Читать книгу Leadership in Veterinary Medicine - Clive Elwood - Страница 29

Wicked problems have the following characteristics (Periyakoil 2007; Cleland et al. 2018):

 They are complex and unique.

 They have innumerable causes associated with multiple, and shifting, social, cultural, and political environments.

 Participants have different interpretations of the same issue, unpredictable behaviour, and a lack of agreement on desirable outcomes.

 They are difficult to define and resolve and do not lend themselves to the traditional linear mode of problem solving.

 The intricacies of understanding are typically retrospective.

 Cause and effect, typically, are ‘distant in time and space’.

 Solutions are not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

 A solution that simplifies the issue can move the problem elsewhere.

 They cannot be managed without politics.

The Review Committee had the unenviable task of re‐designing the process for selecting the ‘best’ veterinary students. The representatives came from general and specialist practice, industry, charities, and academia, and all had a view of what was needed now. Some wanted the most academically able, and they all agreed that personal and relational characteristics were essential. They also recognised the need for a diverse intake. They knew that the decisions they made now would play out over the course of the next 30 years, and that the world would change over that time in ways they could not predict. A wicked problem, and a thankless task, indeed.

Contextualising the veterinary professions as sitting as part of complex, open, adaptive/responsive system and where many problems are wicked without ‘perfect solutions’ informs the approach to managing the realities, and challenges, of leadership in veterinary medicine.