#ThinkfullyHabit: Experiment wickedly
What happens if you are faced with a problem where you can't define the objectives in advance and there’s no apparent ‘right’ answer? What if there’s not enough known about the goals or that things feel too tangled and complex to work out?
There are some problems which can’t be solved very well through using the usual route of identifying the objectives, defining the desirable outcomes and working through a series of scheduled tasks to get there. The Psychologist Gary Klein recognised these as ‘wicked problems’ that need managing in a different way*. It’s these problems where experiments may be the only way to find the route forward.
“Wicked problems won’t clarify themselves. The only way to make progress is to gain insights about the goals by struggling, learning and adapting. ”
WHY?
Experiments have long been a route to solving many significant problems. Let’s take scurvy as one example. It’s estimated that two million sailors died of scurvy between the sixteenth and eighteenth century. No one knew the problem very well, nor the cure. The game changer was made in 1747 through the use of a controlled experiment by physician James Lind. He separated those with scurvy into different groups, one of which was given citrus fruits to eat. People in this group were compared to people in other groups; and they recovered. On his next expedition Captain Cook took note of the experiment's findings and took on board large quantities of sauerkraut and ordered his sailors to eat fresh fruits and vegetations each time they came to land. By doing this, miraculously he did not lose a single sailor to scurvy on his expedition.
Controlled experiments have stood the test of time. In 2000, Google ran their first ‘A/B test’ to identify what the optimum number of results to display on its search engine results page would be. Fast-forward, and companies like Microsoft and Google are estimated to each conduct over 10,000 A/B tests every year as a very typical way to test preferable versions and user experiences. All controlled experiments.
If you find yourself facing a wicked problem that you can’t see an obvious solution for then instead of trying to solve what’s wicked head on, instead, try developing the hypotheses you could test. John C. Camillus**, Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Pittsburgh counsels organisations to, “abandon the convention of thinking through all their options before choosing a single one, and experiment with a number of strategies that are feasible even if they are unsure of the implications.”
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