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As you may (or may not) recall from the last Reflection, TJ was challenging an old guy (me) about writing today. After all, I’m full of “old information” and the world has changed a LOT.

At the end of last week’s reflection, I commented on Ackoff’s concept of “formulating the mess.” Here are some notes on the application of his thinking to today’s world.

I’ve mentioned the concept of system wickedness in several reflections so I’m not going to dig into that. However, although understanding that we are operating in a wicked world is necessary, it is not sufficient.

After recognizing the wickedness of any system, the leading question should no longer be “What should we do?” but “How should we think before doing anything at all?”

This is where formulating the mess comes into play.

This concept came from the work and writing of Russ Ackoff in the 1970s. He was one of the leaders of the systems thinking discipline and saw the growing reality of messy problems that were actually a collection of intertwining problems.

Want an example?

When Hillary Clinton led the 1993–1994 reform effort during Bill Clinton’s presidency, she was not confronting a discrete policy flaw. She was confronting a deeply entangled system with structural interdependencies, conflicting stakeholder definitions, delayed feedback, and political volatility. These are classic characteristics of a wicked environment.

Ackoff’s point was that you cannot “solve” a mess you can only navigate it and make it better. And that starts with formulation.

Formulation is the act of constructing a shared understanding of a problematic situation as a system of interrelated issues, stakeholders, constraints, and dynamics before attempting to improve it.

Formulation replaces the impulse to simplify with the responsibility to understand. It must come before strategy, before decision-making, and before action. You must understand the system.

2026 Messes

Ackoff wrote about messes in the 1970s. Clinton wrestled with one in the 1990s. What must we navigate today? Here are three to consider:

• Climate migration & insurance market collapse: homeowners and insurance companies are both trying to navigate the cost of climate change along the east coast and gulf coast.
• Healthcare workforce collapse & aging demographics: aging demographics and healthcare burnout and shortages are in system conflict.
• Immigration: Who comes and who goes? Do we allow asylum seekers, or do we shut out the world? Who pays for what? Do we want to protect “our” jobs or do we want to keep our economy healthy?

What Ackoff Meant by “Formulation”

Formulation is not problem definition in the conventional sense. Recognize that:

• Problems do not exist in isolation. What leaders call “the problem” is usually a symptom of a larger system.
• A mess is a system of problems. It’s a network of interacting problems that cannot be solved independently.
• Formulation precedes solution. If you skip formulation, any solution, no matter how elegant, will likely worsen the system.

Core Actions

Ackoff never presented formulation as a checklist, but his work implies a sequence of actions.

• Acknowledge you are facing a mess, not a solvable problem. This gives you psychological permission to slow down and think.
• Map the system, not the issue. Identify the elements involved and how they relate:
  • Stakeholders (with conflicting interests)
  • Processes
  • Policies
  • Incentives
  • Technologies
  • Cultural norms
• Surface multiple problem definitions and accept that in a mess there is no single correct problem definition. Competing definitions reveal system tensions.
• Examine how past ‘solutions’ created the current situation. Today’s mess is often the result of yesterday’s solution.
• Distinguish between what can be changed and what must be worked around (laws, contracts, realities).
• Describe the idealized system without reference to the present. “If this system were working as well as possible right now, what would it look like?”
• Explain the mess as a narrative, not a diagnosis. Synthesize your findings into a coherent story of:
  • How the system evolved
  • Why tensions exist
  • Why simple fixes fail
  • Where leverage might exist

Only now is the system ready for intervention.

My View

Will AI formulate our messes for us? I don’t think so.

Our responsibility is to understand the system well enough so that improvement is possible, before action (or inaction) makes things worse. Ackoff saw that clearly in the 1970s and it still applies today.

Humans, young and old, must take responsibility for our future.

Bill