Leading for Health and Wellbeing: the need for a new paradigm

Much of the government’s health policy in recent years has focused on improving health and wellbeing. There have been numerous strategies, targets, reviews of progress and calls for further efforts to tackle what are widely perceived to be persistent, stubborn, deep-seated and intractable problems. Such problems are sometimes called ‘wicked issues’ in the sense that they defy easy or single bullet solutions—if, indeed, there are any solutions at all or ones of a lasting nature. Wicked issues have complex causes and require complex solutions. They share a number of features most of which are strikingly evident in the public health challenges societies face, including tackling obesity, alcohol misuse, poor mental health, environmental degradation and so on. Unlike ‘tame’ problems which can be readily defined and solutions identified, wicked problems cannot be resolved through traditional linear, analytical approaches. Wicked problems: