Decision Making / 4 / 4.3

4.3 AVERSION TO DEALING WITH EXCESSIVELY COMPLEX ISSUES

In decision-making processes, and in management generally, there is frequently a gap, or disjunction, between those who make the decisions and those who are required to advise, analyse, or implement. Executive decision makers would prefer, for a variety of reasons, to distance themselves from the mess of detail and dynamics of complex problems. This creates barriers to learning, informed decision making and effective risk management. See Section 1.10. Further to those barriers already identified, there are a number of others identified by those who have researched similar accidents and problem situations. They are explained here to give us further insight into the difficulties we encounter in coming to grips with wicked problems in risky situations. However, before determining how we might recognise triggers, symptoms, warning signs, root causes, and underlying systemic structures, which produce dynamic behaviour, it is both valuable and important to reflect further upon the nature of wicked problems:

Wicked problems are not necessarily wicked in the perverse sense of being evil. Rather, they are wicked like the head of a hydra. They are and ensnarled web of tentacles. The more you attempt to tame them, the more complicated they become (Mason and Mitroff, 1981: 10).