Is Solving Wicked Problems What MBA Programs Need To Prepare The Students For?
Students pursuing management education will be entering into the business world characterized by extreme VUCA conditions - volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, and complex. The disruptions created by the pandemic coupled with the technological advancements spur the complexities around us, making the ground unstable. The quotation from Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland) is very apt here: "My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere, you must run twice as fast as that."
The management schools have to work fast to ensure the course curriculum is reviewed comprehensively at this juncture. This is necessary to fortify that the program is good enough to develop the students to handle and face the VUCA world situations and developing capabilities to solve the wicked problems. Management schools will be required to train the students to develop skills and attitudes that help them solve the wicked problems. What are these wicked problems? These are the problems that are complex involving multiple interdependencies and involve complex trade-offs. The dynamics of cause-effect and lead-lag are not linear, and therefore, it is difficult to comprehend the structure of these problems. The characters of these problems can be summarized as follows:
At the outset, it is not possible to figure out the possible solutions ex-ante. Wicked problems would be difficult to structure as they are unique and have no elegant frameworks available to decode them. Here we deal with situations that may have multiple explanations and options, deal with numerous stakeholders and various disciplines. There are no true/false solutions for wicked problems, but solutions with the most negligible unintended consequences may need to be worked out.
What will it take? The approaches to handle these problems will need a lot of experimentation to navigate the unchartered paths and to put several heads together to explore unexplored arenas, understanding what will work and what will not. Exploration will require teams to be agile to lead the way and show resilience to discover new ways of working. Sometimes with these problems, we go in circles as there are many unknown parameters. Everyone may see the situation differently, and therefore generating a shared view is critical. The idea of the interconnectedness of various components of the problem with nonlinearities and the absence of clear solutions fit very well with the description of the wicked problems. Explicitly recognizing such characteristics, students should be able to invoke learning and develop at least a way of thinking about the possible approaches to handle these situations and their solutions, if not those solutions themselves. To summarize, solving wicked problems will involve:
The existence of wicked problems is not something new but has been in existence for ages. The growing business complexities have forced us to think and find approaches that can guide us in recent times. Several approaches that have been suggested can form part of the new curriculum, and these are:
First, the use of systems thinking and modeling interactions of various components of the system, within and external, helps to underpin interdependencies (within and external), understanding behaviour dynamics, and getting to a big picture. Deans of Business Schools need to ask whether they have "system thinking" covered in their curriculum. Decoding interconnectedness with cause-effect and lead-lag loops is an important characteristic of system thinking approval.
Second, application of collective thinking and dialogue through experiments with key stakeholders to focus on empathy, building social capital, relationships and ensuring deep engagement and distributed leadership to influence the outcomes. The pedagogues of the future curriculum should emphasize these.
Third, the design thinking approach provides the framework to work in a solution-oriented way and focusing on creativity using various approaches. The complex nature of such problems where we have no experience of handling them, non-existence of elegant frameworks, nonlinearities of the interdependencies and interrelationships among the variables, and potential of small changes producing significant changes at another place through the sensitive dependencies popularly known as the "butterfly effect," will require leaders to operate differently.
Fourth, developing a strong attitude of always remaining curious and keep asking questions. Solving wicked problems will need treading the paths with curiosity and asking intelligent questions. The context is continuously changing. What crisis will emerge next? Will there be further disruption? Will synchronous/asynchronous learning pose a challenge? Will learning be affected? How will working from remote affect our functioning? Are our organizations resilient to handle the next crisis? What financing options will be available in trouble? Is the company focusing on creating adequate reserves? Asking questions continuously will be practice to figure out how the corporate strategies evolve and how to invent and take the organization forward in turbulent times. It is important to remain focused on the problem.
Fifth, encourage failing. The decision-maker has every right to be wrong and make mistakes. Thomas Watson of IBM had said that the key to success is a massive failure. We need to learn how to fail. We have to learn with the experience of failure. Future curriculum development must recognize this aspect. The Deans should not suffer from the recency bias problem and not getting enthralled by immediate and past successes. It wasn't just that many companies could not recognize the increasing importance of technology, but it underestimated how important the transition is for them. In retrospect, many companies have been observed a classic case of a company being enthralled (in a way, imprisoned) by its past success. Recognizing these changes and figuring out your capabilities and resolve, one should not go backward? Never look backward. Many companies create capability and then decide to go backward. How does one ensure not taking the wrong turn? To equip oneself to handle the VUCA world will need skills of not falling into the trap of remaining the same.
Are we focusing on these adequately? Many of our Business Schools have developed Program Learning Objectives (PLOs) and Course Learning Objectives (CLOs). For example, developing skills of students to handle a situation from multiple perspectives, application of analytical frameworks, models, and tools to reflect critically on specific contexts, ability to analyze and connect different functional areas, and integration of the various regions and stakeholder perspectives to support overall goals, etc., are an integral part of the existing PLOs and CLOs. Maybe these need a more profound reflection in the context of the above discussion. The curriculum and pedagogy should focus on developing knowledge, attitudes, skills, and habits (KASH) to handle the volatility, complexity, and interrelatedness. Simply focusing on the knowledge and lower hierarchy of Bloom's taxonomy of learning skills will not be adequate. Still, business schools need to focus on teaching a complex set of skills and helping students to develop the correct set of habits and attitudes. In simple terms, focus on KASH (knowledge, attitudes, skills, and habits) to strengthen the learning ecosystem will pay dividends. We must remember that if we change by 10% world is changing by 50%, our survival is seriously jeopardized. Behavioural biases may creep up as the future is discounted radically, and the current status quo becomes a preferable option.
The program learning outcomes and course learning objectives should align with honing skills and preparing students to navigate turbulent environments, link and relate variables, train the minds to hear the unheard, understand, and explore opportunities to create value. The evaluation and feedback systems should be aligned to tests these skills repeatedly and build their character to face the world with boldness.
How do we bring these thoughts together and develop a robust curriculum that encompasses training on these approaches? Most business schools offer and deliver knowledge in silos. Minimal efforts are made to integrate; mostly, the process is left to the students. Business schools need to recognize this as an essential agenda for going forward and take necessary steps towards this.
 Antonio Maurizio Grioli Gautam Gupta Anju Modi Sunil Sethi Chairman FDCI Sh (1)_20241015134320_original_image_38.webp)
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