Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions: The Role of Leadership

Much of the writing in the field of leadership research is grounded in a typology that distinguishes between Leadership and Management as different forms of authority — that is legitimate power in Weber’s conception — with leadership tending to embody longer time periods, a more strategic perspective, and a requirement to resolve novel problems (Bratton et al. 2004). Another way to put this is that the division is rooted partly in the context: management is the equivalent of déjà vu (seen this before), whereas leadership is the equivalent of vu dàjé (never seen this before) (Weick 1973). If this is valid then the manager is required to engage the requisite process to resolve the problem the last time it emerged. In contrast, the leader is required to facilitate the construction of an innovative response to the novel problem, rather than rolling out a known process to a previously experienced problem.