PDIA in Practice 7: Deconstructing Problems

The Practice of PDIA: Building Capability by Delivering Results Podcast seriesPart 7: Deconstructing ProblemsWelcome to Part 7 of the Practice of PDIA: Building Capability by Delivering Results Podcast series. This 12 part series, based on a video series used for our PDIA online course, will walk you through the PDIA or Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation approach to solving complex development problems. More than 1,500 development practitioners in 90 countries have used the PDIA approach.Most problems in the public sector are wicked hard and therefore it is easy to get stuck. These meta problems need to be broken down into manageable problems to help you mobilize support and to ultimately solve. In today’s podcast, Professor Matt Andrews and Lant Pritchett will discuss how to deconstruct problems.Lant, you often say PDIA is hard. Can you explain this to our listeners?You cannot juggle without the struggleThanks Lant. Matt what else would you say about the role of struggling in PDIA?PDIA is a way to structure your struggleMatt, you often say, PDIA is an approach to solving complex problems where the problem needs to be broken down into smaller, more manageable sets of focal points for engagement, that are open to localized solution building. Can you explain how you do this in PDIA?Deconstructing sticky problems.Thank you for listening to Part 7 of the Practice of PDIA: Podcast series. Tune in to listen to Part 8 where we will discuss the triple A change space analysis. To learn more about the problem deconstruction process in PDIA, download our toolkit at bsc.cid.harvard.edu.