Wicked wisdom: How Deloitte builds a process for thinking about big

Wicked wisdom:
How Deloitte builds a process
for thinking about big problems
At Deloitte University, more than 2,500
Deloitte professionals met in a series of
small group sessions as part of their
development program. And they devoted
an hour to what might be described as
a supercharged brainstorm.
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A battalion of brains
“We wanted to give our people a
sense early on that their skills can
really contribute to finding solutions
to the world’s biggest problems.”
– Jen Steinmann, Chief Transformation Officer, Deloitte LLP
At Deloitte, one of the largest networks of professional
services firms, the process of arriving at answers is as
important as the actual answers. If the method of problem
solving is successful and replicable, then it could be applied
to all sorts of problems that seem intractable. It could
be used by many different groups of people, whether
in companies or other kinds of organizations, such as
government departments, nonprofits, universities,
and so on.
Deloitte has launched a program called Wicked Problems
to exercise and hone employees’ critical and creative
faculties in a way that inspires them to seek solutions
to some of society’s thorniest problems. It is testing this
new process in the “laboratory” of Deloitte University,
the organization’s leadership center near Dallas. “We
wanted to give our people a sense early on that their skills
can really contribute to finding solutions to some of the
world’s biggest problems,” says Jen Steinmann, Deloitte
LLP’s chief transformation officer and an executive
sponsor for the Wicked Problems program.
Beyond its potential impact outside the organization,
the novel process of problem solving is intended to help
Deloitte’s people work better together for a higher goal.
“If you start to do that, then you get a different type of
workforce,” says Steinmann. “They look at our clients’
problems differently and learn the value of incorporating
different perspectives. So it’s intended to be personally
enriching, to help in the wider community, and ultimately
to help our clients as well.”
Deloitte began the problem-solving program by tackling
the elusive and universal issue of employee wellness. At
Deloitte University in the four months ending in January
2015, more than 2,500 Deloitte professionals met in a
series of sessions divided into small groups as part of their
development program. And they devoted an hour to what
might be described as a supercharged brainstorm.
Wicked wisdom: How Deloitte builds a process for thinking about big problems 3
Thinking by design
START
Immersion
Ideation
Experience
FINISH
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Employee wellness is an example of a
wicked problem–one that affects a large
number of people, has a social and
economic impact, and is intractable. It is
one where the proposed solution to the
problem has to be feasible, scalable, and
measurable. Such problems are more likely
to be solved by a group of people than by
an individual. The term “wicked problem”
was not invented by Deloitte. It was first
coined in the late 1960s by Horst Rittel,
a German design theorist and university
professor1. By this he meant problems
of social policy that could not be solved
by science and for which “there are no
‘solutions’ in the sense of definitive and
objective answers2.”
At Deloitte, Wicked
Problems is intended to
help participants improve
their ability to solve
problems, giving them an
opportunity to apply design
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thinking –a disciplined
approach to difficult
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problems–in three steps :
Immersion
This entails defining the problem and
setting boundaries around it to limit
the scope. Considerable work goes into
this stage among Deloitte University’s
Wicked Problems team to maximize
the opportunity for participants to
understand the context of the problems
being discussed and empathize with the
challenges faced by those experiencing
the problem in a short period of time. The
team also sets the stage for participants in
order to be as creative as possible to craft
something of lasting value.
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Ideation
Once the team has properly framed the
problem and has presented it to Deloitte’s
participants, the latter are guided through
a structured process of individual and
group brainstorming to generate and
discuss ideas. Each group chooses the idea
they think has the most potential. Then its
members work together to develop it to
the point where it is presented to the entire
meeting, whose size ranges from a couple
dozen people to more than 300.
Experience
Some of the delivery experiences include
an additional technique to prototype the
ideas. The prototypes might entail building
a structure or using craft supplies; the
ideas could be drawn and mapped on a
large poster or they could be placed on a
storyboard, if there is a narrative; people
could even act out a videotaped skit to
show how the user might feel or employ
the product that comes from the idea.
The program output from a sticky note to
a narrative is analyzed thoroughly for
insights and trends, and shared with
collaborators. Leading ideas are then
selected to advance efforts in the field
through various means such as eminence,
prototypes, or a pilot program.
Churchman, C.W. (1967). “Wicked Problems.” Management Science, 14(4), B141–B142.
http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/files/2013/01/Working-with-wicked-problems-2013.pdf
2
http://www.metu.edu.tr/~baykan/arch467/Rittel%2BWebber%2BDilemmas.pdf. Rittel, Horst W.J., and
Webber, Melvin M. (1973). "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning." Policy Sciences 4, 155-169.
3
The concept of design as a “way of thinking” in the sciences originated in Herbert A. Simon’s book
The Sciences of the Artificial (1969) and in Experiences of Visual Thinking by Robert McKim (1973).
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One example is An Introduction to Design Thinking, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University.
Wicked wisdom: How Deloitte builds a process for thinking about big problems 5
Design thinking may seem abstract but is in reality a
practical discipline that uses designers' methods to match
people’s needs with feasible solutions. At least 17 of
the top 30 companies in the FORTUNE 500 use design
thinking techniques to help solve complex business
problems and to innovate. For Deloitte, it is a valuable
tool for leadership and development. It fits into the
teaching methods of Deloitte University, which include live
classroom and team-based learning. Deloitte University has
been developing the leadership skills of its professionals
since October 2011 in Westlake, Texas, about 30 miles
from Dallas. Last year, nearly 60,000 people from Deloitte
engaged in learning programs ranging from one to five
days. A primary aim is to encourage people to think
differently, by examining a problem from various points of
view and evaluating possible solutions.
In a Wicked Problems session at Deloitte University,
participants collaborate as a diverse group and learn
to work together for a higher goal. It taps into their
aspiration to do good and make an impact that matters,
a desire that is common among workers of all ages,
particularly younger employees. Research has shown that
people in their 20s and 30s are looking for more than just
a job and want work that is consistent with their socially
and environmentally responsible values.
Deloitte University is seen as a logical place to experiment
with different approaches to problem solving and to
encourage its professionals to think unconventionally.
Deloitte’s leaders such as Steinmann and Pete Sackleh,
the managing director of Deloitte University, Deloitte LLP,
began preparing for the introduction of Wicked Problems
as part of the curriculum in early 2013.
Deloitte chose this method of problem solving to help
its professionals develop innovative skills that they could
apply in their client engagements and in the wider world.
“Wicked Problems is one of the ways we continuously build
and reinforce our culture of inclusive leadership. It provides
a forum in which all of Deloitte may participate, regardless
of seniority and function,” says Deb DeHaas, chief
inclusion officer, Deloitte LLP. Indeed, the process lends
itself to diversity and benefits from different perspectives
and different ways of thinking.
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“It’s important to stay fresh; we don’t
settle on one technique to solve a
problem. Design thinking techniques
have been used in a lot of different
organizations. Wicked Problems is
an interpretation of design thinking
for an experience we want for
participants within a time constraint.”
– Pete Sackleh, Deloitte University Managing Director, Deloitte LLP
“It’s important to stay fresh; we don’t settle on one
technique to solve a problem. Design thinking techniques
have been used in a lot of different organizations. Wicked
Problems is an interpretation of design thinking for
an experience we want for participants within a time
constraint,” says Sackleh.
Design thinking is one among several approaches
that attempt to come up with solutions or that try to
provide answers to a perceived need. In recent years,
crowdsourcing7 has become popular as a way of tapping
online communities for ideas. Another approach is
open innovation8, in which groups of researchers and
technicians, sometimes from competing companies,
collaborate to come up with new technologies. As with
Wicked Problems, collaboration is an important ingredient.
Working together in groups has been popular in the
scientific community for decades and is being applied to
more and more kinds of problems, on the assumption that
many heads are better than one.
Brown, Tim (June 2008). “Design Thinking,” Harvard Business Review.
Foster, Karen. “What’s Good About Generation Y?” Greater Good Science Center, University of California at Berkeley, Jan 24, 2013.
http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2006/06/crowdsourcing_a.html
Henry William (2003). Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology, Harvard Business School Publishing.
In the eye of the brainstorm
Once Deloitte University was ready to launch the program,
Deloitte sought to identify a topic for the first Wicked
Problems experience. The subject of employee health and
wellness emerged in the fall of 2014 from a discussion
of healthy eating and cooking between Deloitte and the
Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up by
President Clinton to focus on global challenges. Since the
foundation’s inception in 2001, it has focused on global
health issues. One aspect of this is the development of
programs around which certainly meets the definition of a
wicked problem—it affects a large number of people, has
a social and economic impact, and is intractable. Stress and
employee morale are an issue in the U.S. and many other
countries. One in two Americans, for example, is unwell
and the cost in terms of lost workdays totaled $153 billion
in 20139.
Deloitte had been formulating its own strategy and plans
to tackle employee health. “While we currently offer
market-leading health and wellness benefits and flexibility
options,” says Jennifer Fisher, national managing director,
for well-being, Deloitte LLP, “we are just beginning our
journey of creating a stronger and more holistic well-being
strategy by working with our people to better understand
their well-being challenges and creating the resources
needed to better manage work, client, and life demands.”
Wellness, then, seemed like a good fit for the first Wicked
Problems topic. The foundation enthusiastically agreed.
“We found there was mutual synergy and they had the
vehicle,” says Alexander Chan, associate director for
national strategy at the foundation. “We wanted to
harness the untapped knowledge of people who were
not necessarily specialists in health. Very often groups are
siloed, so by allowing outsiders to add to the conversation,
that’s a very valuable thing to have happen.”
“It was very different to
what we were doing
normally, learning
communication and
leadership skills. And
then all of sudden,
there’s this breath of
fresh air, something
completely different.”
– Hannah Leinberger, Manager, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Over the course of four months ending in January 2015,
more than 2,500 Deloitte professionals were engaged
in discussion about employee wellness. During this time,
Chan paid a visit to observe a session in which wellness
was discussed. The experience was “inspiring,” he says. “I
found Deloitte’s professionals were engaged and immersed
in the topic and were thinking outside the box.”
Wicked Problems sessions vary depending on the number
of people involved, but their basic format is the same. In
the case of the employee wellness issue, 60 managers
attended a session at Deloitte University in November 2014
near the end of a day of training. Divided into groups of
six, they were each armed with a whiteboard and Post-it
notepads. “It was very different to what we were doing
normally, learning communication and leadership skills,"
says participant Hannah Leinberger, a newly promoted
audit manager in Deloitte & Touche LLP’s New York office.
"And then all of sudden, there’s this breath of fresh air,
something completely different."
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Employee Health Improvement Framework, Clinton Foundation, 2014.
Wicked wisdom: How Deloitte builds a process for thinking about big problems
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Two coaches from the Wicked Problems team entered
the room, introduced the session and asked participants
to follow the instructions of a 30-minute video-facilitated
session, the video described the Wicked Problems
methodology, the wicked problem of employee wellness,
and the role of the Clinton Foundation in the choice
and framing of the topic. The video is intended to put
participants in the right frame of mind, encouraging them
to come up with the boldest ideas and to place themselves
in the shoes of the users of their ideas. The video also
helps to make the program scalable, since it can be
shown to hundreds of people, each of whom receives a
consistent message.
Leinberger and the other five members of her group were
asked to spend two and a half minutes brainstorming
by themselves to produce a list of ideas. Then she
paired up with another member of the group and they
picked a single idea from their respective lists. Next, they
spent seven and a half minutes developing their idea
by discussing how the idea would work in practice (the
resources and tools they would need, the organizations
they could work with, etc.).
Leinberger and her partner then presented their idea to
the rest of the group, and the others did the same, each
for one minute only. A coach wrote each idea on the
whiteboard, and the group as a whole voted for their
favorite idea by placing a Post-it next to the name of the
idea on the board. The team with the most popular idea
took home some Deloitte swag.
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”We wanted to harness the untapped
knowledge of people who were not
necessarily specialists in health.
Very often groups are siloed, so by
allowing outsiders to add to the
conversation, that's valuable.”
– Alexander Chan, Associate Director for National Strategy, Clinton Foundation
One remarkable fact about the sessions is that most of
them last less than one hour. This is not too short a time
to produce valuable ideas. In fact, Leinberger believes
that brevity is the key to success. “You don’t have time to
deliberate,” she says. “Getting us to think about the wicked
problem does not need a lot of time; you would likely get
the same results if you had a week to think about it.”
The speed of the process seems to be liberating; there’s
no time for participants to second-guess themselves, and
this quickly enables the best ideas to come to the surface.
Wicked problems have to be tailored to fit the time limit;
if the scale of a problem were too large, such as “solving
world hunger,” a one-hour brainstorming session of
non-specialists would not be valuable. The problem also
has to be something that non-specialists can tackle; if
it is too narrowly technical, a multidisciplinary group of
professionals would probably have little to contribute.
Rapidity is not the only hallmark of the Wicked Problems
process. The coaches in the program talk about the
importance of empathy among the participants. The latter
have to put on the shoes of those affected by the wicked
problem and thus immerse themselves in the problem.
One result of this empathy is that no participant feels selfconscious about making a mistake; there is no such thing
as a bad idea. This provides them with the space to think
unconventionally and boldly. Even though participants’
immersion in the wellness problem was brief, the Wicked
Problems team worked hard beforehand to prepare the
opening video for the sessions, describing the wicked
problem very clearly and providing just enough context to
get the participants started quickly
Factory of ideas
The sessions on the wicked problem of wellness produced
approximately 700 ideas, of which about 100 overlapped.
Deloitte has categorized those ideas and found that nearly
half of them belong to four main categories.
From those ideas, the Clinton Foundation chose 23 based
on being highly feasible, scalable, and measurable. The
foundation wanted them to be “grounded in reality” and
sustainable, says Chan, so that the idea would be useful
and relevant for a long time and address systemic issues.
The short list of 23 ideas includes programs to incentivize
workers to focus on wellness and others that focus on
psychological components, such as improving mental wellbeing through healthier relationships at work. Surprisingly
few solutions in the short list focused on technology,
although one suggested designing a mobile application
that would track a person’s daily nutritional intake.
At this point, a team from Deloitte and the Clinton
Foundation collaborated to choose six top ideas from the
23. One idea that made it to the top six was to establish
the position of chief wellness officer at large companies.
“The idea of creating such a position is one we really liked,”
says Chan. “We want to figure out how to take an idea
like that and build it into a menu of leading practices.”
"At a national level, we want to set
a high standard for employers to
identify and highlight organizations
doing health and wellness programs
at work and establish a set of
practices that others can try to
emulate."
– Alexander Chan, Associate Director for National Strategy, Clinton Foundation
Top six ideas
n Health and Wellness Index: A national health and wellness index
that provides an annual snapshot of employee wellness across the
nation and slices the information by industry, sector, region, and/or
business size as well.
Analysis of ~600 wellness ideas
n Chief Wellness Officer: Create a new role reporting to the CEO
for a chief wellness officer who would be in charge of overseeing and
promoting improved wellness within an organization.
17.8%
51.0%
10.8%
10.6%
9.8%
Employee Financial Incentive
Mandatory PTO/Flex Schedule
Fitness-Friendly Workplace
n Healthy Food Delivered Directly to Office: Arrange access to
fresh, healthy food deliveries to the workplace, follow a model similar to
membership in a food cooperative (co-op). Employees buy in to a plan
tailored to their needs and receive food on a regular basis.
Provide option for healthy ready-to-cook meals.
n Make Work Active: Gamify holistic health and wellness. Design
a points-based rewards program to incentivize employees for adopting
a healthy lifestyle at work, with programs tailored to industry-specific
wellness issues.
n Nationwide Wellness Challenge: Design an intra-company,
points-based rewards program to incentivize employees of different
companies to adopt a healthy lifestyle at work, with programs tailored.
to industry-specific wellness issues (i.e., gamification with intra-company
competition).
n Workday Recess: To promote a cultural shift toward a healthy
lifestyle, implement daily scheduled breaks from work that would give
all employees permission to get up and out of their seats.
Team Activity/Competition
Other
Wicked wisdom: How Deloitte builds a process for thinking about big problems
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The leading idea entails ambitious data collection and
analysis in the form of a health and wellness index across
the U.S., comparing employee wellness in companies,
industries, and regions. “At a national level, we want to
set a high standard for employers to identify and highlight
those organizations doing health and wellness programs
at work and establish a set of leading practices that others
can try to emulate,” says Chan.
The foundation is in discussion with Deloitte regarding
the implementation of the health and wellness index.
They have benefited from exposure to the large scale of
Deloitte’s human resources and are now armed with a list
of ideas to consider integrating into their work. “The goal
is to elevate the discussion and to move companies from
discussion to action. The health and wellness index could
be one of a suite of tools. We know from experience with
other issues, such as child obesity, that once leaders are
out in front on an issue, other organizations want to do
the same,” says Chan.
The Wicked Problems wellness program has benefited not
only the Clinton Foundation but also Deloitte, at both an
individual and an organization level. At the organizationwide level, Jennifer Fisher is very interested in the ideas
generated by Wicked Problems participants. Her mandate
is to drive strategies that create and support a culture of
well-being at Deloitte. “Our strategy is a comprehensive
approach to well-being–encompassing body, mind, and
purpose,” says Fisher, “and providing the support
and flexibility that empowers our professionals to
define and activate well-being in their own lives for
sustained engagement.”
At an individual level, Hannah Leinberger has applied an
idea that arose in her Wicked Problems session with her
project team. As a thank you for her participation in the
program at Deloitte University, she received an activity
tracker wristband. In January, Leinberger was part of a
team that was working long hours on a big project in New
York. She encouraged others on the team to also use an
activity tracker to help them break up the long hours with
bursts of activity. “It led to an improvement in morale and
more energy,” she says. It shows that a simple piece of
technology can improve wellness among a group.
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“At Deloitte, we believe that health
and happiness are critical
components in creating and
maintaining a high-performing
workforce. Our goal is to extend
beyond the standard wellness
program and instead focus on
building a culture of well-being by
supporting our people as they design
a healthy and centered life
professionally and personally.”
– Jennifer Fisher, National Managing Director for Well-Being, Deloitte LLP
Fired up by the success of the first Wicked Problems
exercise, Deloitte has moved on to apply the same process
to the issue of improving U.S. academic standards in
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM),
an area of education in which the U.S. has fallen behind
many of its competitors. Once more, the idea emerged
from discussions with the Clinton Foundation, which has
focused on STEM standards in U.S. schools for many years.
Wickedly wider
“After every delivery, we fine-tune the model and improve
our approach to get the best possible outcomes, in terms
of the ideas generated and the learner experience,” says
Aryn Wood Erwin, Deloitte University’s director of strategy
and operations, Deloitte LLP. Deloitte is committed to
continuous improvement. One element that seems to
need more work is the second step, which is defining the
problem. Wood Erwin says this part of the process must
not be underestimated: “We learned that how you ask a
question is critical and that the refinement of that
question is very important.” Chan sees this point, too.
“The prompt we initially developed around health and
wellness may have been too generic,” he says. “It was so
broad, it was hard to compare ideas. My recommendation
for successive iterations of Wicked Problems would be to
have more well-defined prompts, so ideas that come out
are comparable.”
Wellness was the first wicked problem to be analyzed
at Deloitte University, and the results are encouraging
enough for the sponsors and the team to develop the
initiative further, not only at Deloitte University, but also
outside it. “It’s becoming part of the fabric of how people
engage when they come to Deloitte University, but it’s
also developing in such a way that it can be executed
anywhere, anytime,” says Sackleh. “It’s not a Deloitte
University initiative, but a Deloitte initiative around our
innovation platform. It’s a tool that can be used to
develop or even teach innovation.”
In the next iteration of Wicked Problems, Steinmann says,
Deloitte wants to connect Deloitte University to its clients
by means of video conferences and eventually take it to
university campuses so that potential recruits will be able
to see how the organization develops problem solving
skills. Deloitte would not take Wicked Problems to a client
engagement per se, but it would count on its professionals
to have the mental flexibility to look at the client’s
problems in a variety of ways.
Even as the program evolves, Deloitte will continue to
hold true to the original idea, says Steinmann. This means
giving professionals “an experience where they can gain
confidence to push past where they think they can go.
When you think about those differentiators for business—
courage, optimism, confidence—we can go further than
we think we can and we can do that together. That’s
where I want Wicked Problems to go,” she says.
“We can go further than we think.
And we can do that together.
That's where I want
Wicked Problems to go.”
– Jen Steinmann, Chief Transformation Officer, Deloitte LLP
Health and Wellness Index
Concept:
A national health and wellness index that provides an annual snapshot
of employee wellness and slices the information by industry, sector,
region, and/or business size.
Components:
n Wellness Ranking: Create a nationwide index that focuses on the
best company for the health and wellness of employees. This can be
done by industry, region, and size of business. Use data from companies
such as number and types of insurance provided, monetary offerings,
non-monetary provisions, etc. Data would not infringe on privacy.
n Wellness Partnerships: Collaborate with health clinics to publish
tips and strategies that all industries could work to implement. Leverage
social media channels to promote the ideas.
n Company Surveys: Use company surveys to understand health and
wellness by industry and as a nation. For example, a Happiness Indicator
Survey where employees submit survey responses relating to how well
they feel they can take advantage of wellness opportunities at their
workplace.
n Improved Transparency: Encourage companies to disclose health
care costs (plan costs per person, service costs per person, investments
in health and wellness per person). Disclosure will help encourage
companies to take action to improve health and wellness.
n Rewards for Companies: Incorporate a national policy (similar to
carbon emission credits) that further motivates companies to improve
employee wellness.
n Innovation: Rather than creating a set of rules and lists that
companies have to check off, implement policies that motivate
companies to innovate, improve their wellness, and eventually improve
the ranking of their industry and region.
Wicked wisdom: How Deloitte builds a process for thinking about big problems
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Copyright © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.
Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.