Multiple Explanations
The humble restaurant order spinner is a perfect illustration of a wicked problem’s ninth attribute: multiple explanations that are all simultaneously true. A simple device, yet everyone explains its purpose differently depending on where they stand, what they value, and what they observe.
Why the Order Spinner Demonstrates Multiple Explanations
- The chef’s explanation: “It keeps orders in the exact sequence they were placed so the kitchen maintains flow.” This frames the spinner as a work-sequencing tool.
- The server’s explanation: “It prevents lost tickets and makes sure the kitchen sees everything I’ve handed off.” This frames it as a communication and error-prevention device.
- The manager’s explanation: “It increases table-turn speed and reduces friction between front- and back-of-house.” This frames it as an operational efficiency tool.
- The customer’s explanation: “It must be how the kitchen keeps track of who ordered what.” This frames it as a customer-service workflow device.
- The health inspector’s explanation: “It keeps paper tickets away from food prep surfaces.” This frames it as a hygiene and compliance tool.
- The engineer’s explanation: “It’s a low-tech, high-visibility information radiator that preserves state without electricity.” This frames it as a design and reliability innovation.
- The historian’s explanation: “It’s a surviving relic from pre-digital order management.” This frames it as a legacy artifact with cultural inertia.
The point is not which explanation is “right.” The point is that all of them are partially right.
Why Multiple Explanations Arise
- Different time horizons: People observe the problem at different stages of its evolution.
- Different spatial perspectives: HQ, the shopfloor, the kitchen, the serving area—each sees a different slice of reality.
- Different system versions: One person works with Version A, another with Version B, but both think they are discussing the same thing.
- Different mental models: Financial, technical, operational, psychological, political—each interpretation highlights different causes.
- Different personal incentives: People lean toward explanations that reduce pain or increase advantage for their role or team.
- Different data windows: Analysts choose different dates, scopes, or completeness thresholds.
- Different domain languages: Finance, engineering, HR, IT, and compliance each describe the same phenomenon in incompatible vocabularies.
- Different historical narratives: People remember different versions of “how we got here.”
- Different boundary choices: Each person draws the box around “the problem” differently—what’s inside, what’s outside, who counts, what counts.
These mismatches aren’t dysfunction—they are structural to wicked problems.
Leadership Implications
Because wicked problems generate multiple valid explanations, leaders must resist the temptation to declare one explanation as “the truth.” Instead, effective leadership:
- Maps the competing explanations rather than suppressing them.
- Treats each explanation as data, revealing what the explainer sees that others do not.
- Looks for overlaps and contradictions to uncover hidden structure in the problem.
- Accepts that no single perspective is complete; every explanation is partial.
- Uses the disagreement productively to frame experiments, trade-offs, and next steps.
When everyone agrees on what the problem is, it is no longer a wicked one. Your job as a leader is not to eliminate disagreement, but to make sense of it.
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.