A note on how we landed where we did

When we started sketching out Wicked Outcomes™, we didn’t begin with labels. We began with a question that felt familiar from the Wicked Challenges work:

If this really has “stuck”, what would we expect to see?

Interestingly, we found ourselves circling back to the same number we’d used before for the Wicked Challenges™. Not because symmetry is neat (though it is), but because fewer felt thin, and more felt forced. Four turned out to be just enough to hold the tension.

We’ve been thinking about them a bit like a recipe.

What Goes Into a Wicked Outcome?

• One ingredient is about breadth. If an outcome only shows up in one place, one team, one system, one metric, it’s probably fragile. We needed something that asks: does this show up across the organisation, or just where we happen to be looking?
• Another is about the bottom-up, human side. Not values on posters or behaviours in workshops, but what people actually do on a Tuesday afternoon when no one is watching. How decisions get made. How work really flows. If it doesn’t live there, it doesn’t live at all.
• A third ingredient is about fit. Does this way of working feel aligned with what the organisation says it stands for? Does it feel like “the right way to work here”, rather than a borrowed model or a temporary overlay?
• And finally, there has to be something to score against. Not in a narrow, KPI-chasing sense, but enough signal to have an adult conversation about whether things are genuinely better, worse, or simply different. Without that, everything risks drifting back into opinion.

Individually, none of these are enough. And, as for Wicked Challenges, if these are 'Essential' Elements there are some 'Supplementary' Elements too to take or leave!

Together, they give us a way to talk about outcomes that last, the kind that remain visible after the project team has disbanded and the novelty has worn off.

As with Wicked Challenges™, this isn’t finished piece. It’s a working recipe. We’re testing it, poking it, and inviting others to add their own seasoning. If it holds, great. If it needs adjusting, we’ll learn our way forward. Currently, we're reviewing the emerging thinking internally with Partners and trusted associates @YourBigPic.

That, after all, is rather the point. Next up, the make-up of the working definition,