Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems

Thanks for writing the book!
"I have gotten a great deal of benefit out of the book and wanted to drop you a line and express my appreciation. I learned about DM and Compendium at a meeting ... a few weeks ago. The facilitator had read your book and ran the meeting with Compendium projected on a large screen. I was intrigued by the dynamic of how we interacted with the information on the screen, but was even more interested by how we had largely removed emotion from the discussion, and stayed on topic towards solving several wicked problems!"
Scott Wesson
Chief Information Officer
AIMCO


John Wiley and Sons, Ltd
ISBN: 0-470-01768-6
Softcover - 242 pages
 Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems
Jeff Conklin, Ph.D.

When an organization is confronting a wicked problem the familiar approaches don't work. For one thing, with a wicked problem there isn't even agreement about what the problem is, much less how to solve it. To make progress one must focus on creating maximum shared understanding and shared commitment among the stakeholders. Dialogue mapping is a proven technique for building that shared understanding and commitment, as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Blog Alert!

"...Conklin has also written an excellent book on the topic: Dialogue Mapping : Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems. Finally, there is an open source software tool, Compendium, available to support some of the techniques for framing and working on wicked problems..."

"Conducting an intelligent, tractable, and possibly useful “dialogue” should not be a problem--right? Not according to Conklin. Apparently, even simple real-life problems can turn out to have no solution. The book starts with the introduction of issues related to the “wicked problems.” The examples presented as wicked problems are certain to bring an “aha!!!” moment into many a manager’s mind--“So that is why the project failed, despite overspending!”

From an engineer’s perspective, the world should be very well defined. But we, the engineers, surely fail to place the Hu--the human element--into any project map. As it turns out, sometimes even very simple sounding problems are “wicked” in that they lack specific solutions. Adding the human element into the broth only makes things worse." (more)

Reviewer: H. Van Dyke Parunak
Date Reviewed: 11/21/07
From the back cover ...

Dialogue Mapping presents an indispensable new approach to meetings and collaboration, in which collective intelligence is achieved through framing powerful questions and conducting a comprehensive and creative exploration of their possible answers.

In the first part of Dialogue Mapping, Jeff Conklin introduces the key concepts:
Wicked problems: you must come up with solutions in order to understand what the problem really is … what the real issues are … and the problem definition depends on whom you ask!
Social complexity: the number and diversity of stakeholders whose participation is essential.
Opportunity-driven problem solving: empirical evidence says creative thinking does not follow a linear process!
Shared understanding: overcoming fragmentation requires forging shared understanding about all aspects of the problem-solution space.
The remaining sections provide a hands-on tutorial for practitioners.
“This is an excellent guide for all those interested in durable collaborative solutions in our increasingly tough business climates today.”
John C. Mitchell, former President, Business Printer Division, Lexmark International, Inc.
“Over the past 10 years my company has been bringing Dialogue Mapping to some of the most senior conversations on the planet… It is an amazing methodology explained brilliantly by Jeff Conklin.”
Christopher McGoff, CEO Touchstone Consulting
"Dialogue Mapping was the essential ingredient that held together the NASA-funded government/industry partnership that will allow unmanned aircraft to have safe access into the United States national airspace system for the benefit of all mankind."
John Walker, Policy Team Leader, Access 5
“Jeff Conklin pioneered this field, showing the connection between conversations (dialogue) and solving wicked problems. His ideas are intellectually rewarding and, just as important, are tried and tested.”
Mark Addleson, Director, Organizational Learning Program
George Mason University
“What Jeff has in this book is of powerfully basic importance to improving our Collective-IQ, and thus, in my view, to helping significantly change our world to be a better place.”
Douglas Engelbart, Director of Bootstrap Alliance
inventor of the computer mouse and world’s first hypertext system





                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
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