Improved social strategies

This article is written by Susan Broomhall from Bright Research and Insights, with 30 years’ experience in government applying behavioural science to real-world issues and author of the books ‘Bullying & Harassment – Understanding the Psychological and Behavioural Tactics of the Toxic Leadership Stronghold’ and ‘The Art of Peace – Creating the Harmonic Humanity’.

• The problem: Government policy has developed over time to be more focused on economic issues directed by leaders rather than ground-roots social issues as needed by the people.
• Why it matters: Global hardship and unrest would indicate that current leadership models and social strategies are ineffective for society’s wellbeing.
• The solution: Solutions to recurrent wicked problems require a paradigm shift, not just a rewrite of the same policies.

Most systems, structures, organisations and societies are designed in a hierarchical fashion where there is an apex “leader” at the top. It is the “top” that authorises the rules and regulations for that structure where decisions (or the results of those decisions) impact a broader mass of people. From a social science perspective, all social issues can be algorithmised back to that one pinnacle point – a decision made by an apex leader.

Society, being economically based, is ruled by leaders employing a “business strategy”. For the most part, today’s business strategy has been developed along the philosophy of defeating an opponent as described by Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’. The concept of ‘strategy’ originated in military scenarios as a plan under uncertain circumstances to achieve an intended outcome to defeat an opponent. When leaders use business strategy for social policy, we need to ask, who is the opponent and then how does this model serve to solve wicked problems?

Wicked problems

This economical business (war) strategy model fails to attend to, let alone solve, social issues. Design theorists Rittel and Webber lamented in their paper, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, that science was developed to deal with ‘tame’ problems whereas social policy problems represent ‘wicked problems’ as complex dilemmas of inherently unsolvable societal issues. As planners, they argued that social policy has “at least ten distinguishing properties of planning-type problems, i.e. wicked ones” to which planners needed to be alert.

As the ground crew for social good, public servants have the answers and should exercise their creative initiative to design solutions for an improved social model.

With a desire for improved social outcomes, it is unacceptable to take on a defeatist attitude to complex social needs. For any public servant, these distinguishing properties of ‘wicked’ social problems provide an opportunity to design creative research methodology to pose options for solution development. Rittel and Weber’s perspective is that of design theorists and planners. It is the role of public servants to attend to these so-called ‘wicked’ problems to ensure solutions can indeed be designed. And to attend to (wicked) social problems, a holistic analysis must be conducted to determine where and why these problems persist. The analysis therefore should also examine the leadership paradigm that ensconces the decisions made on behalf of the people.

The leadership hierarchy

Leadership is established on a hierarchical model with successful leadership being measured in terms of deploying strategies to achieve an intended outcome. The business model designed on military strategy, therefore, is based on division, manipulation of information and resource control essentially to ensure the stability of the leadership and to “defeat” an opponent. While this economic business model may work for competitive economic privilege, this model has significant consequences when applied to social issues.

Additionally, this leadership model also fails to safeguard against toxic leaders. While there are many policies, rules and regulations in place that dictate the behaviour of public servants, these same rules do not apply to the leadership that is authorising the decisions on society’s behalf. This creates a division, much like the art of war, where leaders are separate from the people that are impacted by leadership decisions.

If we employ the same tactics used by leaders to define outcome success, then we could use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the efficacy of leadership. Where leaders are directing society, KPIs would measure the health (and happiness) of the society, not the economy. But what are those indicators, and who is paying attention to the results?

Thinking outside the box to design social solutions

“Leadership” has been intrinsically woven into the belief that it is needed for social good, however, with a global upheaval of significant unrest and hardship, should we reconsider our current business model mentality and the future of leadership?

“Success” measures under current leadership calculate wins in terms of dollars and economic growth, but not all success is measured, or even designed, in this way. Despite some of the negative publicity surrounding charities in Australia and overseas, Australians overwhelmingly view charities as leading for the greater good compared to other institutions.

Additionally, rather than skip straight to measuring “success”, a different social model can address how solutions are deliberated and designed. Our current social policy design is based on programme development that essentially requires the programme to be up and running for an amount of time prior to evaluating outcomes and success. This model uses a predictive planning method where, essentially, if mistakes are made in the initial stages, “success” not only becomes a pipedream but also incurs socioeconomic collateral damage since we are talking about human wellbeing.

Rather than continuing to do the same thing (and expecting different outcomes), we should be looking at a paradigm shift that looks at solving those wicked problems rather than just rearranging them under the instruction of leadership. As the ground crew for social good, public servants have the answers and should exercise their creative initiative to design solutions for an improved social model. Rather than top-down autocratic instruction, a different social policy solution design process could be back-casting with stakeholders impacted by the outcome to deliberate how solutions could be created. This process provides opportunity for the individual to be heard, communities to work together, collaboration with change agents and a focus on social matters rather than economic advantage.

The Art of Peace creates social harmony

While researching the definition of “peace”, what was surprisingly relevant was that “peace” was defined as the absence of war. As a behavioural scientist, it is evident that we, as a society, cannot bring to our reality that which we do not even know how to define.

We must first, as public servants, understand what social wellbeing and harmony looks like, not what it does not look like. But understanding what we do not want is a good start.

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