Wicked problems are rarely isolated — they’re symptoms of something deeper.
The Grenfell Tower Fire illustrates Attribute 8 of Wicked Problems: every actor acted “within their role,” yet the system as a whole failed — a perfect web of blame.
🔍 What It Means
When you work on a wicked problem, you’re usually treating effects, not causes.
What looks like a single issue often hides a tangled web of interconnected forces.
Fixing one piece can make others worse — or reveal the real problem you weren’t looking for.
You can’t solve a wicked problem without tracing what’s underneath.
As Rittel and Webber noted, each problem is linked to another — and the boundary between them is never clear.
⚙️ Why It Matters in Business and Policy
- Misdiagnosis risk: Leaders act fast on symptoms, wasting resources on the wrong thing.
- Blame shifting: Teams argue over which department “owns” the issue.
- Reform fatigue: Fixes fail because root causes remain untouched.
- Fragmented metrics: Everyone measures their piece, but no one sees the whole system.
📊 Real-World Examples
✅ Urban Congestion
Traffic jams aren’t just transportation problems — they’re tied to housing costs, zoning laws, and job location. Solving congestion requires rethinking the entire urban system.
❌ The Cladding Crisis (UK)
The fire that tore through Grenfell Tower in London exposed a vast web of blame among builders, regulators, manufacturers, and policymakers. Each actor addressed their own “piece” of the system — safety standards, materials testing, procurement, funding, enforcement — but none saw the whole.
The tragedy wasn’t just about cladding; it was the symptom of decades of deregulation, fragmented accountability, and the belief that someone else was responsible.
Read more in my post on the Web of Blame The Web of Blame
📍 Employee Turnover
A company might see high resignations and launch a retention program. But the real issue could be leadership culture, workload, or lack of purpose. Addressing perks won’t solve burnout.
📋 Checklist: Do You Have This Problem?
- Your fixes keep creating new issues.
- The “real” cause keeps shifting as you dig deeper.
- Departments can’t agree on who’s responsible.
⚠️ If you checked even one — you have a wicked problem.
🛠 How to Navigate It
- Map interconnections: Identify which systems feed into the problem.
- Challenge boundaries: Ask what’s outside the frame that might be driving it.
- Use systems thinking: Focus on relationships, not isolated events.
- Align incentives: Reward collaboration on shared causes, not siloed fixes.
Back to the Full List of Wicked Problem Attributes
Something Wicked This Way Comes: A Wicked Problem.
Other Wicked Problems
- No definitive formulation of a wicked problem
- No stopping rule
- Solutions are not true-or-false, but better-or-worse
- No immediate and no ultimate test of a solution
- Every solution is a one-shot operation (no trial-and-error learning)
- No enumerable or exhaustively describable set of solutions
- Every wicked problem is essentially unique
- Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem
- The choice of explanation determines the resolution
- Planners have no right to be wrong
Reference and Further Reading
For readers who want to dive deeper into the origins and evolution of wicked problems, here are key resources and further reading:
Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning — Horst Rittel & Melvin Webber’s 1973 paper where the concept of wicked problems and their 10 attributes was first defined.
Web of Blame: A post on the results of the Grenfell Enquiry