We can embrace wickedness…or we can shrink away.

Wickedness “Out There.” Wickedness On Your Doorstep.

Every day life is full of wicked problems (TLDR: problems which are extremely complex and resistant to solution). It’s not just society’s obviously wicked problems like war, poverty, inequality, and climate change. It’s also very personal problems, like:

  1. How to earn enough to support yourself and your loved ones?

  2. How to stay professionally relevant in the coming 5-10 years?

  3. What skills are even worth developing when A.I. can be trained to match or surpass human ability in such a wide range of skills in a fraction of the time?

  4. How to attend to your health, relationships, and a sense of belonging when the engines of capitalism keep most of us so preoccupied with getting or staying ahead?

Seeing and Not Seeing Complexity

For millions of years of evolution, oversimplification and even outright denial of complexity has been a hardwired and highly adaptive survival strategy. Only in the past 12k years — coinciding with the emergence of agriculture and the development of larger societies — has seeing complexity become a source of personal and collective power.

A Glimpse of Our Wicked Landscape

We’re under every kind of pressure.
The common culprit is complexity.

Redistribution of Wealth
In 1980, the top 1% owned about 16% of global wealth. By 2020, this figure had risen to over 30%.

Obsolescence Via Automation
10 years ago virtually nobody would have counseled a high school senior that going into computer programming would be a poor career choice. Today, it is one of many highly technical skills which would not be advised. Just a few years from now, many more highly-paid careers will be largely automated.

Exponential Growth in a Finite World
Your wellbeing — and that of your loved ones — depends on a healthy national economy. “Healthy” economies today require exponential growth. Exponential growth is by definition unsustainable.

Short Term Capitalism
According to research by McKinsey & Company, 87% of executives and directors report feeling the most pressure to demonstrate strong financial performance within two years or less, and 65% of respondents said short-term pressure has increased over the past five years.

Short Term Governance
A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 65% of Americans believe elected officials prioritize their own short-term gains over the public’s long-term benefits.

Destructive effects of short-termism around the world (from the UK, to Latin America, to Subsaharan Africa) include erratic and/or irresponsible spending, incoherent policy, gridlock, and corruption.

Take Action.
Tame Wickedness.

Although we are not biologically hardwired to see — much less work with — complexity (quite the opposite), we can learn.

Wicked Leadership is a set of 7 trainable meta-capacities that can help humanity see complexity and tame complexity at work, at home, and in society.