(2) Define the Problem

How you define a problem can radically change the way you try to address it. You might understand one of the causes of an issue, but often there are many causes, with underlying causes behind those. You might see a lack of paid paternity leave to be a core issue in society and immediately consider employers to be part of the problem. Thinking a little wider, you might consider how state or national level policies are part of the problem. If you interview a campaigning group who specialise in this topic area you may discover that mother's attitudes are part of the problem, or male friends' parenting culture is part of the problem.

Suddenly everyone is the problem. In complexity there are no bad guys or good guys. Everyone is an actor in a system which might be generating a negative societal outcome. Working with actors across a system they can begin to see how things are happening for themselves and choose whether to reinforce it or be part of generating a different system dynamic. This is the messy nature of most societal issues; right and wrong are blurred.

To get closer to working with reality, the first process to go through is to make sure you're not assuming you know the nature of the problem. Most first attempts at naming the challenge are inaccurately described. It's easy to oversimplify, or only look one layer deep.

Exercises

Five Whys Assignment

To understand a problem and where it comes from, let's try this process:

Start with measurable symptomatic problems like suicide rate or CO2 emissions per capita. Line them up at the top of a whiteboard or realtimeboard (realtimeboard.com). Ask "why are these things happening"?

Create branches and new nodes underneath each one. For every new node/post-it/description of a cause, again ask "and why is THAT thing happening?". For CO2 emissions you might say "fossil fuel based energy for transportation and electricity" or "a fossil fuel based economy. What is causing that? "Fossil fuel subsidies" and "corporate vested interest." And then the question is - what's causing those? For example "a lack of public support for radical political action on carbon reduction"... and why is that the case? "a public perception of a lack of alternatives" and "a public fear that quality of life will be reduced back to the stone age if we transition off fossil fuels".

For every cause, think about the cause behind that cause. Follow different branches in your thinking back and back and back. Follow the threads back to colonisation, or back to privately owned banks, or back to a corrupt leader, or back to human fear, whatever the roots of it are from your subjective perspective.

Doing this in a group which has some expertise (studied or lived) in the issue will produce a causal map with more strength, but it’s also okay to get into this process with fresh eyes and a mixture of perspectives to turn over new considerations and be provocative. The important thing is to recognise that this map will not be "true" unless you have validated each of the linkages, but it will definitely give you new inspiration.

The aim is to refocus your attention on the way these issues are linked, rather than on solving one of the problems at the top of the chain. You could focus on reducing fossil fuel subsidies with an approach that caters to a fear of loss of quality of life & a lack of belief that alternatives exist. In this way, you can still tackle a concrete, measurable issue while also addressing root causes as part of your strategy, or vice versa.

Reality Bingo

To understand how your team has come to their passion for (and implicitly their definition of) a problem, try this process:

You can do this exercise with a group (your team or a set of stakeholders) to understand what evidence people are drawing on to support their problem definition.

The basic idea is that there are multiple truths in the room, and people tend to define a problem based on their knowledge of the issue. That knowledge or perspective may be true for them, but how do others see it?

Draw up a 2x2 grid with four boxes. Label each of the boxes:

• Lived experience through personal experience

• Lived exposure through the personal experience of close friends/relatives

• NGO or issue-oriented organisation's publications or events

• Academic definitions based on the results of research

Ask each person in the group to tell the story of why they are passionate about the issue they want to work on or work on right now. At the end of their story, every other person in the group takes note of which of the four quadrants that person is drawing their perspective from. From one story, you can put 4 dots in all four quadrants, or you might just put one. Continue this process until everyone has shared their story.

Work together as a group to count up the number of dots or points in each quadrant on everyone's total scores. Include everyone's record - it doesn't matter if the numbers are big or small, it's the ratio that matters.

When you have all the dots on one 2x2 grid, count them and compare the amount of lived experience, or academic information, or organisational information which the group is drawing from.

Have a group discussion and make a commitment to getting more information from the source/perspective you have the least of represented on your team. Collect any thing you notice about how people describe the issue differently based on different sources of passion for change.