Wicked problems in a VUCA world

The industrial revolution led to an era characterised by relative predictability: design a television, make TVs, sell TVs, redesign TVs, make TVs, sell TVs. Manage the business to do that. That worked for at least half a century.

A foundation of leadership education at Ashridge is that we now live in a VUCA world of wicked problems — volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Things will change, and we can’t predict how or when. Wicked problems have no single solution; even the challenges we can foresee will escape any single, simple fix.

In such a world, leaders must draw on and nurture creativity. Team members need the high intrinsic motivation that comes from autonomy, purpose, and the pursuit of mastery. Extrinsic motivation (e.g. performance-related pay) and command-and-control leadership tend to extinguish intrinsic motivation, and the creativity that comes with it.

The research team I lead tackles wicked problems — in particular, how we can more accurately forecast ecological dynamics, such as fish stocks ten years from now. So while I was familiar with the territory, I hadn’t connected it to leadership before. Ashridge helped make that connection, and in doing so helped crystallise a personal leadership style that resonates with my research, that will bring out the best in team members, and that I understand and can keep developing.

Running a business

The programme included a business simulation, run at the rate of one simulated year per real hour. My small team of classmates competed against four other teams, designing, marketing, advertising, and selling retail products. The presence of the other teams created real uncertainty about the outcome of our actions — we didn’t know what products they’d produce, how hard they’d advertise, or the state of their finances. It’s a testament to the programme that our small company won the competition (there were only four of us, so we all played a key role).

While I’m happy we won, I think more often about the mistakes we made, how we succeeded anyway, and what the other teams did differently. As it turned out, we’d been making a fairly serious mistake for the entire simulation — had it continued longer, we probably wouldn’t have won.

The most significant lesson I took from the simulation was about what actually drives me. After we won, a classmate suggested I was probably highly competitive. I realised I don’t much care whether that’s true, because it’s not the important part. What I care about is learning new things so I can perform better than I could before, being creative, and seeing others (and myself) take on the hardest problems we can find. It’s nice, but for me relatively unimportant, that this kind of behaviour often also creates the best chance of winning.

Collaborating and challenging

Perhaps my greatest concern going in was how I’d get on with my classmates. Almost all were from the business world — managing director, development director, strategy director, vice president, financial controller — from a wide range of sectors. How would I compare, would I make a fool of myself, what would they think of me? I was stepping well outside my familiar ivory tower.

I was challenged again and again, and had to ask what P&L, KPIs, and B2B/B2C meant. I probably said some naive things. But I never felt judged, by instructors or classmates — quite the opposite. They were enthusiastic, supportive, open, observant, creative, and fun. The learning experience the instructors created was highly collaborative, and challenged all of us; we learned at least as much from each other as from the instructors. It’s given me real optimism that many leaders in the business world build success through supportive, safe, and authentic relationships.

That might sound a bit warm and fluffy for “business folk.” None of my classmates were bankers, though one was a lawyer — but joking aside, all were highly driven, ambitious, and at times challenging. My optimism comes from seeing so many people show, believe in, and demonstrate that giving is a powerful, probably necessary partner to drive, ambition, and disruption.

Being a better dad

Before kids, life was relatively predictable and controllable: up at 7am, make breakfast, eat breakfast, read the paper, walk to work, work, go home, sleep, repeat. None of that is certain any more — the arrival of my kids brought volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, with no simple or single solution to the challenges they create. And they themselves will grow up, live, and — with whatever leadership I can offer — thrive in their own VUCA world of wicked problems.

— Owen Petchey, April 2016

What is fairness in the workplace (organisational justice)?

Distributive fairness (justice): individuals assess their own contribution-to-reward ratio and compare it with their assessment of their colleagues’. This looks like deservedness-based fairness, as distinct from sameness (everyone gets the same reward regardless of contribution) or need-based fairness (reward based on need rather than contribution). High distributive fairness might be thought of as a meritocracy based on equality of opportunity.

Procedural fairness: involvement in decision-making processes. This enhances the perception of fairness, because people feel they can influence a decision, and because merely expressing an opinion can have positive effects on its own.

Interactional justice: fairness in how employees are treated within organisational procedures — e.g. during a hiring or promotion process — enhanced by truthfulness, respect, appropriate questions, and clear justification.

On equality versus equity: in the workplace, equality seems to be the stronger influence, though measures to promote equity also exist. As Dr Angie Hobbs put it on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “For me, the most attractive interpretation is that each person is of equal worth and should have the opportunity — ideally, an equal opportunity — to access goods, but most of the goods themselves will be proportionally distributed, according to need in some cases and merit in others.”

Fairness assessment requires perceiving one’s own situation relative to others’, so accurate perception matters — and accurate perception is likely tied to effective communication (my own thought, not from the literature).

My conclusion: workplace fairness is mostly about how fair workers perceive their environment to be, largely on meritocratic grounds.

Is fairness in the workplace important?

Two meta-analyses found that high workplace fairness predicts “high job satisfaction, high performance, low withdrawal, fewer counterproductive behaviors, high organizational commitment, and more organizational citizenship behaviours” (Fujishiro, 2005, citing Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001, and Colquitt et al., 2001).

A few more quotes from Fujishiro (2005):

“Fairness, or justice, is one of the most fundamental concerns in society.”

“A lack of perceived fairness was negatively associated with employee well-being.”

“High workload was associated with high strain only when perceived fairness was low.”

“Low levels of organizational justice may act as an occupational stressor and have detrimental effects on employee health and well-being.”

A large-scale longitudinal study in Finland found that a lack of organisational justice is associated with subsequent declines in self-rated health, absence due to sickness, and psychiatric disorders.

The ease with which I found convincing evidence for the positive effects of fairness made me conclude that it’s an important issue, both for individuals and for organisations.

Objections to fairness

Are there studies, theories, or ideas suggesting unfairness might sometimes be desirable — or that concern for workplace fairness might be pointless or unprofitable? Here’s what I found in the little time I gave myself:

• The world isn’t fair — reality isn’t fair, there’s no such thing as a genuinely fair system.
• There may be higher-priority issues in the workplace.
• Chasing absolute fairness may itself cost performance — there’s presumably a curve of diminishing returns relating gains in perceived fairness to the effort spent pursuing it.

One stimulating (if disagreeable) read put it this way: “Our idea of fairness isn’t actually obtainable. It’s really just a cloak for wishful thinking.”

My conclusion: it’s worth thinking carefully about whether investing in perceived fairness is worthwhile — i.e. whether the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs.

How to increase workplace fairness (should you wish to)

From Workplace Tribes: “Treating people fairly is important. Ensuring that they feel fairly treated is even more important.”

I ran out of time on this one, but hope to come back to it.

References

Cohen-Charash, Y., & Spector, P. E. (2001). The role of justice in organizations: A meta-analysis. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 86(2), 278–321.

Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 425–445.