Small wins: how design enables leadership into wicked situations

This thesis investigates how design practices generate small wins that enable leadership to emerge while navigating wicked situations in innovation contexts. Contemporary organizations increasingly operate under conditions of persistent uncertainty, ambiguity, and pluralism, where problems cannot be clearly defined in advance and action unfolds without stable criteria for evaluation. Although design, leadership, and wickedness are widely discussed in management and organization studies, they are often treated as conceptually adjacent yet analytically disconnected domains. This research addresses this gap by developing a practice-based model that reconnects design-as-inquiry, small wins, and leadership-as-practice. Building on a systematic qualitative review of interdisciplinary literature, the study analyses how teams engage with wicked situations through concrete practices such as reframing, materializing ideas, iterative experimentation, and relational sensemaking. The central research question guiding the thesis is: “What design practices generate small wins that support leadership in navigating innovation?” Through a systematic review of empirical studies, 138 practices are identified and clustered into four recurrent configurations: (1) Framing and Reframing Situations, (2) Materializing Understanding, (3) Iterative Experimentation, and (4) Relational Sensemaking. Each cluster addresses a distinct facet of wickedness and enables specific types of small wins (cognitive, material, processual, and relational). Small wins emerge as the connective mechanism between design practices and leadership outcomes. This thesis conceptualizes small wins as situated epistemic and relational advancements that progressively stabilize indeterminate situations. Through the accumulation and interaction of small wins, leadership outcomes of direction, alignment, and commitment become possible.The thesis culminates in a practice-based framework that theorizes leadership as an emergent, distributed accomplishment arising from design-enabled engagement with wickedness. By integrating design studies, leadership-as-practice scholarship, and small wins theory, the study offers both theoretical advancement and managerial guidance for cultivating leadership under conditions of radical uncertainty.

La tesi analizza come le pratiche di design generino small wins che consentono alla leadership di emergere nella navigazione di wicked situations nei contesti di innovazione. Le organizzazioni contemporanee operano sempre più in condizioni di incertezza persistente, ambiguità e pluralismo, in cui i problemi non possono essere definiti in modo chiaro a priori e l’azione si sviluppa senza criteri stabili di valutazione. Sebbene design, leadership e wickedness siano ampiamente discussi negli studi di management e organizzazione, tali ambiti vengono spesso trattati come concettualmente contigui ma analiticamente disconnessi. Questa ricerca colma tale lacuna attraverso lo sviluppo di un modello practice-based che riconnette il design-as inquiry, la prospettiva delle small wins e la leadership-as-practice. A partire da una revisione qualitativa sistematica della letteratura interdisciplinare, lo studio analizza come i team si confrontino con wicked situations attraverso pratiche concrete quali reframing, materializzazione delle idee, sperimentazione iterativa e relational sensemaking. La domanda di ricerca che guida la tesi è: “Quali pratiche di design generano small wins che supportano la leadership nella navigazione dell’innovazione?” Attraverso una sistematica revisione di studi empirici, vengono identificate 138 pratiche, successivamente aggregate in quattro configurazioni ricorrenti: (1) Framing e Reframing delle Situazioni, (2) Materializzazione della Comprensione, (3) Sperimentazione Iterativa e (4) Sensemaking Relazionale. Ciascun cluster affronta una specifica dimensione della wickedness e abilita particolari tipologie di small wins (cognitive, materiali, processuali e relazionali). Le small wins emergono come meccanismo connettivo tra le pratiche di design e gli esiti di leadership. La tesi le concettualizza come avanzamenti epistemici e relazionali situati, capaci di stabilizzare progressivamente situazioni indeterminate. Attraverso l’accumulazione e l’interazione delle small wins, diventano possibili esiti di leadership quali direction, alignment e commitment. La tesi si conclude con la proposta di un framework practice based che interpreta la leadership come un risultato emergente e distribuito, generato dall’ingaggio con la wickedness attraverso pratiche di design. Integrando design studies, leadership-as-practice e teoria delle small wins, lo studio offre un contributo sia teorico sia pratico per coltivare la leadership in condizioni di incertezza radicale.