Tag Archives: systemicity

Not getting lost in process

Not getting lost in process

Debates about political process and endless delays in making decisions threaten to weaken trust in our democratic institutions especially with regard to pressing matters like the provision of adult social care. Politics has become a “prisoner of process” (Bagehot, 2025). 

Bagehot makes a good point and cites Blair in support of the observation that process, rather than being the means to the end, has become an end in itself. Bagehot draws on Stafford Beer’s (not attributed) POSIWID heuristic – the purpose of a system is what it does – to suggest that the system’s purpose has become an endless cycle of debate without action, although, in passing, observing that deliberation is necessary to “ensure that decisions are simply not made” (my emphasis). This is all good, but I think there are a number of conceptual errors that unhelpfully muddy the argument.

Starting with Beer’s POSIWID, it is a simple observation that system is being interpreted here in a narrow sense. We would hope that any system of governance has feedback mechanisms in it. Rather than a simple linear sequence of steps we would expect something like deliberation → action → observation (of effects of actions) → comparison → deliberation → …, where the comparison step derives an error signal based on the difference between what was intended and what happened. This system should operate in a continual cycle of feedback – it is both unlikely that our actions achieve the desired effect and the world keeps changing anyway. While we might conclude that the evident purpose of the system is to endlessly deliberate i.e., deliberation → deliberation → …, we could go a bit further and observe where the system is broken – the action element is missing and therefore the feedback loop is not operating. I think we would both agree that the system needs to be repaired. 

POSIWID is useful and the elicitation of feedback loops, at any desirable level of detail, provides a powerful analytical tool; but I believe there is another way of looking at this problem and the use of a process approach offers some benefits, rather than being consigned in the narrow sense to a trap of deliberation. The key can be found in the way in which we use language in our analyses. I have previously railed against the use of language like ‘solution’ and ‘fix’ in the context of complex problems, but in the analysis of the feedback loop above I rather consciously used ‘deliberation’, ‘action’ and ‘observation’ to emphasise the linearisation of what should be a system and that this arises from the nominalization of elements that should be thought of as verbs.

Getting stuck in a process of deliberation, or an endless sequence of deliberations, is likely when all the actors, including analysts and commentators (expert and otherwise), are constrained by their nominalizations. A better conceptualising of process thinking is to think of governing as a process and that for it to perform it must consist of further processes such as deliberating, acting (or effecting change, or intervening) and observing (or measuring). These processes are all necessary for governing but none are sufficient, by themselves, for properly enacting the process of governing. Note the use of the gerund form of the verb to convey a sense of continual ongoingness of the process. We can decompose this schema (or model) to any level of detail that is required using conditions of necessity and sufficiency as a test on whether a process is required in the model. 

Coming back to Bagehot’s analysis, we can clearly agree that the process of acting is not working well, but it cannot be reduced to a simple intervention that is yet to happen and that will somehow ‘fix’ the problem. The process of deliberating is obviously not working well either, it is clearly not sufficient by itself to enable the process of governing and our measure of its performance should of necessity include its commissioning of useful planning to enable acting. Rather than being prisoners of process, we would be better served by realising that processes are all there are, both in the world and in our ways of intervening in the world. To do this, amongst other things, requires a change in our language, away from nominalizations, especially ones like ‘action’ and ‘solution’, and recognise that acting or intervening is a continuing and ongoing process and may be enacted at any level of scale (socially, temporally, spatially,…).

In the case of adult social care there is clearly a whole lot of process detail that is completely missing between deliberating and intervening and nobody seems to be talking about it. We are left with unedifying analyses and useless solutionist traps. 

Wicked problems and category mistakes

Wicked problems and category mistakes

This is a brief introduction to the notion of a wicked problem. It is based on the highly-cited paper by Rittel and Webber (1973). The following characterise wicked problems:

  1. There is no definitive formulation. In a sense, formulating a wicked problem is the problem
  2. There are no stopping rules. The process of intervening is also the same as understanding the nature of the problem – the intervention is “good enough” or the best that can be achieved within other limitations (e.g. of time, budget…)
  3. Interventions are not right or wrong, they can only be viewed as making things better or worse for certain interests i.e. the intervention has made things both better and worse depending on who you ask
  4. There is no immediate or ultimate test of an intervention. Interventions will generate “waves of consequences” over a period of time
  5. Interventions are “one-shot operations”, experiments are difficult to conduct, every intervention counts significantly, they are essentially unique in nature
  6. No enumerable, exhaustively describable, set of possible interventions
  7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique. “Essentially” implies that aspects may be common, but to think in terms of categories or “classes” of wicked problems with common “solutions” is misleading
  8. Wicked problems can be considered as symptoms of other problems i.e. there is inherent systemicity in the world
  9. Can be contested at the level of explanation, there is likely to be conflicting evidence or data

The corollary of this definition is that certain statements about problems are likely to be rendered false or meaningless if it can be shown that the problem is actually wicked, in effect the statement is demonstrating that a category mistake is being made. The following is not an exhaustive list:

  1. ‘Solving’ or ‘curing’ a wicked problem is a contradiction; there are no ‘solutions’, ‘cures’…
  2. Words that suggest an objective point of view used in the context of the problem at the very least need to be debated e.g. words like optimal, best, right, smart, correct, … all suggest the question – for whom? Alternatively, no decision taken should ever be considered wrong.
  3. Any statement of measurable quantity that supports an argument for the problem getting better or worse without acknowledging the dynamic complexity that systemicity implies i.e. “…worse then better…” is a more believable statement given dynamic complexity
  4. Statements that appear to deny the systemic nature of the problem e.g. ignoring requisite variety
  5. Containing irrefutable assertions of fact e.g. “…this proves conclusively that…”
  6. Use of binary choices, any mention of “silver bullets”
  7. Misrepresenting or ignoring plurality e.g. “The public…”
  8. Emphasis on producing plans rather planning as a process

If any of these corollaries are contested e.g. if someone claims to have a solution to a wicked problem, then they are likely to be making a claim about only an aspect of the problem, or only from a certain viewpoint; or their formulation is not that of a wicked problem i.e. they are talking about something ‘tame’. Statements that contain phrases like “…optimal solution…” or “…this proves conclusively that if we do this we will have the best outcome…” in the context of a wicked problem definitely signal a likely category mistake.

Category mistakes are a warning sign – be sceptical of claims being made. They suggest either misunderstanding or partiality.

It’s worth reading the Rittel and Webber paper. Despite its age, it still does an exceptionally good job of reminding us of the characteristics of wicked problems that’s just as relevant today.

The first steps towards a coherent approach to problem formulation can be found in Rosenhead’s (1996) introduction to Problem Structuring Methods.

Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155-169. doi:10.1007/BF01405730
Rosenhead, J. (1996). What’s the problem? An introduction to problem structuring methods. Interfaces, 26(6), 117-131. doi:10.1287/inte.26.6.117