Wicked Problems

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Boundaries

Has multiple causes & manifests at multiple scales course, small groups surface nuclear weapons systems interventions that could accelerate nonproliferation/disarmament goals.

“I found the collaboration with systems thinkers and designers really valuable and have learned a lot of new methodological approaches through this interdisciplinary work.”

Strategic Foresight

Our module on strategic foresight has been informed by partnerships with the School of International Futures (SOIF), Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, afrofuturist Lonny Avi Brooks, and several others. The course was piloted with several audiences. The feedback we received has informed a refinement of the course under the leadership of futurist Pupul Bisht (now N Square’s director of strategic foresight), whose work focuses on countering colonialist frames in futures work.

To date, roughly 50 participants have completed the new systems thinking and wicked problems courses. Ploughshares Fund, Global Zero, NTI, and numerous other organizations in the nuclear field had staff go through N Square’s systems thinking and strategic foresight course, signaling a desire to develop shared methods and language to support greater strategic coordination and collaboration.

Participants in the course learn methods for tracking and understanding the implications of economic, environmental, social, political, and technological change in relation to nuclear challenges, then crafting future scenarios that allow the community to “rehearse” strategic options ahead of time.

“Training for strategic foresight and systems thinking—without these, we are just going round in circles within a rationality and resulting policy logic that are (I would argue, by design) quite literally closed systems that allow no ‘rational’ exit.”

By demand, we will offer a systems map course that centers the Horizon 2045 nuclear system map* as a tool for field building, engaging new audiences, and cutting across ideological divisions. Using the same techniques that led to the creation of the Horizon 2045 nuclear systems map (now being translated into interactive form), this module will help leaders, changemakers, and funders gain a “topview” of the system in which they operate so they can reduce redundancy, identify levers for change, and coordinate efforts and investments.

* For more on Horizon 2045 and the systems map, see page 44

Why Is N Square Training Having an Effect?

“I’m using this content in real time at my day job. It’s very impactful.”

“Nuclear policy and advocacy fields are brittle (and the latter also rigid—a bad combination). So there really is very little capacity right now, suggesting capacity building is very important!”

It is intentionally designed

Our team has a depth of experience building and facilitating collaborative training courses.

It addresses an absence

There is a lack of training of this nature in the field (and training designed to give people outside the field an entry point).

It embraces collective learning

Many of our trainings are “cohort courses,” with participants working alongside others to learn and apply new skills to boost individual and collective impact.

It is intradisciplinary

Our courses encourage and enable collaboration across organizations, disciplines, and fields.

It is responsive

Feedback is built into the training, helping us hone and shape existing offerings and design new ones in ways that are tailored to changes in the field and to the needs of nuclear professionals.

Survey Results: The Value of Capacity Building

Respondents to our November 2022 survey perceived the following aspects of N Square’s capacity building efforts as high value:

• N Square’s skill at identifying what the field can benefit from and when, and then offering it (e.g., the shift to include futures thinking)

The quality of the content provided

• The opportunity to collaborate with systems thinkers, designers, and futurists (not just learn from, but do work with)

• The ways in which capacity building helps to unstick mental models the field currently holds, catalyze creativity, and respond to how the world is changing around us

• The value of systems thinking to start conversations, change perspectives, address the complexity of the problem, and move beyond immediate tactical challenges