a step-by-step procedure, wicked problems can only be solved by more creative ways. Cognexus calls this opportunity driven, meaning that you'll try to find solutions to parts of the problem as they appear to you. They have envisioned this as such:

In this the red line is the traditional step by step way and the seismographic plot stands for the opportunity driven way of problem solving.

Wicked problems are "enriched" by social complexity. Social complexity is the simple fact that we are both alike and not. We do share the human condition, but we all have different backgrounds, futures, dreams, circumstances, ideals and fears. While we all know this, we are often not so aware of this fact. Especially in organisations and other settings where traditions or social patterns have been formed, we tend to be uncouncious about this. Starting new projects brings these differences a bit more to the surface and foreground and sometimes attention is payed. Social complexity worsens the pitfall of wicked problems. Each member of of a team of a team goes through the phases of the opportunity driven process. Just when one is "back to square one", the other "has nearly solved the thing". No need to say that social complexity adds trouble to the conversation that will be held then.

Because of the nature of wicked problems, solving them is fundamentally a social process and at the heart of social innovation. Social innovation is often seen as flattening organisations. This will lead to more people being involved in different kinds of gatherings trying to solve wicked problems. The key to solving them is "to understand each other's positions well enough to have intelligent dialogue about the different interpretations of the problem, and to exercise collective intelligence about how to solve [wicked problems]" (Wicked problems and social complexity, J. Conklin, p.14 ). Note that it does not say that you need to agree on the problem, since most of the time social complexity and the nature of the problem will prevent this. Still, it is a good ideal to strive for.

The major pitfall is to try to tame the wicked problem. Instead of asking "how can we develop a healthy, progressive growth of our organisation?", one then asks "how can we measure workers / sales / factory output?". Or "how should we deal with the agression in our school?": "how can we best install metal detectors?". The later questions can be achieved, the former not so. Organisations strive often for this, by promoting e.g. the formulation of projects in SMART-goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely). This is a way to tame wicked problems and in the mean time not actually working on what should be worked on.

"For our improvement we need a mirror." as Arthur Schopenhauer said. Here are some questions for you:

• When do you try to tame wicked problems?
• How do you foster social learning in your organisation?
• How do you foster the development of reasoning?

P.S. On how to make a pencil, see this splendid video:...

read more?

• De beoefening van de rede als ambacht in een industriële cultuur. M. de Vlieghere in Heijerman, E. and Wouters, P. (red.) "Crisis van de rede?"
• Wicked problems and social complexity. F. Conklin http://www.cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf