How Many Wicked Layers Do You Have?
The connected and subjective nature of complexity means that no single person can see the whole situation, and opinions drive reality.
This generates the wickedness that comes from having multiple, often conflicting, perspectives all operating at once. But the impact of this wickedness can range from simple misunderstandings to exhausting toxicity.
I was debating this with a friend the other day – that not all wickedness is the same. What came out of that chat is the idea of ‘wicked layers’. The concept that every project can have layers of wickedness, which range from shallow to deep.
Shallow vs. Deep
Shallow wickedness is where you find minor differences in opinion or interpretation that don’t have a big impact. You might have experienced this where, despite being in the same meeting, people walk out with wildly different versions of what was agreed and what to do next.
It leads to confusion, drags out a few conversations, and is a bit of a time sink, but you can quickly see all the way through it.
Deep wickedness is a whole different ballgame. This is where people are operating with deeply held opinions and different agendas that can be overt or concealed. Left unaddressed, these can completely drive a project to failure, but not before exhausting the participants on the way.
Not Deep Enough
Few projects are set up to deal with the deep layers. These layers of social challenges are rarely discussed openly and never written down, yet they shape everything. The divergent motivations stay hidden, or unspoken, even as the project starts to go bad.
And the normal attempts to turn around the project don’t work.
You add more detail to the plan.
You ramp up the reporting rigour.
You increase the frequency of meetings.
You run a facilitated session to get everyone on the same page.
These actions focus on surface-level symptoms and shallow wickedness, but represent an inability or unwillingness to deal with—or even recognise—the deeper dilemmas.
You end up redesigning the monthly status report when the real problem is that the Head of Operations doesn’t trust the new Head of Strategy and their crazy plans to transform the organisation.
When the Wicked Layers run deep into those murky relational dynamics, the very actions you take to show progress can mask the real problem. They create the illusion of control and improvement.
It might look like something is happening, but there won’t be a real breakthrough until you address the deep layers.
Opinions and Agendas
Wicked Layers come from unresolved differences and conflicting agendas.
Shallow layers come from different world views or interpretations of language.
Deep layers can be sourced in the organisation’s culture, power struggles, lack of trust, unresolved tension, or just two strong-willed individuals who refuse to cede any ground.
You won’t see the layers mentioned in any project metrics, but you will feel it in the tone of emails, the revisited decisions, the general resistance to change, and the desire to have closed-door discussions.
Until the deep layers are addressed, your project will underperform and waste energy, no matter how hard the team works.
The Cost of Staying Out of the Deep End
What is this avoidance costing you?
The vast majority of project teams are unwilling to take on the social cost of shining a light on the problems. They default to carrying the extra load and exhaustion rather than confronting the dark heart of wickedness. This can be driven by a lack of skills or fear of consequences if the dysfunction is called out.
The problem is highly situational, but the solution always starts in a similar way: creating the space to discuss and name what is getting in the way.
What do you know is in the way of performance that no one is willing to talk about?
What are you doing to create the ability to bring this into the light?
How do you focus on understanding the worldviews of others (and why they think this way)?
Are you creating the space and permission to have higher-order conversations about what is really in the way?
Ignoring the deep social issues that are standing in the way of progress is a common strategy. Yet, time and time again, the most effective projects and operations are those where there is alignment all the way up and down through the organisation.
Surfacing the wicked layers makes projects easier. Never simple, sometimes expensive, but worth doing.
