Tuesday, 9.06pm
Sheffield, U.K.
There is a lot of stuff we can’t control, but it is completely in our power to decide what the definition of what a good job is. That’s up to us. – Mike Rowe
I’m carrying on with reading Holwell, S., 2000. Soft Systems Methodology: Other Voices. Systemic Practice and Action Research 13, 773–797, and today I am going to focus on a single paragraph.
But first, some background.
I’ve been writing more on LinkedIn recently and I’m finding it tricky to find the right kind of tone.
A writer on LinkedIn is incentivised by the system to chase engagement and likes – it’s the dopamine reward for putting the “right” kind of content on the platform.
That content is designed to stop and engage you, and so it uses certain psychological triggers – clickbait of one kind or another.
With each promise in the headline, there has to be a payoff to keep you from being disappointed; you need a nugget of wisdom in exchange for stopping your scroll.
This is something that’s tricky to deliver if your message is that the world is complicated and when you start trying to make sense of it things usually get more complicated.
And that things are usually harder to do than you think.
But the kind of message that hooks you is look at this thing you need, we’ve got an easy button for it, and if you buy this everything in your life will be better.
In a roundabout way, this is the point of the paragraph that I’m reading – the difference between simple and complex, between well-defined and ill-defined problems.
A well defined problem is what is 2 x 3? You don’t need to worry about what is 2 and what is 3.
I struggled to find a word for this next point and came up with it’s a closed problem – you don’t need to know anything about the properties of graphite to figure out the answer. The pencil you use has no impact on the problem, neither does the room you’re in or the ongoing dispute you have with a neighbour.
It’s a means-ends problem – what means do I need to achieve this end? To solve the problem you must have some knowledge of arithmetic or know someone who does.
And finally, there is a stopping point. There is a solution. You know when you get to the answer that there is an answer, and this is it.
The kinds of problems we face in real life are often not of this sort, they are instead ill-defined.
There isn’t really a “problem” but a problem situation.
Take a look at the news right now.
How would you, if you were the leader of a country, respond to what is going on in politics?
It’s got to be a hard one. You may agree with the policies. You may disagree with them. You might disagree but have to pretend to agree because you haven’t got any cards. You might have to disagree because that’s what your people want you to do, but really you want this whole thing to be over and retire to your country house.
What you’ve got isn’t a problem but a problem-situation.
In such problem-situations the context matters. The way you act will be different if you have power, or if you need support from others, and whether you can count on support or if you have to persuade others.
Such approaches require problem structuring – what are the tradeoffs, what kind of agreements could you reach, what levers do you have?
I imagine the kind of frantic negotiation that happens when a bill needs to be passed and the sponsors need to call all the legislators they know and engage in horse trading to get the task done. You know it’s heading in the right direction when everyone is about the same amount of unhappy.
And then finally, there is no end point, there is no solution.
The best you can hope for is that you’ve made the world a better place – that there has been some improvement.
In the next post, we’ll try and get back on the history track.
Handcrafted insight 