Back to the Full List of Wicked Problem Attributes
Something Wicked This Way Comes: A Wicked Problem.
Every wicked problem is unique — even when it looks familiar.
🔍 What It Means
Tame problems repeat themselves: the same steps, the same outcome.
Wicked problems don’t. Each one sits in its own web of history, people, timing, and constraints.
You can recognize patterns, but never replay the same solution.
Context is the invisible variable that changes everything.
⚙️ Why It Matters in Business and Policy
- One-size-fits-all fails: Copy-paste strategies from other organizations rarely fit local realities.
- Benchmarking misleads: Similar metrics hide deep structural differences.
- False familiarity: Teams underestimate the problem because it “looks like last time.”
- Cultural blind spots: What works in one country or department may backfire in another.
📊 Real-World Examples
✅ Vaccine Rollouts
Every country faced similar scientific challenges, but social trust, logistics, and politics made each rollout unique. The same plan could not be copied wholesale.
❌ Corporate Mergers
A merger template that worked once failed the next time because leadership styles, timing, and economic climate were different. Similar playbook — different outcome.
📍 ERP Implementations
Even within the same software platform, no two factories share identical workflows, data quality, or user habits. Each site becomes its own transformation.
📋 Checklist: Do You Have This Problem?
- You’ve said, “We’ve done this before,” but it doesn’t work the same way.
- Teams assume lessons learned are universally applicable.
- Local context keeps overriding standardized plans.
⚠️ If you checked even one — you have a wicked problem.
🛠 How to Navigate It
- Start with context-mapping: Identify what’s different this time.
- Adapt, don’t adopt: Translate lessons, don’t transplant them.
- Empower local intelligence: Give autonomy to those closest to the work.
- Document nuance: Record what made your situation distinct — not just what worked.
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.