Wicked Problems Podcast

In this edition I am speaking to Keith Grint, Professor Emeritus at Warwick University. We’re discussing Wicked Problems in general, the specific Wicked Problems of Covid-19, Brexit, and Leadership. When Wicked Problems were first introduced by Rittel & Webber in 1973, various people have built upon the idea that it was Professor Grint, drawing on the work of Thompson’s Messy Solutions, who introduced the concepts of Tame and Critical problems, thus contextualising the...

After nearly 3 decades of building Fortune 500 brands and serving as a 3x CMO, Stephanie founded Mindfire Mastery in 2020 to show leaders the secret power of using disruption to their advantage to catapult from functional to optimal. As a certified professional coach and emotional intelligence teacher of the Google born Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program, she supports Executives and results-driven leaders who are struggling through overwhelming change and stress to build abundant...

Marcus Kirsch has worked as a transformation, service design and innovation specialist for over 20 years. Today he helps organisations be better problem-solvers and be more resilient. He is a Royal College of Art alumnus and former MIT Medialab researcher. He led projects for companies like British Telecom, GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft, McDonald’s, Nationwide, Nissan, Science Museum, P&G, Telekom Italia, non-profits and startups. He won awards in the areas of creativity and innovation and has...

Andy is the Founder of the Transparency Task Force (TTF) the collaborative, campaigning community dedicated to driving positive, progressive and purposeful reform of the world’s financial services industry, through harnessing the transformational power of transparency. Core to The TTF’s mission is to “encourage ongoing reform of the financial services sector, so that it serves society better” The TTF’s vision is “to create a large and highly respected international institution that helps...

Royston A Cumberbatch is an expert in Finance, Business and Investing. With a career spanning 30 years… He now empowers business owners and entrepreneurs to make better decisions and get higher returns / profit after tax. He does this by using his unique Profitable Business Blueprint and Proven Profit Generator System. What I found really interesting about Royston was really the rags to riches story. He comes from a humble background, was rejected by his father who had abandoned him as a...

Today I’m with Anuka Gazara-Anthony. Anuka is a Mindfulness teacher and Leadership & Wellness Coach who combines organizational leadership, programme management and hypnobirthing in her work. She has supported and advised executives in a diverse range of organizations, including the United Nations and the International Labour Organization, with work taking her across Europe and Africa. Anuka’s work is committed to strengthening the inner resilience and wisdom of leaders using...

Martin cut his teeth as an early AWS pioneer leading two of the largest migrations in the world in the early naughties. He now has 15 years’ experience in Digital Strategy, Cloud Architecture and Digital Operating models and has provided best practice cloud usage, DevOps/Agile operating models and technical leadership to some of the world’s largest companies. I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: tc@wickedproblems.fm. Enjoy, Toby

Welcome to another edition of Wicked Problems. Jannah Patchay is a subject matter expert and consultant in the financial markets sector who specialises in financial markets innovation, and helping firms define, develop and execute commercial strategies in a highly regulated environment. Her passion is for market structure and finding creative solutions to the challenges surrounding access to markets and liquidity for both traditional financial markets and asset classes, and the emerging...

Risk! There’s definitely some going around at the moment, whether it’s markets, business continuity, or popping to the corner shop – risk is everywhere. My guest today is Jan-Peter Onstwedder. Jan-Peter has over 25 years experience in risk management across a wide variety of asset classes and global trading markets, both in a banking and a corporate environment. Currently he works as Chief Risk and Technology Officer for Pavilion Energy, an LNG trading company in Singapore, specialising...

With the world in lockdown, how do you get the right amount of exercise? Exercise videos abound on the internet. Most of which provide a vital service to people seeking to stay fit. However, the majority are aimed at those who already have a certain level of fitness and flexibility. So, is there an exercise routine that works for all, regardless of fitness level? My guest today, Martin Christie certainly thinks so. In 2003 Martin introduced Nordic Walking to the UK, forming the company...

I first met Aino at a conference. I was late to a session and she graciously signalled that the seat next to her was free. I had no idea that I was now sitting next to the day’s keynote speaker, a fact that didn’t reveal itself even when we were paired up for an exercise that involved sharing our earliest memories of soft toys. (Yes, really!) Aino is a teacher, a technical conference editor and retrospectives facilitator and has appeared on the conference circuit since 2001 and presented...

Allan Kelly Allan Kelly was an early exponent of the #NoProjects movement, one of whose key tenets is: “If you want to start a project, you’ve already failed” Allan runs workshops on fresh thinking (thought leadership) and Agile team trainings He is also an Agile coach, speaks at conferences and events and spends a great deal of time at ‘Agile on the beach’. Somewhere in amongst all of this, Allan finds the time to write some excellent books such as: (links below) This episode may...

In this episode I talk to John Clapham, a professional coach and Agile consultant who works predominantly with I.T and digital services organisations. John helps leaders and individuals develop, teams to build great products, and organisations learn to be more effective, productive and enjoyable to work in. He is also a frequent speaker at conferences around the UK. With the advent of cloud technology and fast paced Agile project delivery methodologies such as Scrum & Kanban, come concepts...

This week I am talking to the CEO of ChaosIQ Russ Miles, cofounder of the open source project ChaosToolkit. Russ is also an international speaker, trainer and author. Russ has just released his latest book title Learning Chaos Engineering: Discovering and Overcoming System Weaknesses Through Experimentation. If you’ve ever experienced an issue with a computer system and wondered how it is that people don’t catch these issues, or if you are the owner of a system and have encountered an...

Billy Bragg's music is heavily centred on bringing about change and involving the younger generation in activist causes. He is known to have said: “I don’t mind being being labelled as a political songwriter. The thing that troubles me is being dismissed as a political songwriter.” “Phil Collins might write a song about the homeless but if he doesn’t have the action to go with it he’s just exploiting that for a subject.” Billy bought himself out of the British Army in 1981 for £175, cites...

Sue Dopson is the Rhodes Trust Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Fellow of Green Templeton College and Deputy Dean of Saïd Business School at The University of Oxford. Her research centres on leadership and transformational change in the public and healthcare sectors. Her work has informed and influenced government bodies such as the department of health and the national institute for health and clinical excellence; N.I.C.E, in their thinking on the areas such as the...

The risk of cyber attack is on the increase and becoming ever more complicated. So how do you defend against that risk when in fact it's so complicated that it's almost impossible for anybody to understand the threat landscape. In this episode I'll be talking to Martin Clements. Martin moved to the private sector in 2016 after a long career focused on digital innovation and cyber in government. Originally trained in Computer and Natural Sciences, he started his career as a coder;...

In this episode I'll be talking to John Williams, founder of The Ideas Lab London. John began his career in creative technology as a developer on pioneering special effects software, including on-site work at Disney Feature Animation at Los Angeles and broadcast automation. He became Digital Media CTO at a European startup incubator before moving to head up a small media technology consultancy team at Deloitte. John left to consult independently to broadcasters around the world...

My name is Toby Corballis and I’m going to be your host on this journey through some fascinating problems being worked on and thought about by some extremely clever people. But first, why the term wicked? Well, it’s not meant in the Ali-G sense, nor in the Wizard of Oz sense. Here, the term Wicked is referring to the elusiveness of solutions. This doesn’t mean that such problems cannot be solved, just that a solution is not that easy to find or, when solved, it wasn’t done by any...