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Phil Wagner: I love the wicked problem. In fact, it’s one of the things that, when I was deciding to come to William & Mary, it really drew my attention. It is such a robust organizing framework. It’s a great mental model to really get us all on the same page and also allow our students sort of individual lanes that they can bring their thought leadership and their unique experience to the table and execute something of value for themselves and for their industry. If you’re not familiar, a wicked problem is just a super complicated problem, but not just super complicated. If you look at the origins of wicked problems, this is a research phenomenon. It was developed by a city planner who partnered with an academic. And ultimately, the wicked problem framework says a wicked problem is something that has no one solution.

There’s not just one outcome, there are multiple different perspectives on the table and each have weight. Like, one could be viable, one could be viable, two could be viable, three could be viable. It doesn’t matter. And what makes it so complicated is that because there is no one right solution, and because there are multiple potentially right perspectives, how we solve each part of the wicked problem has sort of a domino effect. And so what you do in one part is gonna impact what comes next. It becomes a little bit choose your own adventure. But the stakes for the problem solver are incredibly high. These are personalized problems. These are problems that are relevant in the marketplace or relevant within the organizations that our students are a part of.

So, there’s something personally at stake on the table for each of them. And so the wicked problem framework, again, is just a space for our students to swim in, to bring problems to the MBA journey, to then get skills in finance and accounting and marketing and all of the different specializations or pathways we offer, and then come back and say, you know what? I can better address this wicked problem or a part of this wicked problem by applying these tools, by applying these concepts, by applying this disciplinary knowledge, and I can get somewhere helpful.

Speaker 2: Yeah. That’s incredible. So I believe it’s introduced in Renaissance Leader, and then students kind of work on it throughout their curriculum, throughout the course of the program, and then it kind of all comes together in the capstone. Is that right?

Phil Wagner: That’s correct. There are various iterations of how this could work. One of the things that we wanted to do is give students a strong orientation to wicked problems at the beginning. So your very first course, it’s an orientation course, but you hit the ground running. You’re not just thinking like, okay, here’s what it means to be an MBA student, or here’s a basic overview of the language we’re gonna use across the MBA. You’re bringing your big wicked problem to the table, and you’re gonna work through a variety of different thinking models, planning models, and some initial strategy models to think effectively about that wicked problem. Now, along your journey, which, this is a very personalized MBA, like this is not an MBA off the shelf, you can go elsewhere to get one of those.

We really pride ourselves on you being able to build something that is valuable for you. And so there’s not one pathway, which means there isn’t just one way we approach the wicked problem throughout the curriculum. Students do encounter the idea of wicked problems throughout several different courses. You’ll get it as early touchpoints. As you know, our students come to campus for residencies, and most, if not all of those residencies are about wicked problems or heavily explore the wicked problems framework. So along the MBA journey, they’re adding more tools to their toolkit. And what tools they add really depends on what they want this MBA to be for them. By the time they get to that final course, that’s when they come back to that wicked problem and they revisit and they think, okay, I’ve got these disciplinary tools, I’ve got these specializations.

They’ll get some strategy framing, they’ll get some strategy models in that final class. Then they’ll be able to step back and say, okay, how have I grown as a principled leader throughout this journey? What’s happened in that wicked problem space over the last 18 months or more? Because, as you know, the world is spinning fast. So how we think about AI at the start of that journey may look different. How we think about veterans affairs, how we think about anything could change. Are you prepared as a leader to navigate that change, to drive results through times of change? We think giving our students that orientation to wicked problems and allowing them to build the tools for their toolkit ultimately will give them something helpful by that last course to do something with. And then they graduate, not just with a diploma, not just with a credential, but with some finesse, thought leadership that they can take back to their industry.

Terry Shannon: Picture that a wicked problem is a complex business situation or societal situation that is perplexing. It sits out there, it causes lots of people concern, yet it maybe isn’t being addressed in an effective fashion. And what it takes is the willingness to do a dive, deep dive in on it, understand all the stakeholders that are involved. And one of the conversations we have with the students is change your lens, change your perspective. Being able to look at things from different angles. Think of that individual, the photographer, changing lenses to be able to zoom in or zoom out or change filters and so forth. If they can keep that thought process in mind when looking at a problem and get the right people at the table and then be able to lead those folks and guide them, because the multitude is better than the single to be able to come up with a scenario.

So the student identifies a wicked problem in that very first course, the Renaissance Leader, and it carries throughout the entire program with an ultimate presentation as a big part of the capstone. And the whole idea with that is that there are gonna be components of every course that you take that hopefully will change your lens and give you a different way to look at that issue that you’re dealing with. Some of it may be financial, some of it may be marketing, some of it may be operational or IT, but all designed to open your eyes and give you a different way to think about it, so that when you come to the tail end and you’re pulling it all together, you’ve got a way to go at the problem in an effective fashion, and you know who the teammates need to be to help make that happen.

Michael Wilkerson: My wicked problem is, so I run, I’m an owner and operate a business that sources products all over the world, specifically for furniture manufacturers and cabinet makers and things like that. So, it’s been an interesting couple of years between tariffs and more tariffs and changing government. And there’s just been a lot of things going on in the two years that we’ve been here. And so for my business specifically, I recognize that just like a person on the sales side of a business would want to sort of reduce their sales concentration risk, when you’re a sourcing company like we are and you’ve got 50 years in the business and tons of manufacturers that you work with that you’ve worked with for decades, but they’re all in Asia, and there’s a bit of a geopolitical coup as it relates to Asia right now.

And so it has, you know, that’s a big kind of lever and stress on our business. And so I decided to make my wicked problem that was diversifying our partnerships overseas, finding other countries to go to. What was funny about that is in the beginning of the course structure and as I was going through, about halfway through after this administration was elected and they decided to tariff every country, it kind of had to change my wicked problem.

So I had to pivot again. And so what’s cool about that, I think, is what’s a wicked problem? It’s a really difficult problem that has thousands of potential answers that any answer that you choose could be right or maybe be right, but that answer is gonna lead you down a path that’s probably gonna open up a whole another can of problems as well.

So it did that. It did just that. And so I was able to live it while I was working through it. And each course sort of touches on it in their own way. So it’s introduced in the Renaissance program, and so you kind of talk about it and build something, and then you’re always free to kind of change it or sort of, I guess, bake it and mature it. But yeah, at some point now, actually just finishing finance, and I’m kind of going through and looking at costs and looking at these things, there’s a bit of a change in my wicked problem. I’m just coming into this, I guess, capstone project, I guess you would call it, which is final class, where we have to formally kind of do it.

I think I’m gonna throw a wrinkle in it. I think it’s going to be a kind of a different reveal at the end than I thought it was gonna be, and I’m excited about that.