Structure of messy problem
solving.
Design
Collaboration
for, and support collaboration with automated
tools, we require a deeper
understanding of how
collaboration works.
declare
connect
learn
“we”
create
COLLABORATION IS NOT OUR FIRST
CHOICE
When faced with a messy problem, most people do not automatically fall into a mode of
collaboration. Our colleague,
Nancy Roberts, has confirmed this
from her work and uses it to teach
a class on “coping with wicked
problems” [ 9].
Roberts begins the class by posing a wicked problem and asking
everyone to devise a solution to it.
When they come together, the
group judges no solution satisfactory. Their proposals typically
involve getting an appropriately
high authority to make and
enforce key declarations. For example, a green infrastructure is best
achieved by establishing a new cab-inet-level “infrastructure czar” who
can set sustainability goals, create
timetables for their completion,
and inflict punishments on those
who do not comply.
After this failure, Roberts asks
the students to try again. Once
again, when they come together,
the group judges no proposed solution satisfactory. This time their
proposals involve various forms of
competition: the best prevails in
some sort of contest. For example,
the green and blue advocates both
present their cases to the public,
who vote on referenda to adopt
one scheme after a period of
debates and campaigning.
Roberts sends the students back
to try a third time. In their frustration over their recalcitrant instructor they start meeting as a group.
They discover they can invent
solutions that take care of multiple
concerns. They find a solution to
the wicked problem.
Roberts notes that the students
eventually got to collaboration,
but not before they had exhausted
the alternatives of authoritarianism
and competition. These two
approaches do not work because
they do not show each member of
the group how individual concerns
will be addressed. Roberts concludes, “People fail into collaboration.”
We are not saying that authoritarian solutions or competition
solutions never work. Of course
they do. They tend not to work
for wicked problems. Our familiarity with them draws us to them
first. Roberts is saying that when
we encounter a wicked problem,
our best bet is to look for a collaborative solution.
The situation in the U.S. after
Hurricane Katrina in August 2005
followed this pattern.
The wicked problem
was to restore infrastruc-
ture in a region where
most of the residents
had permanently fled
after the storm knocked
out all power, communi-
cations, water, trans-
portation, food
distribution, sewage, and waste
removal. The President’s first pro-
posal (FEMA takeover) was
authoritarian. Local authorities
asserting regional rights rebuffed
that approach. Thereafter, the situ-
ation devolved into numerous
competitions (including disputes
and finger-pointing) between fed-
eral and local jurisdictions. Two
years after the disaster, the region
remained gridlocked by local rival-
ries, fewer than half the residents
had returned, disaster reimburse-
ments were held up by enormous
tangles of red tape, and very little
rebuilding had even started. Most
of the progress that was made
came from the grass-roots level,
such as businesses, churches, vol-
untary associations, and neighbors.
So the political system tried and
failed at authoritarianism and
competition and got stuck, while
the grass roots fell into collaboration and made progress. The political system, in its desire to manage
everything, did little to empower
the grass roots.
Two aspects of our contemporary culture may be further disincentives for collaboration. One is a
belief that we can win in every
negotiation by standing our
ground [ 4]. This belief leaves little
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