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 PM's Questions if I admit that I don't know what to do about welfare reform, and instead I am going …
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 are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal …
