I have been enjoying reading a 2024 book by Guru Madhavan
titled Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World. It also has a preview
at Google Books. For two decades I conducted failure analysis projects to solve
what he describes as hard problems.
In the book he discusses four types of problems: hard, soft,
messy, and wicked. Beginning on page 7 he says:
“Call the first type ‘hard problems.’ They are bounded and
boundable, and scientific principles, market pressures, and sponsor
requirements neatly specify them. The outcomes are directed – even dictated- by
customers, consumers, and clients….Such problems can be mathematically
manipulated, chemically configured, and materially improved. Ultimately, they
can be ‘optimized’ by applying available knowledge and experience with the idea
that the best possible outcome exists and is achievable.
The second class, call it ‘soft problems,’ is in the area of
human behavior, which is complicated by political and psychological factors.
Because their endpoints are unclear, and thorny constraints complicate their
design, soft problems cannot be solved like hard problems; they can only be resolved.
There are no easy fixes to a problem like traffic congestion….Since soft
problems fuse technology, psychology, and sociology, resolving them yields an
outcome that’s not the best but only good enough. As Ackoff characterized it,
the results are based not on optimizing but on ‘satisficing,’ an approach that
satisfies and suffices.
The third class, ‘messy problems,’ emerges from differences
and divisions created by our value sets, belief systems, ideologies, and
convictions. A disease outbreak may involve hard problems with solutions such
as barcode-tracked supplies or antibiotic deliveries. The outbreak’s soft
problems might require resolutions like mapping infectious disease spread or
retooling the indoor environment to prevent the propagation of infection. Neither
resolution is exact, but both are good enough. By contrast, a messy problem can
involve a pathogen gaining antibiotic resistance or intersecting with delicate
religious rituals, as we’ll see with Ebola…..Messy problems can be reframed out
of existence not by optimizing or satisficing but by ‘idealizing.’ In Ackoff’s
words, this entails getting the matter ‘closer to an ultimately desired state,
one in which the problem cannot or does not arise.’
If they were works of art, hard problems would be photographs,
offering clarity and directness. Soft problems are like blurry brushstrokes of
impressionism, and messy problems are spilled and splattered abstractions. A
wicked problem emerges when hard, soft, and messy problems collide. Think of
them as a cubist collage where the truth is simultaneously sharp, shaky, and
squiggly. All three are required for wickedness. Hardness is nestled in soft
problems, and hardness and softness reside within messy problems. By extension,
a solution can be within a resolution, and a dissolution might contain resolutions
and solutions.”
Chapter three of the book discusses the failure of a fifty-foot
tall, ninety-foot diameter steel molasses tank that occurred on January 15,
1919 – when it had been filled for the first time. It killed 21 and injured 150.
Wikipedia has an article about it titled the Great Molasses Flood. On page 114
Dr. Madhavan says:
“Based on the technical manuals of the time, the Purity tank’s
safety factor should have been at least four times the strength chosen. The tank’s
thin walls, selected as a cost-savings measure, proliferated a rapid fracture.
Since the 1850s, when steel production ramped up, low-temperature brittleness
has been a problem. Microscopic analyses from the Boston Navy Yard showed that
the tank’s fractures were herringbone, a zigzag damage pattern. The breakdown
of riveted constructions remained common well into the mid-20th century;
during the winters of 1943 and 1944, World War II Liberty ships literally broke
in half, embrittled.”
But he is wrong about the Liberty ships, which were welded
rather than riveted. The textbook example for failure was the tanker SS Schenectady, which broke in two on January 16, 1943 while she was moored at a
dock in Portland, Oregon.
Another tanker, the SS Pendleton, broke in two during a gale
south of Cape Cod on February 18, 1952. 32 sailors on one half were heroically rescued
by four men in a 36-foot Coast Guard motor lifeboat from Chatham, as depicted
in the 2016 film, The Finest Hours and above in a sign at the Chatham station. You
can watch a nineteen-minute YouTube video titled The Daring Sea Rescue That Shocked
the World.
There was another horrible failure involving a tank storing
liquified natural gas in Ohio. The Cleveland East Ohio Gas Explosion on October
20, 1944 killed 131 people.
A ten-pointed image from Openclipart represents a wicked
problem.
