By: Ivan Ostrovsky on February 28, 2025
“A Failure of Nerve” by Edwin H. Friedman is definitely my favorite book of the semester so far! It’s been a challenging week for me, and it truly feels as though this book was written just for someone like me. As a new leader here in Hawaii, I’m navigating the beautiful journey of leading in…
By: Joel Zantingh on February 28, 2025
In our Doctoral program, there has been ample space to think through the models of leadership that exist, and how we as leaders will shape our influence to meet the complexities of the world. But what can be learned by not beginning with the leader or their qualities, but with the complexities themselves? This is where…
By: Noel Liemam on February 27, 2025
Introduction: “EXPLORING WICKED PROBLEMS: What They Are and Why Thet Are important,” by Joseph Bentley, PhD and Michael Toth, PhD not only gave us different perspectives on how we look at problems, but some practical ways to deal with it. In the introduction, they gave us the reason this book is necessary by stating that…
By: Daren Jaime on February 27, 2025
According to the U.S Census, in 2023, the official poverty rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 11.1 percent. There were 36.8 million people in poverty in 2023. As poverty remains on the decline for most of my home city of Syracuse, New York has a poverty crisis. It leads the nation in extreme concentrated poverty…
By: Jess Bashioum on February 27, 2025
Reading a failure of nerve by Edwin Freeman[1] was encouraging to me. One of the main reasons I am pursuing this Doctorate is my excitement for adventure. I work in a field that can very much get stuck in its own orientation[2]. In efforts to make change we end up seeing a lot of tired…
By: Michael Hansen on February 27, 2025
It had already been a twelve-hour day when the text came across my Blackberry: the infamous Sev-1 (Severity One) alert. For our fulfillment center, it signified that part of our automation and/or sortation systems were offline, putting customer experience at risk, as orders might not reach their intended destination in time. I headed to the…
By: Chad Warren on February 27, 2025
What if loneliness became so overwhelming that people started renting families just to feel connected? In Japan, this isn’t just a hypothetical—it’s a reality. Companies like Family Romance provide actors to fill roles as family members, friends, or romantic partners for people craving human connection.[1] While this may seem extreme, it highlights a larger issue…
By: David Weston on February 27, 2025
So far, this book by Edwin H. Friedman entitled A Failure of Nerve has been my favorite reading. Having been in many different forms of leadership for well over half a century, I deeply resonate with his thinking patterns and the lessons he is proposing. This book reminds me of an incident in my own…
By: Jeremiah Gómez on February 27, 2025
My favorite definition of “leadership” these days is one from Ronald Heifetz: “disappointing people at a rate they can absorb.”[1] This definition came to mind throughout my reading of A Failure of Nerve, especially as Friedman interacted with the concepts of sabotage, systemic toxicity, and how people and organizations can strongly (negatively!) react simply because…
By: Julie O'Hara on February 27, 2025
It happened almost immediately. I started reading about Wicked Problems, and I could feel the metaphorical head smack followed by the thought, “How have I never heard of this before?” I was further surprised by reading about the many ways that a Wicked Problems framework is popular and widely applied across many disciplines. I may…
By: Elysse Burns on February 27, 2025
“Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1)—a verse that comes to mind when reflecting on Joseph Bentley and Michael Toth’s Exploring Wicked Problems. Drawing from the work of social scientists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, Bentley and Toth distinguish between two categories: tame problems and wicked problems. Tame…
By: Kari on February 27, 2025
I live in a breeding ground for wicked problems. My host country is in the Sahara. It is listed as the fifty-sixth poorest country in the World.[1] Limited resources are a daily struggle for everyone living here. Conflicting values in the country stem from topics such as slavery, ethnic conflict, and colonialism. The country receives…
By: Debbie Owen on February 27, 2025
I have a deep passion for spiritual formation and discipleship. However, I have found that before discussing discipleship with someone, I must begin by clarifying with which of the many definitions they are most familiar. With so many interpretations of discipleship, there is a lot of ambiguity regarding “what” it is, “how” to do it,…
By: Christian Swails on February 27, 2025
I really do not want to take on the task of critiquing Edwin Friedman’s masterpiece, A Failure of Nerve. And honestly, I’ll spend most of this article relating to the brilliance of his work rather than combatting it. I agree with William H. Dorherty’s endorsement, “Reading this book is like discovering an unpublished Beethoven sonata…
By: Darren Banek on February 27, 2025
I have had the privilege of attending our current church for about twenty-three years. In that time, I have seen the congregation of around one thousand people regularly functioning as the hands and feet of Jesus in desperate times. Some have lost all their worldly possessions in a matter of hours due to house fires,…
By: Graham English on February 27, 2025
In my weekly interactions with church leaders, I frequently encounter discussions centred around various problems they are experiencing. Rather than offering immediate advice, I adopt a listening stance, posing numerous questions to facilitate a deeper understanding of the issue. This approach often enables the individual to arrive at a solution independently, with my guidance catalyzing…
By: Robert Radcliff on February 27, 2025
This week, I read Friedman’s classic work, Failure of Nerve. He presents differentiation as the solution to the problem: “America is stuck in the rut of trying harder and harder without obtaining significantly new results.” [1] The book’s theme is that differentiated leadership provides stability in anxious times, refuses to blame others, and sets new…
By: Alex Mwaura on February 27, 2025
I’ve always thought the topic on leadership was a one we generally agreed on until I read Friedmans’: A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Every now and then, I pick up a book or article and find some aspects polarizing and others that I agree with. This book had…
By: Betsy on February 27, 2025
Our church was growing, and new people were joining all the time. In December 2011, I met a relatively new woman in our church who wanted to meet me in a coffee shop near our children’s schools. She produced some printed paper with Google definitions of different diagnoses, including narcissistic personality disorder, psychopathic and sociopathic…
By: Diane Tuttle on February 26, 2025
Problems are a common part of living. Solving many of them may be relatively simple. They give people confidence to try new things, thinking that the strategies for problem X would likely work for other problems. In addition, problem solving has other benefits such as giving life meaning, building mental growth, stimulating thinking and helping…
