Wicked problems are messy, evolving, and deeply interconnected challenges that resist simple definitions and definitive solutions. Climate change, inequality, public health, conflict, and humanitarian crises all share this quality: the closer we look, the more layers we uncover.
Last year, the Behavioral Systems Group relaunched its webinar series with a special Halloween edition dedicated to exploring the “wicked” nature of complex systems. In this article, we revisit some of the key highlights from the event.
To reflect on these challenges, we were joined by Marie Pauline Stege, a behavioral scientist in the Research and Innovation team at the International Rescue Committee. Her work brings together economics, environmental issues, gender, humanitarian aid, and behavioral science, with experience ranging from community-based development evaluations in Ecuador to climate resilience and agricultural projects in Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Niger.
Throughout the session, Marie guided us through the complexity of wicked problems and shared practical questions for beginning to untangle them.
1. Before defining the behavior, understand the system
One of Marie’s strongest messages is that, when dealing with wicked problems, teams should resist the urge to define the target behavior too quickly. In traditional behavioral science projects, it is common to begin by identifying an actor, a behavior, and a desired outcome. But in complex humanitarian and climate-affected settings, this can narrow the problem too early.
Marie explains that in countries affected by overlapping crises—such as droughts, floods, conflict, displacement, and economic insecurity—it is often unclear where the problem begins. In an agricultural program, for example, it may be tempting to say that farmers need to use better seeds, plant at a different time, or adopt a new practice. But these decisions are shaped by many other forces: seed suppliers, informal financial networks, government policies, NGOs, climate shocks, conflict, and local norms.
Her point is not that behavior does not matter. It is that behavior is rarely isolated. Before asking how to change a behavior, practitioners need to understand the wider system that produces it.
2. Behavioral science should be a lens, not the whole solution
Marie is careful not to present behavioral science as a universal answer to wicked problems. Instead, she argues that it should be used as one lens within a broader interdisciplinary approach.
In her view, behavioral science can help teams ask better questions about assumptions, motivations, barriers, social norms, decision-making, and context. However, wicked problems also require systems thinking, design thinking, futures thinking, local knowledge, and participatory methods. Some challenges may have a behavioral component, but they may also be structural, political, institutional, or environmental.
This distinction is important. Rather than beginning with the question: “What behavioral intervention should we design?”, Marie suggests that teams should first ask: “What kind of problem are we facing, and where can a behavioral lens actually help?”
3. Communities need to be involved before the problem is fully defined
Communities should not be consulted only after a project has already been designed. They need to be involved from the beginning—even in defining what the goal and the problem are.
Marie illustrates this with a seed security project in Pakistan. At first, one assumption was that farmers struggled to access quality seeds because they lacked formal bank loans. From that perspective, the problem seemed to be about affordability and access to formal credit. But when the team spoke with communities, they discovered a different reality: farmers often accessed money through relatives and informal networks. The issue was not simply the absence of formal loans.
This changed the way the team understood the problem. It also showed why assumptions must be treated as hypotheses, not facts. In wicked problems, the people affected by the issue often see constraints, resources, and priorities that external teams may miss.
“You need to think—but what do we actually know? Let's take a step back and think, how can we make sure that we're not missing something? So I think it's more about having this hypothesis mindset[…]”
Marie also connects this lesson to her earlier experience in Ecuador, where she began questioning why communities were often involved only after programs had already been implemented. That experience helped shape her interest in behavioral science and in adopting more participatory ways to intervention design.
4. Systems tools are useful, but the mindset matters more than the map
Marie also offers a very practical reflection: systems thinking is not about using one specific tool. It is a mindset shift.
In the Pakistan project, her team created a complex visual map of the seed system, which included farmers, agro-dealers, policymakers, NGOs, and other actors. The process helped the researchers understand existing relationships and interdependencies. But when they shared the map with the broader team, they found it to be overwhelming and difficult to use.
The value of a systems tool may lie in the thinking process, not in the final diagram. A causal loop diagram may help a research team make sense of complexity, but it may not be the best communication tool for partners, policymakers, or communities.
In Somalia, for example, Marie describes how it was more useful to extract a specific vicious cycle and present it in a more digestible way. In work with pastoralist communities, the team also learned that decisions about migrating, settling down, or changing livelihoods were not shaped only by drought or conflict. They were also shaped by people’s attachment to animals and to the pastoralist way of life. Culture, identity, and social norms were part of the system.
This is why, for Marie, systems thinking is less about producing a perfect map and more about asking better questions: What do we actually know? Where did this problem definition come from? Who has been left out of the conversation? What other actors and forces are shaping this behavior? And where can we realistically intervene?
A thought to reflect on
One key learning of the conversation was that wicked problems are not solved once and for all. They are worked on. For behavioral scientists, this requires humility, participation, iteration, and collaboration with other disciplines.
Instead of rushing to identify one actor, one behavior, and one intervention, we need to slow down and ask which system is producing the behavior in the first place. In complex settings, the most important contribution of behavioral science may not be a nudge or a message, but simply a better way of seeing the problem.
You can view the full session recording here.
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