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Monthly Archives: March 2011

The era of the Wicked Politician

A few months ago – piqued by an article in the Guardian – I wrote, in a blog, some advice for the Prime Minister on how to tackle welfare reform, where I advocated a more incremental, experimental, collaborative, long-term (and so on) approach, than I think was contemplated. Mr Cameron has yet to comment; and, if I am honest, I have pretty much given up hope that he will. Busy bloke I guess. But, a long-time (and wise) friend of mine – Glyn Hughes – recently added a response, putting these words in to Mr Cameron’s mouth…

“But now imagine […]

Solving Wicked problems

That’s Wicked with a capital W; not just ordinary wicked. And that’s not wicked in the sense of street wicked (ie rather good) nor does it mean dreadfully evil like a demon or a nasty lady with a pointy hat. This Wicked is a term first used by two chaps from Berkeley – Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber – to explain their thinking (in 1972) about tough problems and how to handle them.

Pinching the definition from Wikipedia, a Wicked Problem is one…

“…that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that […]