Centre for Innovation

in Health Management

Working in Systems:
The Landscapes Framework
Pat Gordon Diane Plamping Julian Pratt

Whole Systems
Working Papers
November 2010

Acknowledgments
We have developed and refined these
ideas in workshops with colleagues
over many years. Our thanks are
due to all of them for their tolerance
and readiness to share ideas
and experience.
We thank John Harries for sharing his ideas about
project management; and Rosemary Field for
commenting on a draft version and contributing
one of the examples.
Pat Gordon
Diane Plamping
Julian Pratt
CIHM Associates 2010
www.wholesystems.co.uk

Centre for Innovation in Health Management

The Centre for

Innovation in
Health Management
(CIHM) at the
University of Leeds:
The CIHMs purpose is to improve
public service in the UK and to foster
innovation and change in health and
wellbeing services internationally. Our
focus is on systems and organisations
the place and set of relationships in
which public service is executed.
CIHM is a network of doctors, public sector
managers, organisational change consultants and
academics, who are passionate about improving
public services. We believe that CIHM is unique
in that it is a think and do tank: not only do we
undertake major pieces of academic research but
we also work with public sector organisations to help
create the conditions in which change occurs. We
work with partners nationally and globally to generate
new knowledge and apply it in the quest to deliver
more efficient and effective public services.

Contents
Introduction............................................. 4
1. Systems thinking.................................. 5
Adaptive systems and designed systems.............5
Boundaries.........................................................7
Both/and............................................................7
Whole systems...................................................7

2. Making sense of your environment:

the Landscapes Framework.................. 8
Goals, individual or collective..............................8
Problems, tame or wicked .................................9

4. Acting effectively: making use of the

Landscapes Framework . ................... 20
Competition......................................................20
Coordination.....................................................22
Co-operation.....................................................23
Co-evolution.....................................................25
Example: tackling obesity..................................27

In summary........................................... 29
Annex 1 Terminology of tame
and wicked problems.............................30

Four landscapes...............................................10

Annex 2 Action planning

in four landscapes . ...............................32

Mountain.....................................................10

References...........................................................38

Jig-saw........................................................11

Working in systems workshop................................39

Donkeys......................................................13
Icefield........................................................14

3. Moving around the landscapes........... 16

Some examples................................................16
Getting to action...............................................19

Introduction
Whole Systems Go is the title of a
2009 paper by the National School
of Government and the Public Sector
Leaders Alliance1 which calls for a
whole systems approach to thinking
about government and public services
and new patterns of inter-organisational
working in order to tackle the crosscutting problems facing citizens and
communities, such as child protection
or crime and the fear of crime. Some
10 years earlier the Department of
Health insisted that The strategic
agenda is to work across boundaries
underpinned by a duty of partnership
past efforts have shown that
concentrating on single elements of the
way services work together... without
looking at the system as a whole does
not work2. In 2010 the language is of
the big society, localism and Total
Place as another new administration
seeks to tackle intractable problems.
People readily understand that many of the issues
facing public services do not sit neatly within
one organisation or one sector. They recognise
that piecemeal approaches do not solve complex
problems and yet, in trying to tackle these, the
tendency is to break them into manageable
component parts. At the same time, however, there

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is growing understanding that, when you cant do it

alone, you have to find ways to get the system as a
whole to operate differently but how to make that
happen? How to progress from analysis of a problem
to effective action?
Systems thinking offers both a way of understanding
the world and a way of intervening to make things
happen. In other words, theory can be intensely
practical when it helps you decide what to do. We
suggest that the type of systems thinking that is
useful depends on the environment you find yourself
in and determines the sort of practice that is likely to
be effective. We describe a Landscapes Framework
which offers a way of thinking about different types
of situation in which people work together on a
problem. Each of the landscapes calls for a different
set of tactics in order to produce the successful
behaviour that gets things done.
We originally described this framework over ten
years ago in the context of inter-organisational
partnerships3; but it applies just as cogently to
single organisations or departments. This is an
updated and expanded version. It is addressed to
public sector managers and practitioners who are
sceptical enthusiasts, curious but not much taken
with magic bullets. Section 1 begins with a brief
discussion on systems thinking. Section 2 Making
sense of your environment sets out a framework
based on judgements about the nature of the
problems people face and the nature of their goals.
This gives us four possible landscapes. In Section 3
we give some examples of the way in which players
find themselves moving between landscapes and
adjusting their behaviour accordingly. Section 4
Acting effectively describes the methods and
behaviours that are effective in each of the
landscapes and is illustrated with the example
of tackling obesity. The paper concludes with a
brief summary.

1. Systems thinking
A system is something that can be
conceptualised both as a whole and
as a set of interconnected parts. In
human systems we refer to these parts
as players whether they be individuals,
groups or organisations. One or more
of these players may think systemically
and we call this player an animateur.
This player gives attention to the parts,
the whole and the connections, and
although one of these will be in the
foreground at any given moment, the
animateur always gives attention to
all three*.
The parts: An animateur gives attention to each of
the players, ensuring that the conditions are right
for them to survive and to do their best while also
preventing them from doing their worst.
The whole: An animateur looks beyond the activity
of individual players, asking whether the system as a
whole is achieving what it could achieve and taking
action to shape the whole so that it behaves more in
the way they would like it to.

The challenge of how to get things done when you

cant do it alone arises within a single organisation,
with its multitude of departments and professional
groups, as much as in inter-organisational settings;
and systems thinking can be applied fruitfully to
organisations, teams and indeed families.

Adaptive systems and

designed systems
There are several ways of thinking about systems,
each of which implies a very different theory of
change why and how particular actions and
methods bring about changes in the way we do
things. Anyone who wants to take action to make
a difference in the world will employ a theory of
change, even if this is implicit. Our theory of change
is rooted in an understanding of the distinction
between designed and adaptive systems4 5 6.
Metaphor is a way of illuminating our thinking
about the world7 and we describe two useful and
contrasting metaphors for ways of organising in
human enterprises machines (designed systems)
and living systems or ecosystems (adaptive
systems). Each is a systems approach but the
underlying mental model of how systems organise
is different.

Connections: An animateur gives attention to

the connections between the players who
communicates with whom, what are the flows of
information, the relationships of power and authority,
the nature of feedback loops and so on.

We have found it hard to find a term that conveys the role of a player who thinks and acts systemically in a range of different
sorts of system. We experimented with system organiser, rule maker, having oversight of the whole, promoter of necessary
conditions, shaper of landscape and in the end decided to go with the term animateur in the sense of to cause to come alive
or to make happen.

Designed systems, machine metaphor

The dominant theory of change in our culture is
derived from a view of the world as a simple system
simple in the sense that the behaviour of the whole
can be predicted from knowledge of the behaviour
of the parts and their connections, even where
this is complicated. Order has to be designed in. A
designer has to take responsibility for analysing the
current situation from a position of objectivity and for
proposing an intervention that will have the desired
effect either because it is so persuasive that people
change their behaviour or because you have control
over them. This is a designed systems approach
and the interventions can be described using the
metaphor of a machine re-design, re-engineering,
leverage. It is a sequential approach in that analysis
leads to policy, which leads to action.
The designed systems approach is a powerful way
of understanding and describing, but its great
weakness is that there is so often a disconnect
between the policy analysis and the action that
makes a difference. A lot of energy has to go into
motivating people to carry out the policy which they
have had no part in developing.
An example of this sort of designed structure is a
firm that decides what to produce, whom to employ,
what roles each will play and what will be the
sanctions and rewards.

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Adaptive systems,
living systems metaphor
An alternative theory of change is derived from a
view of human systems as complex adaptive systems
that are capable of organising themselves (selforganising). When such a system is not acting as you
would want it to, it is likely either that it is organising
to achieve something other than its stated purpose
or that it is being constrained by its environment. As
there is no external designer, any actor in the system
(individual, team, group, organisation, community)
may take on the role of animateur and perturb
the system in the hope that it will self-organise to
achieve a different purpose.
This is an adaptive systems approach and
interventions can be described using the metaphors
of living systems and ecosystems interconnection,
interaction, identity, patterns, flows of energy. It is
a non-sequential approach in which the sharing of
understanding and purpose is not a precursor to
action but an integral part of it.
An example of this sort of adaptive structure is a
social network that influences an individuals diet,
exercise and weight8.

Boundaries

Whole systems

The boundaries of a designed system are created by

its designer. The boundaries of a complex adaptive
system are created by its own internal dynamics, in
interaction with its environment. Everybody is part
of many human systems for instance a family,
a neighbourhood, supporters of a football team,
a work group. We suggest that human systems
organise around purpose (what is important to them)
and meaning (why it is important). People choose
whether or not to take part. If you are connected
to others who share the same purpose, you are
part of a human system organised around that
purpose. The boundaries of adaptive systems
are not the same as the boundaries of organisations
or professions.

The term whole systems does not have a single

agreed meaning but has nevertheless proved to
be useful. In the 1990s we worked together on an
action research programme based at the Kings
Fund and developed a combination of theory and
practical methods of working across boundaries
which we called Working Whole Systems9 . Its
original sense was intended to convey a way of
working based in adaptive systems and the living
systems metaphor which was applied to a domain
(inter-agency work). People responded to the term
whole systems as an invitation to think beyond the
limitations of a competition-based NHS and would
say things like we dont know what a whole systems
approach is but it sounds interesting.

Both / And
Some aspects of the work of a human system
require the formal authority, accountability and
hierarchy of a designed system. Other aspects
require the capacity for self-organisation, adaptation
and evolution. We find it fruitful to think of most
human systems as both designed systems and as
living systems. The important thing is to be able to
distinguish between them so you can recognise what
sort of system you find yourself in at a particular
time, and identify how you might operate effectively.

When New Labour came to power in 1997 they

brought a language, indeed a duty, of partnership
to the public sector and a commitment to joinedup government. It seems clear from the form they
prescribed for Local Strategic Partnerships and
Action Zones that they intended these partnerships
to follow a designed systems approach that
coordinates the activities of different agencies. The
term whole systems entered the vocabulary of the
public sector, particularly the health service, and
came to be applied to any sort of system-wide interagency planning.
There is a coherent literature in which whole systems
approaches are rooted in adaptive systems thinking;
but whole system is also commonly used to refer to
any approach that is system-wide, even when rooted
in disciplines such as strategic planning.

2. Making sense of
your environment:
the Landscapes
Framework
We describe a framework of four
environments or landscapes, each of
which calls for different tactics in order
to get things done. The starting point is
to recognise which landscape you are
in and what you are dealing with. The
framework is derived from judgements
about the nature of the problem
and the nature of the goal; whether
the problem is tame or wicked
and whether the goal people seek is
individual or collective.
These judgements, about the nature of the
problem and the nature of the goal, set up four
possible landscapes.

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Problems, tame or wicked

Wicked problem

Wicked problem

Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

Tame problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

Goals, individual or collective

To the right side of the landscapes framework,
players pursue individual goals. To the left, they also
have some collective goals.
Collective goals and joint undertakings between
organisations are avoided in the private sector,
by and large, but there are usually some areas
of common interest e.g. horizontal groupings
such as trade associations and cartels or vertical
groupings such as a manufacturer and its supply
chain. In the public sector, on the other hand,
joint ventures are assumed. There is the high-level
collective goal of serving the public good but, at the
same time, organisations are driven by their own
policy imperatives, budgetary requirements and
departmental responsibilities. There are plenty of
good reasons for misunderstanding whether and to
what extent public sector organisations are pursuing
a collective goal.

Tame problems are found below the line in the

landscapes framework, while wicked problems are
found above the line.
Tame problems are those where people more or less
agree what has to be done and how to go about it.
Tame does not necessarily mean easy reaching
a solution may be difficult and solutions may be
complicated but tame problems can usually be
defined, analysed and resolved in a sequential
manner. With a tame problem there is an existing
knowledge-base of tried and tested solutions that it
is possible to exploit. We can predict what success
will look like. Building the Olympic Park in East
London is a tame problem difficult, complicated,
costly and controversial but we know how to plan
to do it and there is plenty of experience to learn
from. In organisational life and professional practice,
preventing people from doing their worst, in the
sense of incompetence or fraud, is in principle a
tame problem. It may not be easy but there is no
doubt about whats needed good regulation.
A wicked problem, on the other hand, is a situation
where, even with a goal they are all agreed on, a
group of people will have quite different views on
the nature of the problem, what may be causing
it and how to resolve it. Securing the Olympic
legacy, for instance, is quite a different matter from
building the Olympic Park. Childhood obesity is
a wicked problem. Poor communication between
professionals is a wicked problem, as evidenced
in child protection inquiry after inquiry. In terms
of professional behaviour, enabling people to
do their best is a wicked problem open to many
interpretations and possible forms of action. A
wicked problem may be clear enough at strategic
level, but not at operational level. A wicked problem
cannot be tackled simply by exploiting existing
knowledge; what is required is exploration of a range
of possibilities. (Annex 1 sets out a
more detailed description of the tame and
wicked terminology.)

Tame and wicked problems are not in themselves

good or bad, desirable or undesirable they just
are. For many commercial organisations one of
the key strategic decisions is how much resource
to put into exploiting their existing knowledge base
and product line (tame) and how much to put into
exploring possible new products (wicked). Problems
are dynamic, not static, and a wicked problem
today may be tamed for a while, even though it
may present itself as a wicked problem again in the
future. These situations are familiar to us. In social
life what counts as success is often contested. In
organisational life, different views on the current
state of play, incomplete evidence about what works,
uncertainties about what others intend and how
they will respond all contribute to the wickedness
of a problem. This does not mean that there is no
purposeful way of tackling wicked problems, but
wicked problems are not solved in a once-and-for-all
way and intervention in a wicked problem is likely to
give rise to unintended consequences10.
It is the designed features of accountability and
formal authority that are intended to tackle tame
problems, and the adaptive feature of self-organising
that is best suited to wicked problems. Whats
important is to be able to distinguish between tame
and wicked because they call for different tactics
and behaviours in order to act effectively.

Four Landscapes
i) Mountain: competition
Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

In this landscape each player is pursuing their own

goal and believes they know how to achieve it. The
mountain peak represents a tame problem which
somebody, somewhere has tackled before, and
there is enough knowledge of what has worked in
the past to exploit in this venture. If an animateur
sets up a competition and defines what success
looks like they can give coherence to the activities of
many players. A sporting body, for example, decides
the rules of the game, its duration and the criteria
to be met for a win. A commissioner decides the
service they want to commission, and how to decide
amongst potential providers. An interview panel
decides the specifications and the weightings to be
used in selecting applicants for a job. If the rules are
set well, the animateur can harness the creativity of
players. This is a landscape which enables architects
to come up with creative designs, sportspeople to
improve their performance and contractors to refine
their offerings and hone their prices.

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The language in this landscape is of competition,

best practice, success, benchmarking, winning,
as well as allegations of cheating and appeals
to fairness. The characteristic behaviours and
artefacts that allow you to recognise where you
are include invitations to tender, clearly set out
rules and regulations, lists of competencies,
markets, competitions, auctions, contracts, targets,
performance frameworks. Rewards and sanctions
are set out openly. The focus is on the relatively near
term winning the match, getting the tender and
on tightly defined, therefore fairly narrow, goals.
The negative side of self-interest can lead to grave
injustice and to coercion and control when players
exploit differentials in power. But competition is a
mechanism that can harness each players pursuit
of their own goal to give rise to purposeful and
coherent behaviour, as demonstrated by contexts as
different as sport and the market economy.
What this environment is good for
Competition offers the possibility of getting the best
out of each of the players optimising the parts
and is a good strategy when improving the parts
is likely to raise the game overall. In some ways
this landscape can be seen as low maintenance
as it requires no agreement, or even direct
communication, among players and there are no
uncertainties about what to do to succeed.

ii) Jig-saw: co-ordination

hold the collective goal in focus, but as long as each

player delivers their piece on time and to standard,
they will complete the jig-saw.

Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

In this landscape the problem is once again tame.

The goals can be described and painted on the
jig-saw for all to see. The steps which are necessary
to achieve these goals can also be described, based
on past experience of what works (and these could
be visualised as the painting running though the
whole thickness of the jig-saw so that it is visible to
all levels within an organisation). The big difference,
compared to the mountain peak, is that players have
to rely on others to achieve the overall goal. The task
is to co-ordinate the activities of the players. This is
the terrain that people most often assume they are in
when they choose to work together.
Coordination is a good way of delivering complicated
projects when the goal is shared and can be
divided into manageable chunks, each of which
can be tackled independently and then assembled
e.g. the many contractors building a bridge or the
public service organisations developing emergency
plans for responding to a disaster. Each player is
responsible for one or more pieces of the jig-saw.
They come together with the intention of delivering
pre-set, shared objectives based on a consensus
about what works. Once they have committed
themselves to playing their part, individual players
dont need to see the whole picture. Someone has to

The chief executive of a high-tech engineering

company was interviewed about the firms
contribution to building the Large Hadron
Collider. He was very proud of having
manufactured a component to the specified
design and within a tolerance of thousandths
of a millimetre. When asked what part the
component plays in the collider, he replied he
had no idea.
In patient care, what matters is that each
professional delivers their piece of the jig-saw in
a way that fits well with adjacent pieces. Once
protocols have been negotiated in a surgical
team, for example, each professional does not
need to see the whole patient pathway, just
to deliver their piece in a manner that allows
others to play their part.
The key to recognising this landscape is that there
is agreement about strategic goals and agreement,
too, about the operational plans required to achieve
them. This is the landscape where most planning
sits and observables include things like strategic
plans, option appraisals, project plans, paper trails,
contracts, project initiation documents, partnership
agreements, operational plans. The language here
is of good practice, joint ventures, due process,
transparency, coordination and evidence-based
practice.

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12

The caveat is that the paradigm of planning and

project management is so familiar that we assume
we know what is entailed and mis-apply it to
situations where there is no collective goal or where
the problem is wicked and there is no consensus
on what works. In other words, the picture on the
jig-saw may be illusory. The reason coordination and
project planning are so valued may be because they
deal up-front with factors like risk management and
metrics and resource allocation. Factors like these
have to be managed whenever work involves several
players and while it is tempting to think there is
one best way of addressing them, they matter in all
the landscapes and their appropriate management
varies in each. (see Annex 2: Action planning in all
four landscapes).

iii) Donkeys: co-operation

What this environment is good for

When a group of players agrees a shared goal, and
how to achieve it, the pay-off is that they achieve
much more than any one of them could manage
on their own. Like the mountain peak, the jig-saw
is a good place to carry out initiatives that can
be planned on the basis of past experience and
knowledge of what works. The great attraction is the
belief, tenaciously held, that applying learning from
other places holds out the promise of roll-out
and transferability.

The image of the two donkeys tied together and

pursuing their own stock of food illustrates a wicked
problem. Neither is interested in the others welfare.
Neither knows at the outset how to achieve their
goal but they recognise they will have to act in a
way that triggers helpful behaviour from the other.
The rope in this image signifies the key insight that
co-operation arises when players recognise that their
futures are linked. They are exploring new territory
in this landscape of individual goals and wicked
problems. They cannot know in advance what the
right behaviour is because it will depend in part on
the future behaviours of others, which may in turn
depend on how the first player behaves now. As with
all wicked problems, the first steps are important
and each step shapes subsequent possibilities. The
steps along the way cannot be predicted and each
player may have to try some non-obvious behaviours
to influence the actions of others (and be prepared
to abandon them and try something else if they
dont). This is about cycles of behaviour over time,
not one-off activity.

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Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

Political process is the means of balancing different

opinions and interests and finding pragmatic ways
of operating that allow people to work together on
certain issues and remain in conflict on others.
When players want to get things done and find that
they can agree, or at least go along with, some of
the goals of other players, this leads to the formation
of coalitions and shifting alliances based on giving
and withholding conditional support. The prize is
the possibility that co-operation may arise entirely
out of self-interest, I can get more of what I want by
co-operating with you.
The characteristic language here is of win/win, give
and take, coalition, reputation, the long game, social
capital. The artefacts and behaviour that help you to
recognise where you are include shared currencies,
trust, requests and offers, deals, alliances, resourcesharing and a sense of what goes around comes
around. Players build on the particularities of their
history in the knowledge that they expect to share
a future.
And, of course, co-operation can be negative as
well as positive people cooperate to defend insider
interests, to exclude rather than include, to make
dirty deals, to reinforce compliance with the rules of
closed societies and so on.
What this environment is good for
The attraction of co-operation is that it can be
very efficient. It does not need the time and effort
required to reach agreement about a collective goal.
It is characterised by the growth of trust and social
capital. Players are prepared to work together to
achieve their own ends, and co-operation around
one issue can build reputations and set the scene
for further co-operation in the future. This is a low
risk opportunity to build relationships that can lead
to other forms of working together.

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iv) Ice Field: wicked problem, collective goal

Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

Players share broad goals in this landscape but

there is no consensus on how to achieve them.
The problems are wicked and the future uncertain.
This is where we find the challenge of seemingly
intractable issues like obesity, or inequalities of
wealth and opportunity, or shifting to a low carbon
economy. The image we use here is of an ice field,
constantly shifting, in which floes move around
exposing unexpected patches of freezing water*.

As with all wicked problems there are likely to be

many players each with their own take on the nature
of the problem, what may be causing it, and how
to resolve it. They may recognize that interactions
between them produce knock-on effects that can
have unexpected consequences. They will have
some shared goals but these will be much less
precisely defined than the pre-set objectives of the
jig-saw; and there is unlikely to be agreement about
what works. Operating effectively here is about
roping up together; players who recognise their
inter-dependence agreeing to explore possibilities in
the hope of co-producing something together for a
shared purpose. An example would be the challenge
of how to reduce the amount of waste we send to
landfill sites. It is a safe bet that there will be strongly
held views about why landfill sites are becoming
saturated and whether solutions are to be found in
penalising households that throw away too much
or incentivising people to recycle or reorganising
refuse departments or compelling supermarkets to
reduce packaging waste or renegotiating EU targets
or convincing shoppers that plastic-wrapped carrots
are not OK, or all of the above.
One way of recognising that you are in this
landscape is to realise that you have tried every
other approach you can think of (including
trying to convince others that you have the right
answer). The language to be found here includes
uncertainty, complexity, learning through doing,
interconnectedness, long-term, resourcefulness,
culture change. Observable artefacts and behaviours
include bringing in different voices, structuring
conversations that help people see a problem in
a new light, rapid proto-typing, action research,
building trust, multiple stakeholders, conversations
to explore possible futures.

This is not a good approach for tackling tame

problems or for people who want to coerce others
in a certain direction. To some people exploring
possibilities may appear to be little more than
chewing the fat or time-wasting talking shops. For
those who are rewarded for clear remits and tight
agendas when they operate in the designed system,
it can be a jolt to find that dialogue can be effective
in leading to action. There are lots of tried and tested
techniques for constructive dialogue that can spark
new insights and, when certain conditions are in
place, lead to new ways of working.
What this environment is good for
Recognising that you find yourself in this landscape,
and that there are effective ways of working
here, allows you to engage with issues that would
otherwise seem too wicked to tackle. There is no
need to pretend that you know at the outset what to
do or that there is accepted best practice that can
fix it; and because exploration benefits from bringing
together different perspectives, you are no longer
on your own. One advantage of recognising that you
are in the ice field is that you stop wasting the time
and effort that are needed to maintain the illusion
that problems are tame. Another is that you have to
choose whether to explore or not it is a matter of
putting your energy into things you feel passionate
about. This is a good place to begin for a group of
people concerned about a particular challenge that
all of them want to resolve but that none can fix on
their own.

Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

Caveat
By now it will be clear that our aim in this paper is to
describe the possibilities for positive behaviours in
all four landscapes. We acknowledge the dark side
where differentials in power are exploited, players
collude to fix prices and make corrupt deals and so
on; but our focus is on understanding the nature of
the different landscapes and the practices that work
well in each.

We first used the image of the Scottish Highlands to bring to mind a landscape that is rugged, in the sense that it is
topographically uneven and a climb to the top is not a smooth steady progression but a series of ups and downs, diversions
and attempts. That image captures the ruggedness but not the deformability of an environment that is constantly changing
and where snapshots and helicopter views are of little use.

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15

3. Moving around
the landscapes
At this point you might ask yourself if
this framework illuminates your own
experience of working with others to
get something done. If it does, you
will almost certainly recognise that
you often move from one landscape
to another as circumstances and
purposes change, as illustrated in the
examples below. We believe that there
is no right or wrong way of moving
around the landscapes, though some
trajectories occur more frequently
than others.

Examples
A routine procedure that runs into problems
A surgical team carrying out an operation has a
shared goal and treats the procedure as tame. They
have trained to carry it out, and the sequence of
actions is well-rehearsed they are in the bottomleft (jig-saw) landscape. If something unexpected
happens, they may well have considered this
eventuality and rehearsed what to do. But sometimes
something happens that turns the problem into a
wicked one, where the team need to improvise a
solution, and here they will need to talk, perhaps
challenge, and explore possibilities together. They
have moved from the bottom-left landscape (jig-saw)
to the top-left (ice field), and when they identify a
suitable course of action will soon move back to the
bottom-left. The difference between high- and lowperforming surgical teams lies not in how often things
go wrong but in how quickly they recover.

Strategic alliances
Airlines provide an example of firms that compete
with each other for passengers (bottom-right),
perhaps even on the same routes, but enter strategic
alliances to co-operate to offer Frequent Flier deals
to their customers and share back office functions to
save costs (top-right).
All the NHS trusts in a region may co-operate to
set up a recruiting drive in another country then
compete for any applicants this generates.
Every year the NFL (National Football League) in the
USA showcases the rising stars of college football.
They start by co-operating to allow the lowest
performing teams in the league to have the first
pick of the new players, and only after that do they
compete for players.

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

The consultation

Developing and implementing policy

Most patients and doctors hope that each

consultation will include a process in which the
goal of the consultation is established that is to
say, that the consultation will move rapidly from the
bottom-right (where each has their own expectations
of the purpose of the consultation) to the left hand
side of the framework. Sometimes the problem is a
tame one but more often it is wicked, with both the
solution and even the nature of the problem still to
be explored.

Over the course of ten years, four reports identified

that doctors had difficulties accessing health
services for themselves, particularly when they had
problems with mental health or substance use. A
small group of psychiatrists had been lobbying the
Department of Health (DH) for improved access
to health services for doctors. A senior clinician at
DH was supportive. The reports and the lobbying
were attempts to build from the goals of individuals
(bottom right) to a desired shared goal (left).

Sometimes consultations get stuck in the bottomright, with either the doctor or the patient knowing
what the result of the consultation should be,
and one or both goes away dissatisfied. Where
doctor and patient have a series of consultations
over a period of time, not only can each come
to understand the other better but there is the
possibility of increasing give-and-take as cooperation arises (moving into the top-right), opening
the way for the establishment of a shared goal.

The DH clinician had one of his regular meetings

with the Medical Director of the National Clinical
Assessment Service (NCAS), which provides an
assessment and advice service where there are
concerns about the performance of doctors. In their
wide-ranging discussion, the question of the health
of doctors came up. The Medical Director was aware
that 25% of doctors using his service had health
problems and that NCAS had difficulty signposting
suitable services and offered to explore ways of
tackling the problem. This conversation had led to
co-operation that could serve both of their individual
goals (top right), and characteristically took place in
the interstices of a meeting that had a
different purpose.
The Medical Director recognised that different
individuals and organisations (the General Medical
Council, doctors who had been patients, employers,
psychiatrists providing services) had somewhat
different views and priorities relating to this issue.
Under his direction, staff in his organisation used
the opportunity of an international conference on
doctors health to work with an informal group
committed to making something happen. He
had effectively recognised that this was a wicked
problem and took the essential first step of bringing
together those who were passionate about the issue
(top left). Each member of this group went back into
their own spheres of influence to do whatever they
could to move things forward, from advocating to the
Secretary of State to sounding out existing providers.

17

They decided to bring together a working group to

think about possible models for a service to meet
needs that were not being met. There was no
off-the-shelf model, and some strong views about
what would be appropriate. The working group
deliberately expanded the breadth of interests to
include deaneries, psychiatrists, occupational health
physicians, addiction specialists, managers and
doctors who had provided services for doctors, and
ex-users of services for doctors. They met several
times and their conversations were exploratory,
eventually reaching agreement on a proposed
service model (by doing the necessary work in the
top left they tamed the problem sufficiently to take
their work back into the bottom left). The secretariat
of the group wrote a report which was submitted
to DH, which committed funding for a pilot. They
then encountered a delay while they identified
a commissioner (unsurprising, as they had not
included a commissioner in their working group),
and then together they wrote a specification for the
service a relatively straightforward task because
of the extensive discussions that had taken place in
the working group. This was then put out to tender
(bottom right) and a successful service provided.

Trying co-ordination first

Getting to action

Drug Action Teams were set up to coordinate the

activities of local agencies based on evidence
based good practice in reducing drug use and the
harm brought about by drug use. This worked well
enough in a small city where some progress was
made e.g. setting up needle exchanges in new
settings. However, the chief police officer, a local
clinical specialist and the chief executive of the
local primary care trust reached the conclusion that
these interventions would not be sufficient to get the
outcomes they wanted. None of them was sure what
to do next. Everything they could think of was highly
contentious. They were in an ice-field, and moving
away from described good practice was a different
order of risk and politically dangerous.

Some people are naturally adept at moving between

different approaches depending on the task in
hand an obvious example is the ability to explore
possibilities in ways that are inclusive and openended, and then delegate detailed planning and
execution to a group with a clear remit and tight
timeline. But you only have to sit through a meeting
at which people are trying to explore possibilities and
commit to action at the same time to realise how
frustrating it can be, and how these two different
purposes require different ways of designing and
conducting meetings.

They agreed, in the first instance, to support each

other in meetings where resistance to their opinion
was anticipated (roped together for safety). So both
the clinician and the PCT chief executive attended
the Police Authority meetings to chip in and support
their colleague, and vice versa. Gradually it became
clear that others shared their views and wanted
to try and make a difference. This heterogeneous
collection of potential collaborators expanded slowly
and created the space to try some politically risky
initiatives e.g. not charging people caught with small
quantities of cannabis. This has been mainstreamed
in many places now.

The following illustration11 is intended to show that

action, if it is to be well-directed and sustainable,
has to rest on the foundation of planning which itself
requires the exploration of possibilities. It reminds
us that the exploration of possibilities means that
players will have to put in time and use it to grow
connections amongst themselves. The original use of
the triangle is derived from the recognition that those
organisations which successfully manage change in
turbulent times are committed to action but know
that they have to make exploring possibilities
real work if they are to get the best range of
potential plans.

We find that when people share an understanding

of the landscapes framework it can provide a quick
and easy way to communicate about fundamental
assumptions, and this in turn may make it easier to
work together. It can be a neutral way of describing
the shifting ground of their experiences of
working together.
Practices that work well in one of the four
landscapes may be counterproductive in others, and
to be effective you need to know where you are and
adjust your behaviour accordingly. The framework
clarifies which ways of working are effective in each
landscape, and these are described in more detail in
the next section.

Action
Planning
Possibilities
Connections
Time

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19

4. Acting effectively:
making use of
the Landscapes
Framework
If the description of the framework
resonates with the worlds you operate
in the next question is: how can you
operate purposefully and effectively
when you find yourself in each of the
landscapes? In this chapter we re-visit
the landscapes and set out briefly the
ways of working that are likely to be
effective in each. We do this from the
perspective of an animateur (see page
5) and a player.

Competition
Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

Competition can give rise to purposeful and coherent

behaviour within this landscape where each player is
pursuing their own goal. When certain conditions are
in place competition is a good strategy; for example
when success is measurable and recognisable
(everyone has to climb the same peak), when the
motivation of players is not in doubt, when the
rules of the game can be specified and enforced. It
requires active players and an animateur who is well
enough informed to specify what success looks like
and offer a set of rules that are coherent and plain
for all to see. Providing it has been set up wisely,
competition can be relied upon to stimulate the selfinterest and creativity of players.
In order to shape the landscape an animateur
has to:

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

Define success and clarify what winning means

(no moving goalposts)

Specify and publicise entry criteria to

encourage entry

Trust the creativity of players

Set out and enforce regulations

Review consequences for the system as a whole,

and for the players

There are a number of caveats. Although it is

relatively easy to promote competition when success
can be defined precisely, as for a widget, it is
much less easy for something like an educational
programme. There is a risk, though, of over
specification if the commissioner of a competition
feels the need to specify how they want success to
be achieved, rather than what success looks like,
they will fail to make use of the wisdom of players in
imagining what could be provided. An architectural
competition, for example, will release the greatest
amount of creativity if the brief describes in detail the
use to which the building will be put and, in general
terms, the desirable attributes like longevity, energy
efficiency, cost but not the materials, design, layout
and so on.
There are many ways of defining winning personal
best, first past the post, all who meet a standard
and they impact on the system as a whole in
different ways. Selecting all those who reach a
threshold, rather than a single winner, is a means of
increasing the pool of potential players. An example
is the popularity of marathon running in recent
years. Being a marathon winner has always been
an achievement but when success was re-defined
to include completing the distance, this led to a
great increase in the number of people entering the
competition and capable of winning. Winner-takesall, on the other hand, can lead to the elimination
of all but the most successful. The unintended
consequence can be that the best becomes the
enemy of the good, and the gap between the best
and the rest widens. The impact on the system as a
whole can be a reduction in variety, robustness and
innovation.

As a player in this landscape the key tasks are to:

n

Understand what counts as success

Concentrate on improving your own performance

Consider what happens if you lose

Negotiate your entry

One of the caveats here is that although taking part

in competition can motivate players to raise their
game, the costs of competing may outweigh the
benefits. If everyone has to complete a full tender,
there is a lot of wasted effort and players either
become highly selective in the contracts they tender
for or increase their fees to cover the cost of bidding.
When a contract is to be awarded to just one of a
dozen players, the chance of winning is low. Players
may find themselves subject to a lot of uncertainty
in the contracts they win and these risks are passed
on down the line e.g. through short-term
employment contracts.
Competition has to be regulated to be fair, and be
seen to be fair. Usually this important feedback
loop is the responsibility of the animateur, but bad
behaviour is not always visible to them and all
players need to be able to blow the whistle
when necessary.

21

Coordination

In order to shape the landscape an animateur

has to:

Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

In this landscape players have a shared goal and

each knows the part they are expected to play
in order to achieve it. Coordination is a good way
of delivering complicated projects. Planning is
the organising mechanism and this requires an
animateur to be given authority to take an overview
of the whole, to assume executive power, direct the
planning and manage the project. In public services
this function is often filled by a group with legitimate
authority delegated to them, often by central or
local government.
The necessary conditions for coordination to
work well include a shared picture of how things
could be (not just should be) based on past
experience of good practice, real consensus on
how to do it and shared belief that the task can
be completed if everyone plays their part. Active
project management is required and that means
prior agreement on clear goals, methods of resource
allocation, timelines, risk management, deliverables,
anticipated organisational impact and an exit
strategy12. Project management is a way of working
with interdependencies so that the contributions of
players are ordered and sequenced effectively.

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

Set up real negotiation on both strategic and

operational goals

Clarify which goals really are collective

Invest in active project management

Expect surprises and plan what triggers a review

Invest in dealing with misfit and re-fit

In commercial contracts the animateur motivates

players with money. Contractors are usually happy
to do their bit as long as they are paid, and may
be kept to time by penalty clauses. In many public
sector contracts the incentive is a strategic goal
some aspect of the public good and the animateur
has to articulate this clearly enough and often
enough to motivate players to carry on doing their
bit, despite the inevitability of other demands
and priorities.
Sometimes, if plans are to be carried through and
indeed to be financed in the first place, goals have to
be presented and treated as though they were tame.
This requires a judgement that the assumptions
are reasonable enough to set off hopefully, rather
than a judgement that they will continue to be valid
throughout. Surprises along the way are inevitable
and the paradox is to expect the unexpected.
Deciding what should trigger a review is easier done
in advance than in a crisis.
The key tasks for players in this landscape are to:

Playing your part means both delivering your piece

of the jig-saw and paying attention to the boundaries
with other players. This is like a relay race in which
each player has to run, and also manage the
handovers. Each piece of the jig-saw articulates
with its neighbours, and each player will need to
understand the roles and responsibilities of those
working in the departments they connect with. This
is not about directories of names and job titles, but
real communication about what is important to them
and which behaviours help or hinder.
Service failures so often occur at the boundaries
between departments or professions or
organisations e.g. when patients are transferred
between hospital departments, when children
make the transition from primary to secondary
school, when young people with mental health
problems are left in limbo as they become
too old for child and adolescent mental
health services.
One of the challenges in this landscape is that while
it may not be difficult to reach agreement at board
level, it is at the operational level that any agreement
has to be made to work. This requires robust
negotiation at the outset between the animateur and
players who can deliver their piece, and amongst
players themselves, so it pays to invest time in
understanding each others circumstances from
the start.

Co-operation
Wicked problem

Collective goal

Individual goal

Tame problem

The basis of co-operation is a gift economy in which

players make offers in the expectation that their
gift or favour will in due course be reciprocated by
another, in other words what-goes-around-comesaround. This expectation may not be explicit and
is quite different from the trading behaviour of a
market economy where goods and services are
exchanged in a series of transactions that are each
complete in themselves. Co-operation is voluntary
and the aim is to get more of what you want by
triggering helpful behaviour in others. A player in the
role of animateur would recognise that it requires
less commitment and maintenance than the other
landscapes no tendering or contract management
and no need to agree collective goals.
Co-operation is not usually planned or designedin but arises when certain conditions are in place.
These conditions have been extensively studied in
game theory13. In order to shape the landscape an
animateur has to:

Negotiate goals and targets robustly, and the

steps to achieve them

Provide opportunities for players to meet and get

to know each other

Deliver your piece of the jig-saw

Emphasise when futures are linked

Respect the needs of other players you want

them to deliver their piece

Create opportunities for repeated interactions

between players

Challenge others who dont deliver

Change the pay-off structure to reward cooperation and make it clear to all

Invest in teaching people the guiding principles

of co-operation

Tell stories of co-operative behaviour and how

we do things here

23

Expressions like you-scratch-my-back-and-Illscratch-yours may remind us of the opportunities

for corrupt as well as beneficial purposes. It is
important for an animateur to be aware of these risks
and from time to time to return players either to the
landscapes below the line, where there is greater
transparency, or to the left of the line where there are
explicit collective goals.
Staff in hospitals may cooperate to organise
their work rotas in a way that provides them
with long stretches off duty, even though the
concomitant long spells on duty may not lead to
high-quality patient care.
The key tasks for players in this landscape are to:
n

Try cooperating first

Dont try to beat the others (the possibility is a

win/win)

Make requests and offers

Reward co-operative behaviour in others

Punish unco-operative behaviour in others

Be forgiving (dont hold a grudge)

Build a reputation for co-operation

Growing a reputation matters and cannot be taken

on trust; being seen as trustworthy arises from
observed behaviour. One way to trigger co-operation
is to make offers to other players, but our experience
is that people working in public services often do
not know enough about each others work for these
offers to be meaningful. This means players need to
make honest requests.

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

During a break in a meeting between elected

members of a local authority and primary care
trust non-executives, one of the non-execs said
to a member that the local authority had done
really well the previous winter in providing the
home care that was needed to prevent delayed
discharge from hospital. The member asked
why the PCT hadnt said so at the time, and the
non-exec protested that he was sure that staff
had been very appreciative.
Thats not what I mean said the member you
didnt write to the local paper. That would have
been worth its weight in gold in an election
year. The non-exec realised that it had never
crossed his mind to do so, but that it would in
the future.

Deal-making can be seen as a form of corruption

especially when we value the transparency and
attention to due process that are among the
strengths of designed systems. Yet those at the top
of hierarchies often feel able to do deals, as do those
on the frontline. (It seems to be harder for those in
the middle). Building personal relationships with
others at similar level is implicitly about building
co-operation. Put another way, one of the barriers
to developing co-operation is the lack of continuity
of relationships. If people move frequently from job
to job, there is little opportunity for the repeated
interactions that can trigger co-operation.

Co-evolution
Trading behaviour is the norm in our market
economy. It is surprisingly difficult to make offers
and requests that are unrelated to each other, but it
can produce quick results.

Wicked problem

Collective goal

In Palestine, towards the end of a workshop

using the Landscapes Framework, a session on
Requests and Offers resulted in several deals
being made. One involved a Fatah-run hospital
offering space to a Hamas-run service. Another
offer resulted in a mobile service allowing a
hospital to follow up its patients when it was not
able to gain access to the area.

Individual goal

Work in this landscape may lead to several different

sorts of outcome. One of the possible consequences
of spending time understanding the perspectives of
other players is a change in the culture, in the way
we do things around here. Another is that proposals
that are already known to the system and may have
been discussed for a long time suddenly materialise
actions that we call pop-ups. Yet another is that
players move back into the designed structures
(below the line) and implement an agreed solution in
their own organisation or team.
The conditions necessary for successful outcomes
here include a will to achieve a high-level goal but no
agreement on how to reach it, some understanding
of inter-dependence, no single boss who can fix
it and no player committed to imposing their own
solution. Players who recognise themselves to be in
the ice field have to begin by reaching out to others
who share their passion to make a difference to the
issue in question. They have three key tasks: to find
a way to clarify their purpose; to invite in all those
who share that purpose and want to work together to
achieve it; and to design their conversations so that
they generate possibilities for action9.
In order to shape the landscape an animateur
has to:

Tame problem

Players in this landscape understand that this is

about exploration, and that its not possible to know
at the outset what the solution is, or how to get
there, or when you will arrive. They do not expect the
answer to lie in a strategy of one more heave. The
opportunity here is to slow down, acknowledge that
there are different ways of seeing the problem, invest
time in constructive dialogue and recognise that, in
the process, they are all likely to co-evolve together.
This is not in order to be nice, but to be effective.
It sounds simple but is challenging and, in many
situations, counter-cultural.

Draw in people with different perspectives on the

nature of the problem

Work with purpose and language (concentrate

on why and what for)

Encourage people to explore possibilities

Allow time for dialogue

Build connections and amplify the sense of

being in this together

Trust peoples wisdom and capacity to do

whats needed.

Promote sufficient connections for

feedback loops

25

One of the tasks for an animateur is to slow things

down and encourage players to begin by sharing
their experience of how things are now. Most of
us dont know how others see things and yet a
shared understanding of current reality is essential
before moving towards how things could be. Local
conditions always matter.
Dialogue is the method used here. This requires
time and space for the system to become aware of
itself, which sounds simple but is one of the most
demanding requirements in organisational life. Put
another way, when we amplify a sense of being in
this together more outcomes emerge. Confidence
in new possibilities grows and energy for change
emerges from within, commonly in the form of recombination of ideas already in the system rather
than something generated externally14.
Another task for the animateur is to engage the
formal authority that is located in organisations and
seek permission for the exploration of possibilities
and for the implementing of solutions that have
been found.
The key tasks for players in this landscape are to:
n

Get involved as yourself, not as a representative

of others, and only when you care about
the issue

Work with your experience, not just

aggregate data

Invite others to take part early on

Work to understand each others worlds

Allow enough time for dialogue

The principle of self-organising sounds to many

people to be either too woolly to get anything
done or so uncontrolled as to be threatening. The
motivation of players in the icefield, just as in the
other landscapes, is to make a difference. They want
to take action, but they know there are things they
need to do to prepare for the action so that it has the
desired effect.
One of the biggest challenges is recognising that
its not possible at the outset to know what to do.
Owning up to the fact that its not possible to know
the solution, or the steps to be taken to get there, is
particularly difficult for managers and professionals
who are usually rewarded for fixes when they
operate in the designed system. There is a huge
temptation to write a plan and set up the kind of
structures and accountabilities appropriate for the
jig-saw of coordination. This allows the fantasy
of control, but if the problem truly is wicked then
formal planning processes and micro-management
will prove to be unable to deal with it.
The other big challenge is taking the time to clarify
purpose. The temptation is either to seek early
consensus, which simply closes down explorations
of difference, or to go rapidly to problem-solving,
which by-passes any challenge to the nature of the
problem and can only ever optimise the status quo15.

Example: Tackling Obesity

Mountain peak: Slimming magazines proliferate
offering products and advice and prizes, such as
slimmer of the year competitions. Weightwatchers
attracts people to join and compete against their
own target weight and all members support each
other to win. Catering contracts can specify healthy
eating options in canteens. Contracts with suppliers
of ingredients for school meals can specify reduced
fat and sugar content in products. Another way is
to select contractors who can demonstrate ways
in which they promote a healthy workforce e.g.
providing exercise facilities. There are programmes
in which women win food vouchers when they do
not put on excess weight in pregnancy and parents
win payments when their children stay within healthy
weight limits measured at regular checkups.
Jig-saw: The shared goal of improved population
health will be supported by new training
programmes for staff. Multidisciplinary teams are set
up, sometimes with new roles like diet counsellors
or peer mentors. Jamie Olivers dinner lady training
can be seen as one new possible piece of the
jigsaw. The various activities that happen in school
can be coordinated classroom based health
education programmes or geography lessons on
the source of foods are linked to cooking lessons
and the availability of healthy food options in school
meals. Local authorities can coordinate their various
departments to contribute to healthy living goals
e.g. subsidies on access to leisure facilities, on fresh
fruit, on bike purchase . Planning permission for fast
food outlets near schools can be refused.

Donkeys: People identify their own exercise buddies

because it helps them to keep going to reach their
own targets. Health insurance companies calculate
that they can manage their risks better if they lower
the premiums for people with healthy body mass
measurements. People set up social networking
sites in their work places to help them find support
to benefit from these savings. Employers want to
reduce time taken off work and reduce the health
insurance premiums they pay so they encourage
staff to take a lunch break and use it to go for
walks. Shopping malls who want to be recognised
as community friendly open their walkways before
the shops open for people to walk out of the cold
and dark on winter mornings. (This also brings in
more shoppers). Overweight people may be offered
free gym classes by their primary care trust or local
authority on condition they agree to use them four
times a month. A repeat offer is dependent on
evidence of repeated use.
If we take the example of food labelling we can
envisage many alliances for change, each with their
own goals. Health services and insurance companies
might be interested in disease reduction and health
outcomes; green campaigners in reducing levels of
non-biodegradable or toxic waste or reducing high
water consumption in the production of some foods.
One government department may be interested in
increasing food security and another in economic
development and they could achieve these by cooperating to encourage local food production.
Icefield: as we write, people are struggling to
understand what effective interventions in this
landscape might look like. As previous efforts are
shown to have less impact than had been
hoped, new ideas and possibilities can emerge in
this landscape.
One way of intervening would be to change the
language. For example, in the medical world the
shift in language from curing cancer (a tame
problem) to living with cancer (a wicked problem)
allowed a reconfiguration of the system in which

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27

solutions may lie (who is the system concerned

with this formulation of the issue?). A shift in
language from obese (a medical term linked to
objective measurement) to fat or overweight (which
recognises subjective meanings) would open similar
possibilities. The chances are that more people will
feel passionate about struggling with weight, eating
healthily, feeling fit, living long and well or feeling
good about myself than there are people energised
by being labelled obese. If an inquiry were to be set
up with the purpose of understanding the struggle
and what helps and hinders us achieving what we
seek, it is clear that the people doing the struggling
would have to be part of it. If the problem were more
bounded e.g. struggling with childrens weight, then
children would have to be present too (not have
some one speak for them). This kind of participation
is about co-producing solutions and is quite different
from sequential methods like consultation or
research that are then used to inform policy
and action.
Another possibility is to start not with the changes
you can already envisage but with an inquiry into
what keeps the pattern the way it is; what is it
about the current system that generates the
present pattern?

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

Another possibility is to create nudges to make

healthier choices the easier choices. (Nudge is
a term used to describe an external intervention
that helps you to do what you really want16). What
distinguishes this from coercion or prohibition is the
way these interventions are developed. They are only
nudges if you have communicated with people about
what really counts to them. They are not imposed
from above based on some expert analysis. They
may need to be checked against available evidence
but these measures are introduced only if dialogue
identifies that a nudge would be valued e.g. if we
and our children want to avoid purchasing fizzy
sweetened drink and salty snacks in school we can
regulate the availability of vending machines. (This
contrasts with the trouble Jamie Oliver had with
some parents and children when he imposed his
well-intentioned nutrition standards).
If our underlying purpose is not to reduce body mass
but is really to reduce premature morbidity and
mortality then we may find this takes us into many
systems and is a truly wicked problem.

In summary
This paper is about taking action that is
effective. When you recognise that you
cant resolve an issue on your own and
you have to find a way of getting the
system as a whole to operate differently
how do you go about it?
The Landscapes Framework offers a way of thinking
about different types of situation in which people
work together on a problem. Each calls for a different
set of tactics in order to produce the successful
behaviour that gets things done. Judgement about
which landscape you find yourself in at any given
time is just that, a judgement, and it can change.
What is not in doubt is that you have to be able
to operate in all of them as circumstances and
purposes change. If you are not where you think you
are you are unlikely to be effective, no matter how
hard you work, because practices that work well in
one do not necessarily work well in others.
Our starting point has been the continuing interest
in the public sector in systems thinking and whole
system approaches to tackling policy-resistant
problems where, even with an agreed goal, a
group of well-intentioned people will have quite
different views on the nature of the problem,
what may be causing it and how to resolve it. We
distinguish between these wicked problems and
tame problems that can be defined, broken into
manageable chunks and solved.

Our contention is that thinking about theory is

intensely practical because it helps you decide what
to do. There are several ways of thinking about
systems, each of which implies a very different
theory of change why and how particular actions
and methods bring about changes in the way we do
things. Anyone who wants to take action to make
a difference in the world will employ a theory of
change, even if this is implicit. Our theory of change
is rooted in an understanding of the distinction
between designed systems and adaptive systems.
Each is a systems approach but the underlying
mental model of how systems organise is different.
Both designed and adaptive systems are at play in
organisational life and they constantly interact. Each
requires us to pay attention to different features
in order to act effectively. You can design ways of
analysing, reorganising and reviewing in order to
tackle a tame problem. But if the problem you face
is wicked then you need to intervene in ways which
focus on the capacity of teams, organisations and
individuals to adapt.

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Wicked problems

Annex 1:
Tame and
Wicked Problems
The terminology of tame and wicked problems
was introduced in 1973 by Horst Rittel and Melvin
Webber17 who asserted that there are a whole range
of social planning problems, which they called
wicked, that cannot be tackled by defining, locating
and solving the problem. In 1974 Russell Ackoff
made a similar distinction, between what he called
a problem and a mess18. Another way to refer to
the same basic distinction is to distinguish between
issues arising in simple systems (including the
complicated) and in complex systems.
Tame problems are potentially soluble. Rittel and
Webber suggested that wicked problems cant be
solved but that they can be resolved, or tamed, for
a while.

Tame problems
A tame or benign problem:
n

Is described by a clear problem statement

Has an definitive and optimal solution that

is transferable

Has a clear stopping point we know when a

solution has been reached

Can be objectively evaluated

Its usually fairly straightforward to recognise when

you have encountered a tame problem. You find it
convincing when somebody claims that they know
exactly what to do. One way to put it to the test is
to try applying the Logical Framework Approach19.
This approach links a description of actions
(activities) to a goal through a series of if and
then statements that constitute its temporal logic
model. In a truncated form:
n

If these Activities are implemented, and these

Assumptions hold, then these Outputs will
be delivered

If these Outputs are delivered, and these

Assumptions hold, then this Purpose will
be achieved

If you can put your hand on your heart and write

down if... and then statements for the task in
hand, and believe that the assumptions are realistic,
then you can assume that you know what to do and
that the problem you are tackling is a tame one. This
allows you to create a project plan to achieve your
desired purpose.
Of course it is wishful thinking to expect that things
will always go to plan. Unexpected events may
arise that may make the original plan, or even the
goal, inappropriate. The usual way of handling
risk and uncertainty is to identify where these may
arise, minimise/manage risk where this is possible
and expect that it may be necessary to review and
change plans and goals. But the assumption all the
way through is that you can know what to do, even
if the what has to be reviewed and changed as
surprises occur.

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

A wicked problem has none of the clarity of a tame

problem. There may be a broad statement of the
problem, but there are multiple perspectives on
what the detailed description of the problem might
be. It has no final and optimal solution. Indeed no
solution is ever reached, just a better resolution than
last time round. And there is often not even enough
agreement about what success would look like for
there to be any agreement about whether success
has been achieved.

The ten distinguishing properties of wicked problems

1 There is no definitive formulation of a
wicked problem that provides the
problem-solver with all the information
needed to formulate the problem, break it
into manageable chunks and solve it.

6 Wicked problems do not have an

exhaustively describable set of potential
solutions, nor is there a well-described
set of permissible operations that may be
incorporated into the plan.

2 Wicked problems have no stopping rule.

You cant say that you have solved a wicked
problem, just that you have run out of time or
money or patience.

7 Every wicked problem is essentially unique.

Solutions are not transferable from one time
and place to another. It is possible to learn
from experience about the processes of
problem-finding and solution-finding, but not
about the content of a solution.

3 Solutions to wicked problems are not

true-or-false, but good-or-bad.
Evaluation can never be objective and
always requires judgement.
4 There is no immediate and no ultimate test
of a solution to a wicked problem. Cause
and effect are distantly connected, and there
are always unexpected consequences.
5 Every solution to a wicked problem is a
one-shot operation; because there is no
opportunity to learn by trial and error,
every attempt counts significantly. The
consequences of intervention cannot be
undone. History matters and provides the
context for the next intervention.

8 Every wicked problem can be considered to

be a symptom of another problem. Wicked
problems are intertwined.
9 The existence of a discrepancy representing
a wicked problem can be explained in
numerous ways. The choice of explanation
determines the nature of the problems
resolution. Each stakeholder will have their
own perspective on the nature of the problem
and the solution.
10 The planner has no right to be wrong. You
will be held responsible because your actions
are difficult to justify and have a big impact.

31

Annex 2:
Action planning in
all four landscapes
Factors such as risk management,
timelines, stocks and flows, outcomes,
use of resources and the time taken
by meetings have to be managed in all
four landscapes. It is tempting to think
there is one best way of doing this but
their appropriate management varies in
each of the landscapes.
Risk Management
Mountain/Competition: Competition transfers the
risk of failure from a commissioner onto the players.
The detailed specification of goods and services is
what helps to diminish risk in this landscape. Safety
for a player comes from a clear understanding of
what counts as success, and will not be subject
to change. Safety for a commissioner comes from
quality controls on the goods and services delivered.
Jig-saw/ Coordination: Many of the risks here are
about operational targets, which require each player
to deliver their piece in a sequence and manner
that allows the others to do their bit. Risks to the
animateur are reduced by the specification and
assessment of clear deliverables, monitoring against
agreed timelines and active project management.
Risk registers may be created but there may not be
enough past experience to estimate risks or mitigate
them for example, the oil spillage in the Gulf
of Mexico.

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

Donkeys /Co-operation: Developing co-operative

relationships is low-risk for both players and
animateur because the amount of time and
resources invested is relatively low, particularly at
the start. This is an environment where it is possible
to pursue safe experimentation, but only if non-cooperators are punished (otherwise you run the risk of
being taken for a ride). So the main risks to players
are reputational, and this may extend to exclusion
from a co-operative nexus and missing out on
future possibilities.
Icefield /Co-evolution: Here you reduce risk by
roping up with others rather than going-it-alone,
which means dialogue in which players think
together and build rapid feedback loops. There is
a risk that the system starts to evolve in a direction
that is not acceptable to those with the power to
stop it this risk can be reduced by ensuring that
those in positions of power are actively involved or
that they delegate to a trusted colleague. There is
also a risk that the exploration does not reach its
goal. Sometimes this is unavoidable; sometimes the
passion of players is not enough to sustain them in
the face of indifference and opposition. The risks
can be minimised by checking that there is a real
variety of perspectives amongst the players, that they
re-visit and if necessary revise their purpose, that
they allow enough time for dialogue and that each
meeting or other activity is valuable in itself, not just
a preparation for something else.

Timelines

Stocks and Flows

Mountain / Competition: Start-up costs are high

in terms of time. Drafting a good specification (the
rules of the game, the invitation to tender) takes a
lot of time, as does preparing for the competition
(training, drafting a good tender document). This
time is not generally visible to others and may
be underestimated by both sides. Later stages
may require commitment to regular, intermittent
monitoring (e.g. contract management).

Mountain / Competition: The stock of expertise

lies with players. The key flows are a vertical flow of
money from commissioner to provider, and a vertical
flow of information in which players receive feedback
on their performance, often in public. There are
also horizontal flows of information as each player
seeks to learn from and adapt to their competitors.
In theory this is strictly limited to prevent collusion.
In reality there is much more communication than
is usually conceded e.g. cooperating to fix prices,
poaching employees from competitors or regulators,
industrial espionage.

Jig-saw/Coordination: It takes time to establish the

initial shared purpose, to negotiate terms and to
build trust among players. Once these are complete
the project requires a predictable timeline to be
set out, and the players to stick to it. Active project
management is essential in keeping players to time
and to task, and in co-ordinating their contributions.
Donkeys /Co-operation: Co-operation grows over
time through repeated interactions and in ways that
are not predictable. It is not possible to set out a
timeline at the outset but time is important in other
ways in this landscape. The past is significant as
trust and reputations require a memory of previous
interactions. The future is important because belief
in the shadow of the future is what makes cooperation rational behaviour.
Icefield / Co-evolution: Here players have to invest
time early on to understand each others worlds,
establish shared purpose and to grow connections
amongst an often large, disparate group of people.
But once groups of explorers have done this work
they can gain acceptance for their proposals, and
put programmes into action, in a short space of time.

Jig-saw / Coordination: There may be vertical flows

of money here. There are also vertical flows of
information between players, project manager and
steering group. This is required for three purposes
motivation (downward flow) monitoring (upward and
horizontal) and learning (upward and downward).
Information for monitoring is critical here because
there are likely to be time-dependencies which mean
the project manager needs honest information about
progress, and delays. Players need to communicate
horizontally with their neighbours on the jig-saw,
giving and receiving feedback on timing and quality
as far as this affects adjacent parts. And they need
information about whether they are judged to
have succeeded.
Donkeys / Co-operation: The most significant flow
here is of gifts and acts of goodwill, freely offered not
in direct exchange but in expectation that what goes
around will come around. Currencies here include
offers of time, expertise, access to equipment or
space or other resources. If players understood each
others needs perfectly then offers would be perfectly
matched to these needs. In reality, there has to be
a flow of requests to shape offers. And these are
not requests that carry any expectation of being
met, just as the offers are just offers. The stock that
matters here is reputation and trust.

33

Icefield / Co-evolution: The most important flow

here is stories, which are significant for several
reasons because they are contributed and
understood by everyone, because stories encompass
our beliefs about cause and effect and because
a story has the capacity to illuminate the whole.
Meaning grows through the flow of stories. One stock
that matters here is the understanding that each
player develops of the other players and the shared
purpose that they develop. Another stock is the
behaviours, shaped by guiding principles or rules of
thumb that make up the culture of an organisation,
network or community. For example, the guiding
principles that have shaped, and continue to shape,
the extraordinary creativity of the worldwide scientific
community are:

Outcomes, goals and measures

Use of Resources

Meetings

Mountain / Competition: Measurable or observable

goals being able to see the mountain peak are
essential here. Outcomes can be predicted in
advance. The rules of the game must be capable
of being judged so that everyone can see that the
winner has won. Deliverables and indicators are
specified at the outset and play a key role in shaping
the behaviour of players.

Much of the work of organisations gets done

in meetings, yet meetings bloody meetings is
a familiar refrain of dissatisfaction. We have all
experienced meetings that are useful and those
that are not.

Generate testable hypotheses

Mountain / Competition: Inputs cannot be specified

at the outset by a commissioner because these
depend on the methods the players choose to
deploy. During the phase of active competition the
commissioner commits considerable resources
to developing a specification, devising rules and
publicising them, regulating players and judging
success. For players, too, this is resource-intensive
because each has to develop their own offering
even though only one (or a small number) will
succeed. From the point of view of the system as a
whole this approach is far from efficient during the
stage of active competition. It is only after a winner
has emerged that the cost advantages of monopolies
and oligopolies appear.

Design reproducible experiments to test

the hypothesis

Make public the details of experimental methods

and their results

Donkeys / Co-operation: The goals here are

individual, and the measure of success is the extent
to which a player can trigger behaviour in others in
order to achieve the players own goal. Short-term
goals can get in the way because co-operation takes
place over time and many cycles of engagement.
Outcomes cannot be predicted in advance.

Other stocks in this environment are energy, shared

meaning, common purpose and new possibilities.
Co-evolution requires each player to bring their own
energy, and exposure to energy is itself energising.

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

Jig-saw / Coordination: Outcomes can be predicted

in advance. Here the planner has to be in a position
to define both strategic and operational goals
precisely, and they almost certainly have to go
through an initial stage of negotiation. There is some
room for players to negotiate the part they will play.

Icefield / Co-evolution: The goal here serves to

enable players to decide whether this is something
they want to commit to. What is needed therefore
is a broad goal and an avoidance of premature
commitment to operational goals. Measures of
progress are the engagement of unusual mixes
of people, deeper understanding of each others
perspective and the surfacing of some sense of
shared purpose. Outcomes cannot be predicted
in advance.

Jig-saw / Coordination: The resources that will be

needed have to be known in advance and specified
at the outset. This includes resources for anticipated
re-fits as the work progresses. One danger is that if
there is inadequate agreement early on, particularly
on operational goals, resources get sucked in later
to compensate.
Donkeys / Co-operation: Co-operation is fuelled by
offers and gifts that arise out of an understanding
of what is helpful to other players, and cannot be
specified in advance. They will often be relatively
low-cost to the giver and valuable to the recipient, if
co-operation is to be sustainable.
Icefield / Co-evolution: The main resource to be
used here is peoples individual passion, energy and
time for the issues being explored.

Mountain / Competition: In this landscape it is

possible, and may even be desirable, to avoid
most meetings between competing providers. The
necessary communications such as invitations to
tender, bids, project plans and progress reports
can all be made in a written form at pre-determined
intervals.
Once a contract has been awarded, the main
purpose of communication is to ensure that there
is compliance with the contract and that any
exceptions are reported. It is only after exception
reporting that a meeting to negotiate a variation
might be triggered. Face-to-face meetings may take
place between contract managers and players with
the purpose of seeking clarification and holding to
account. Responsible behaviour consists of honest
question and answer about the bid and about the
progress of the work.
In spite of this, there do seem to be a lot of meetings
in this landscape. Very often this is because there
is not enough clarity in the Invitation to Tender,
or because the process of developing a Project
Initiation Document (PID) does not lead to early
sharing of understanding between commissioner
and provider and this has to be re-visited. Another
dysfunctional reason for meetings is the lack of
real sanctions by the commissioner, which leads to
meetings in which the commissioner attempts to
cajole the provider.

35

One good reason for meeting in this landscape

would be to provide feedback to unsuccessful
competitors, though this option is rarely offered in a
way that enables players to compete better (rather
than just trying to make them feel better).
Jig-saw / Co-ordination: In this landscape the work
is done between meetings. A series of bilaterals
between each player and the project manager
could be carried out by regular email updates,
though phone calls provide closer monitoring and
face-to-face meetings may be needed to enforce
compliance as well as providing opportunities for
communication amongst the players. Meetings
may also be needed to motivate people to adhere
to the plans cascading or getting ownership are
phrases commonly used for this process.
Steering group meetings are about making decisions
and holding to account and are supplied with
reports, background papers and option appraisals.
Responsible behaviour is to abide by the structure
for the meeting, make decisions and record them in
the minutes.
Donkeys / Co-operation: Here communications
are mainly bilateral, involving just two players.
These meetings are often invisible to others and
often unplanned, taking place when players paths
cross (sometimes called coffee break or corridor
meetings). They may emerge as the unintended
consequences of other meetings, which might
explain why people often ask who else is attending
a meeting (this could be about status but is often
scanning to see if there is any one it would be
useful to talk with to make a deal). There are great
advantages to face-to-face meetings as players need
to pick up subtle clues and read body language if
they are to make judgements about other players,
but when players know each other well these
meetings do not need to be face-to-face.

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Centre for Innovation in Health Management

Icefield / Co-evolution: The purpose of meetings in

this environment is for participants to understand
the perspectives of other players, to identify areas
of shared purpose and to explore possibilities.
This requires time for conversations that develop
understanding of how other players make sense of
the world. For players who are used to operating
in the jig-saw landscape this may feel like a timewasting preamble because no decisions are made or
minuted. But these conversations are the antithesis
of preamble it is in these meetings for conversation
that the work of exploration is being done.
These are face-to-face meetings that require a range
of people who care about the issue in question (and
almost certainly include people who dont usually
have the opportunities for such conversations). They
require a meeting design that enables everyone to
contribute by drawing on their experience, rather
than analysis or aggregated data. They require
enough time to examine purpose (what is important
to them) and meaning (why it is important).
Responsible behaviour is to join in only when you
are passionate about the issue, participate as an
individual (not as a representative), contribute stories
of your own experience and take responsibility for
any commitments that you make in the meeting.

37

References
Benington, John & Hartley, Jean (2009) Whole
systems go!: improving leadership across the whole
public service system National school of government

Department of Health (1998) Partnership in Action.

London, Department of Health

Pratt, Julian; Plamping, Diane & Gordon, Pat

(1999) Partnership: fit for purpose? London,
Kings Fund

Sweeney, Keiran & Griffiths, Frances (2002)

Complexity and Health Care Abingdon, Radcliffe

11

Harries, John The trouble with projects: why

working in organisations is not like having a baby
personal communication

12

Axelrod, Robert (1990) The evolution of cooperation London, Penguin

13

Plamping, Diane; Gordon, Pat & Pratt, Julian

(2009) Innovation and public services:
insights from evolution Leeds, CIHM Whole Systems
Working Papers

14

Kernick, David (2004) Complexity and health

care organisation: a view from the street Abingdon,
Radcliffe

15

Plamping, Diane; Gordon, Pat and Pratt, Julian

(2010) Supporting change in complex adaptive
systems London, The Health Foundation

16

Morgan, Gareth (1986) Images of organization Sage

Publications, Newbury Park

17

Christakis, Nicholas (2010) Connected: the

amazing power of social networks and how they
shape our lives Harper Press

18

Pratt, Julian; Gordon, Pat & Plamping, Diane

(1999/2005) Working whole systems:
putting theory into practice in organisations
Abingdon, Radcliffe Publishing

Newmarsh, Shelley personal communication

Darwin, John (2004) Preventing premature

agreement Reason in Practice: The Journal of
Philosophy in Management 4:1
Thaler, Richard & Sunstein, Cass (2009) Nudge:
improving decisions about health, wealth and
happiness London, Penguin
Rittel, Horst & Webber, Melvin (1973) Dilemmas
in a general theory of planning Policy Sciences 4
155-169

Working in systems
Landscapes framework in practice:
collaboration skills workshop
CIHM invites you to put the ideas
about working in systems into
practice with Diane Plamping, Julian
Pratt and Pat Gordon who have over
15 years experience of working with
the Landscapes Framework.
Workshop: The 8 hour workshop is about
identifying effective action in the many situations
in which people have to work together to solve
problems. Intended for people with an interest in
using the principles of complex systems.

What you get: Insights into how the Landscapes

Framework helps you select tools and
methodologies, increase your confidence in using
the principles of the framework, develop your
collaboration skills.
Participants: Participants are encouraged to
attend with colleagues and to bring a specific
problem they are prepared to work on. Groups of
30-40 people work well.
For more information contact CIHM on
[email protected]

Ackoff, Russell (1974) Redesigning the future:

a systems approach to societal planning
New York, Wiley
Australian Government AusAID (2005) The Logical
Framework Analysis Ausguideline
www.ausaid.gov.au/ausguide/pdf/ausguideline3.3.pdf

19

Tenner, Edward (1996) Why things bite back:

new technology and the revenge effect. London,
Fourth Estate

10

38

Centre for Innovation in Health Management

39

Centre for Innovation in Health Management

Leeds University Business School
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University of Leeds LS2 9JT
Tel: 0113 343 5599/5683
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