The Muddle
Welcome to The Muddle!
So happy to have you here.
In this series of posts, we’ve discussed uncertainty (incomplete and imperfect information, Part I of series) and we’ve discussed different types of problems (technical and complex, Part II). Just knowing that there are different types of uncertainty and knowing that there are different types of problems doesn’t always mean we know what we’re dealing with in a given problem space. The Muddle is what happens when we have uncertainty about what type of problem we face.
You are here.
Somebody with better graphic arts skills could no doubt communicate this better (any great graphic artists out there in Allophus that want to do better?), but what you’re supposed to get from the amorphous fog above is that we can be in the middle of a problem and have no idea whether it is a technical, complicated, complex, wicked or super wicked problem. Or even many of these things simultaneously.
Our most pernicious and difficult problems are often a combination of both technical and complex problems. We may have technical solutions for climate change, but we don’t have consensus about how to enact them. Building consensus is a complex problem. We are often poorly served (and frustrated) by people that oversimplify and say these problems are purely technical, because they ignore the social, behavioral and cultural components of a solution that will need to be arrived at by many actors. This is particularly troublesome when individuals (cough, politicians, cough) promote their solutions as the only one (epic saga syndrome). We need leaders that are ready to listen and explore solution space with us, not oversimplify it.
And then there’s incomplete and imperfect information. It is entirely possible for people to not understand elements of a problem that is well defined (we don’t know where every asteroid is in our solar system, but we know what size it would need to be to kill us) and it is also possible for people to understand a problem differently than each other - Israelis and Palestinians may both say they want peace but may understand the conflict and peace differently. In cases with incomplete information (including our own) we need ways to share information, evidence and facts that are trustworthy. In cases with imperfect information (including our own) we need ways to develop a better shared understanding of the problem.
In The Muddle we need to allow for:
The possibility that not everyone understands the problem the same way (they may have incomplete information or imperfect information, note that everyone includes you, so the corollary is that you may have incomplete and/or imperfect information!)
No one has all the answers (the corollary is that some people may have parts of the answers)
Agreement on facts or evidence is not sufficient to solve the problem - if we don’t know if we are dealing with a complex problem, knowing only technical fixes may be insufficient
Some critical mass of stakeholders will need to own a solution to even attempt the solution (and we might fail, because we don’t and may not ever fully understand the problem).
This is not easy stuff!
The Allophusians created ways to work together to push very large boulders around where Sisyphus couldn’t, through a lot of trial and error (learning, adapting) and communication (consensus building). We, all of us, will need to create better ways to work together in The Muddle.
Next, in the Project, we’ll talk about what the features of these types of solving mechanisms look like.
