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Drawing by Nancy Margulies www.nancymargulies.com

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Most people are very good at problem solving.

Perhaps that’s why the default stance for many of us is to frame the challenges we see in the world as a series of “problems.”

But what about the more intractable problems that plague us? The challenges that are so complex that we can’t even agree on what we are looking at, let alone what we should do about them?

These kinds of problems are better described as Messes, Wicked Problems, or Wicked Messes.*

When we apply problem-based thinking to messes and wicked messes, we nearly always make a bad situation worse - often much worse.

Coping With Wicked Messes - Shifting Our Focus from Problem to Participation will free you from the constraints of problem-based thinking. When people gain the ability to see the world not as “problems out there” but as “concerns we all share” new possibilities and news ways of thinking and responding to even the most intractable challenges emerge and become available for creative action.

When we focus on our participation, it becomes far easier to:

1. ~ Identify ways to effectively include all the relevant voices
   

2. ~ Tap the social intelligence needed to deal with paradox, uncertainty and ambiguity
   

3. ~ Explore what is possible given the systems in place
   

4. ~ Know when to use our problem-solving intelligence to take effective action
   

5. ~ Bring well intentioned people together in productive conversations
   

*Messes and Wicked Messes may sound like whimsical labels, but they are actually technical terms referring to situations with high systems and high social complexity.

“Problem solving” is the box we need to think outside of!