Tackling Wicked Problems : A Public Policy Perspective

10. Skills for APS Employees

Tackling wicked problems raises a range of skills and capability issues for the APS. The need to deal with the social complexity associated with wicked problems (working across organisational boundaries, engaging stakeholders and influencing citizens’ behaviour) requires additional skills over and above the more traditional analytical, conceptual, and project management skills required by public servants involved in policy making and planning policy implementation. In 2004, the Management Advisory Committee in its Connecting Government report focused on network management and stakeholder management and the capacity to ‘facilitate cooperation and partnerships, build commitment to a shared agenda, manage and share information, manage change, engage stakeholders, and resolve conflict.’³¹ People with connecting skills will be increasingly valued—people who can build up relationships across the public, private and non-profit sectors and leverage these relationships to build networks of mutual benefit. There is also a need for policy makers to be aware of and apply behavioural change theory.

Critically, tackling wicked problems also calls for high levels of systems thinking. This big picture thinking helps policy makers to make the connections between the multiple causes and interdependencies of wicked problems that are necessary in order to avoid a narrow approach and the artificial taming of wicked problems. Agencies need to look for ways of developing or obtaining this range of skills, including through recruitment, contracted labour, outsourcing particular analysis, formal learning programmes and encouraging employees to undertake a relevant range of work to broaden their experience. A multidisciplinary team approach is one practical way to garner all the required skills and knowledge for tackling any particular wicked problem.

31 Management Advisory Committee, Connecting Government, p. 53.