Jonathon Colman: Wicked Ambiguity

Notes from Jonathon’s keynote at #CONFABMN 2015

Live Long and Prosper

Stephen King and the “shape under the sheet”
- Our fear creates ambiguity re: what’s real and what’s not real
- Fear of the unknown makes us want to “drop everything and run away as fast as we can”

Content strategist vs. writer vs. marketer vs. engineer: our differences don’t matter
- We’re bound together by a greater force.
- We dare. We’re united against ambiguity.
- We make the unclear clear. (h/t to Abby Covert)

Special problems that have no final solutions. Very complex. Trying to solve them can reveal (or even cause) more problems.
- Examples: gentrification, war on drugs, climate change
Wicked problems sap our will to dare

Drake equation
- Sometimes processes aren’t to ultimately solve problems but inspire creativity
- Drake equation failed at being a viable equation but succeeded in sparking conversations
Empathy
Messages: do they have meaning?
- Can “aliens” decode and understand what we’re trying to communicate?

Languages, symbols evolve over time
- May not have the same meaning (or even exist!) in the future
Must communicate
- This is a message
- This place you’re in is dangerous
- WHY
  - “We can’t fuck this up because we have no right to be wrong. But it’s so hard to get this right because we can’t test it—the people creating this message have no way of knowing if it will reach their audience or be understood.”
Long-term communications are hard, far more complex than they seem at first

Our problems aren’t meaningful because they last forever, they’re meaningful because they don’t last
As we chip away at daily ambiguities, it helps us break down the bigger ones
Solutions need not last for ages to be significant.
Our differences don’t matter. We solve our problems all together. Or not at all.

They inspire creative responses from people who dare to work outside their fields of expertise.
Jonathon: “I don’t care who gets the credit.”
We shouldn’t live in a world without wicked problems.
- Inspire collective creativity
Tackling wicked problems doesn’t require fearlessness. Instead, have to be ready to encounter and overcome the fear.
We can’t solve wicked problems. 5 ways to respond:
1. Acknowledge them.
  - Start by being open and direct.
  - Agree on the problem you’re trying to solve.
  - Dare yourself to take on the biggest problems you can solve.
  - Don’t let people dismiss your work or contributions or value.
2. Take risks
  - Accountability in our orgs to be flexible.
  - Accountability is not a weapon. It should be a warm blanket that helps people feel safe and secure enough to try new things and take bigger risks.
3. Stop being perfect
  - “There is no such thing as perfect!!!!!”
  - Chasing perfection is a distraction. Prevents us from solving problems right now.
  - Perfection is a barrier to our progress, our collaboration, our creativity.
4. Reward learning
  - Stop punishing failure.
  - Don’t “succeed at any cost.”
  - Build leadership through failure, through humility–>this is the path to building meaningful, empathetic leadership that lasts.
5. Try
  - We may not be able to solve all the hard, scary, most important problems. But we can always try.

Jonathon’s slides and (ridiculously awesome) transcript are here: http://www.jonathoncolman.org/2015/05/21/wicked-ambiguity/