Dealing with imperfection in tackling complex problems

By Gabriele Bammer. Originally published on the Integration and Implementation Insights blog.

Why is an appreciation of imperfection and its inevitability important for those seeking to understand and act on complex societal and environmental problems? Which traps can imperfection lead to and what are the most effective ways of dealing with it?

The inevitability of imperfection

Imperfection is inevitable both in attempting to develop a comprehensive understanding of complex societal and environmental problems and in acting on them. The multiple underpinning reasons include:

• Complex problems are systems problems, and all systems views are partial, so that the whole system cannot be taken into account. Even then, boundaries need to be set to effectively deploy available resources and these artificial boundaries further constrain understanding of the whole system. In addition, any systems view encompasses multiple interacting cause-and-effect relationships, which can be nonlinear and at different scales and therefore hard to grasp.
• All problems occur in a particular context, which has historical, political, geographical, cultural, economic and other dimensions. It is not possible to fully understand all of these circumstances.
• Unknowns are unlimited, with new unknowns continuing to arise through changing circumstances and as a result of research. Further we don’t know what we don’t know (unknown unknowns), methods have not yet been developed to investigate some unknowns and some things are simply unknowable.
• Change is multifaceted, dynamic and unpredictable, often making problems hard to pin down so that they can be examined and making the impact of actions hard to control in what is often a roiling environment.
• Understanding of problems and desirable actions is affected by the worldviews, values and interests of those involved. These can differ widely within and across groups of researchers, those affected by the problem and those charged with acting on the problem. Put simply, a good outcome for one group may be anathema to another.
• Resources will always be limited. Even leaving aside the causes of imperfection outlined above, there will never be enough time, money or person-power to fully understand a problem or take all the actions required.

Actions to avoid

It can be hard to acknowledge that no amount of time or money to produce more fine-grained research findings will be adequate and that there are no perfect ways forward. One action to avoid, then, is over-confidence that perfect understanding or an answer exist. Instead, it’s important to focus on the best that can be done in the circumstances. In addition, the inevitability of imperfection should not be an excuse for:

• hopelessness or nihilism, in other words thinking that nothing is worth any effort.
• incompetence or anything goes, where research and actions are done sloppily, where the best methods are not used and where no judgment is exercised in deciding what to do and how.
• corruption, where no effort is made to avoid conflicts of interest or self-serving actions, such as casting unwarranted doubt to delay or influence specific actions.
• hindsight bias, where reviews of actions taken use information that was not available at the time to provide undeserved criticism.

Effectively dealing with imperfection

As well as knowing what to avoid, it is also useful to know what to aim for, which includes:

• Aiming for best possible outcomes. This relies on the judgment and expertise of those involved, including in deciding how to approach the system; which aspects of context are most likely to be critical; how best to deal with unknowns; what actions are mostly likely to have an impact; inviting a diversity of views and inputs, as well as accommodating them respectfully and as comprehensively as possible; and using time, money and human resources effectively and judiciously.
• Communicating clearly that “solutions” are always time-limited and imperfect.
• Building in the ability to detect adverse unexpected consequences and nasty surprises, as well as having processes in place to deal with or recover from them. Closely related is adaptive management, which involves constant review and tweaking to stay within pre-determined ‘safe’ limits (Stafford Smith, 2015).
• Using models to explore potential impacts, while maintaining an awareness of model limitations and avoiding poor assumptions, making models overly complex, biases, a false sense of certainty and excessive precision as discussed by Andrea Saltelli in his i2Inisghts contribution Five lessons to improve how models serve society.
• Being upfront about and documenting the decisions and judgment calls made, as well as mistakes and limitations, so that any evaluation can follow the logic of what was done and fairly assess its merits and weaknesses.

Conclusion

There is still much to do to appreciate the importance of imperfection, and especially to deal with it effectively. Do you have any relevant experience to share? What explanations for the inevitability of imperfection have you found compelling? Have you identified other traps to avoid? Most importantly, are you familiar with other effective ways to deal with imperfection?

Reference:

Stafford Smith, M. (2015) “Responding to global environmental change.” In Bammer, G. (ed) Change! Combining analytic approaches with street wisdom. The Australian National University, Canberra: ANU Press, 29-42. Online, open access: https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p319221/pdf/ch032.pdf

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)

Biography:

Gabriele Bammer PhD is Professor of Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at The Australian National University in Canberra. i2S provides theory and methods for tackling complex societal and environmental problems, especially for developing a more comprehensive understanding in order to generate fresh insights and ideas for action, supporting improved policy and practice responses by government, business and civil society, and effective interactions between disciplinary and stakeholder experts. She is the inaugural President of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (2023-25).

Article source: Dealing with imperfection in tackling complex problems. Republished by permission.

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