Designing Human Systems in a Wicked World

Wickedness Is On Fire

We live in a world our institutions were not designed for. They were modeled for a kind environment, but ours is wicked.

Wicked describes environments of high complexity and velocity. What Hogarth observed in learning, what Epstein named in development, and what Rittel argued for in public planning shows up everywhere humans organize.

I am writing to name the pattern across domains. Wicked just… is.

It rises and falls as society moves through time. Wickedness becomes observable when change outpaces structure. In wicked conditions, humans feel chaos.

The internet was the first major catalyst pulling us out of post-war equilibrium. AI is a powerful accelerant, pushing the balance further in wicked’s favor.

Lucky for us, wicked worlds don’t break. They reshape, and we get to do it.

Coherence comes from humans. Strategy is dynamic control of time and space.

This is Designing Human Systems in a Wicked World.

When Structure Stalls, People Take Over

Legacy systems are optimized for stability in kind environments, where change is slow and inputs are predictable.

In wicked conditions, that stability becomes a source of friction. Processes built for repetition break under dynamic load.

When reality shifts faster than structure can update, a gap forms between the system on paper and the system in motion. 

The workload shifts to humans, and human interfaces become the load-bearing points the system can’t provide. They demand relational energy to mediate coherence.

This pattern scales.

When institutions lag social change, people experience chaos first and reach for order.

Games of strategy accelerate toward dynamic control of time and space, where system friction leads to loss.

When organizations grow messier, roles blur and system friction costs money.

Friction as Information

Friction is often mistaken for failure. In wicked systems, it is information. When friction is treated as information, systems adapt quicker.

In human systems, friction appears where force is applied against structure, because complexity and velocity have outpaced alignment.

Where friction shows up, coherence is missing. The signal can be local and the cause still systemic.

The instinct is to remove friction wherever it is, which works in kind environments.

Wicked conditions are different. Friction tells you where to look, not what to do. It wants to be understood.

Friction accumulates, but read early and it can be metabolized live. System ecology generates emergent roles where coherence is already trying to reassert itself.

Emergence

Dynamic loads lead to emergent roles as ecological functions: the system produces both the problem and the solution. They appear at the inflection points of system reorganization. 

Emergent roles are concepts, not positions. They are containers, and anyone who sees them can step in.

Friction is an external influence, and emergent roles are always part of a coordinated team. Some emergent roles carry enormous influence. Others are ordinary, almost invisible.

A strongman fills a leadership vacuum. A striker emerges at goal scoring opportunities. A glue player coordinates across organizational teams.

Designing for Flow

In every system, drift appears everywhere and correction is continuous. 

In kind environments, coherence is achieved through stability. Predictable inputs allow fixed structures to metabolize friction over time, making stability an ideal design goal. 

Wicked conditions force systems to reorganize around interaction rather than architecture. The design goal shifts from stability to emergence. A design approach in wicked conditions reduces the focus on outcome and instead shapes conditions.

As wickedness rises, alignment is less prescriptive, and decision-making more distributed. Coherence is reached when relational energy concentrates at emergent inflection points.

Responsiveness is built in. Roles and components remain loosely coupled but tightly aligned, free to breathe and recombine as the system learns what it needs.

Flow is sustained coherence over time. Csikszentmihályi described individual flow as emerging when cognitive systems maintain coherence under dynamic load. System flow emerges when collective coordination achieves the same.

Wicked systems in flow adapt smoothly. Signals travel efficiently through human relationships and pathways form where energy already wants to go.

Pattern Naming

Institutions will lag, structure will strain, friction will appear, and somewhere along the way a human will respond.

Wicked is universal, wickedness is cyclical. Coherence is invariant. The system is always reorganizing itself. Our work is to help it breathe.