..
The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and
complicated world
by C. F.
Kurtz
and D. J.
Snowden
..
In this paper, we challenge the universality of three basic
assumptions prevalent in organizational decision support and
strategy: assumptions of order, of rational choice, and of
intent. We describe the Cynefin framework, a sense-making
device we have developed to help people make sense of the
complexities made visible by the relaxation of these
assumptions. The Cynefin framework is derived from several
years of action research into the use of narrative and
complexity theory in organizational knowledge exchange,
decision-making, strategy, and policy-making. The framework is
explained, its conceptual underpinnings are outlined, and its
use in group sense-making and discourse is described. Finally,
the consequences of relaxing the three basic assumptions,
using the Cynefin framework as a mechanism, are
considered.
..
Over the past several years, our group has been conducting
a program of disruptive action research using the methods of
narrative and complexity theory to address critical business
issues.
1
Action research has been defined as grounding theory in
contextual exploration, emphasizing participation, and
embracing change.
..
We started work in the areas of knowledge management,
cultural change and community dynamics, then expanded into
product development, market creation and branding, and in
recent years have been working increasingly in the area of
national and organizational strategy. Some of this work has
been directly funded by the U.S. government through DARPA
(Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) as well as by other
government agencies (in particular in Singapore) which are
interested in new approaches to supporting policy-making. The
central element of our approach is the Cynefin framework for
sense-making. In this paper we describe the framework and its
conceptual basis, and we detail some of its uses for
sense-making to support decision-making in varied dynamical
contexts.
..
Conceptual approach. We begin by questioning the
universality of three basic assumptions that pervade the
practice and to a lesser degree the theory of decision-making
and policy formulation in organizations. These are:
..
The assumption of order: that there are
underlying relationships between cause and effect in human
interactions and markets, which are capable of discovery and
empirical verification. In consequence, it is possible to
produce prescriptive and predictive models and design
interventions that allow us to achieve goals. This implies
that an understanding of the causal links in past behavior
allows us to define "best practice" for future behavior. It
also implies that there must be a right or ideal way of doing
things.
..
The assumption of rational choice: that faced
with a choice between one or more alternatives, human actors
will make a "rational" decision based only on minimizing pain
or maximizing pleasure; and, in consequence, their individual
and collective behavior can be managed by manipulation of pain
or pleasure outcomes and through education to make those
consequences evident.
..
The assumption of intentional capability:
that the acquisition of capability indicates an intention to
use that capability, and that actions from competitors,
populations, nation states, communities, or whatever
collective identity is under consideration are the result of
intentional behavior. In effect, we assume that every "blink"
we see is a "wink," and act accordingly. We accept that we do
things by accident, but assume that others do things
deliberately.
..
This paper contends that although these assumptions are
true within some contexts, they are not universally true. We
also believe that in decision-making at both policy-making and
operational levels, we are increasingly coming to deal with
situations where these assumptions are not true, but the tools
and techniques which are commonly available assume that they
are.
..
Order and chaos in antiquity. The human distinction
between order and chaos goes back to an abundant presence in
mythology, in which order arises out of (and thus requires)
and then vanquishes (and thus destroys) the mysterious forces
of chaos. For example, in the Enuma Elish,
2
the Babylonian epic of creation, the world began under the
reign of Tiamat, the mother of all things. In Tiamat's world,
"none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained." After
several generations, Tiamat's god-children appointed a
champion to seize control. Marduk not only defeated his
ancestor, but "split her up like a flat fish into two halves"
that became heaven and earth. He then proceeded to order the
universe in finer and finer detail:
He [Marduk] made the stations for the great
gods;
The stars, their images, as the stars of the
Zodiac, he fixed.
He ordained the year and into sections
he divided it;
For the twelve months he fixed three
stars....
He founded the station of Nibir [the planet
Jupiter] to determine their bounds;
That none might err
or go astray...
..
Note the words "fixed," "ordained," "divided,"
"determined," "err," and "astray." Control (in the first four
terms) and an absolute knowledge of right and wrong (in the
last two) are the salient points of Marduk's new world. Of
course Tiamat was never entirely vanquished; forces of chaos
appear in all traditions in the form of tricksters and
malcontents such as Bacchus, Loki, Coyote, the Monkey King,
Anansi, and Hermes. The forces of order and chaos danced with
each other throughout ancient times.
..
Science, order, and epiphenomena. Aristotle defined
four types of cause: the material (what you are made of, your
muscles and organs), the efficient (how you came to be, the
fact that your parents gave birth to you), the formal (your
type, your species), and the final (your function, your life
itself, your place in the universe). He believed that to
understand an event or entity, one had to consider all of
these factors in the particular, the mysterious as well as the
ordered. As others have pointed out,
3
the focus of Western thinking post Kant on efficient cause
only is to the detriment of knowledge.
..
Since the birth of enlightenment science, the distinction
between order and chaos has held a prominence that has
profoundly influenced conceptual and practical thinking. Kant
separated things that we can know empirically from things that
are the province of God, and thereby helped to section off all
but efficient causes to epiphenomena that could be safely
ignored. This concept of ordered science triggered a massive
growth in human knowledge and extended over many disciplines.
For example, sociology grew out of philosophy partly in an
attempt to create a "science of society" that could duplicate
the advances being made in physics and biology through
systematic observation and causal explanation. It was argued,
mainly by Comte, that it was theoretically possible to
discover laws similar to those of physics which could explain
the behavior of people in societies. The growth of technology
and the dominance of engineering-based approaches arising from
the need for automation and scalability reenforced the desire
for and the assumption of order. In popular literature, the
belief that all things can be known (in a Newtonian sense)
persisted well into this past century. Asimov's classic
science fiction Foundation Trilogy
4
builds on the character of Hari Seldon, the founder of
psychohistory, whose mathematics permits the prediction of
human behavior and social change centuries into the
future.
..
The development of management science, from
stopwatch-carrying Taylorists
5
to business process reengineering, was rooted in the belief
that systems were ordered; it was just a matter of time and
resources before the relationships between cause and effect
could be discovered.
6
The case study approach of many M.B.A. programs and the desire
for precise recommendations from policy teams and external
consultants perpetuate the underlying assumption of universal
order. Good leadership is linked to certain competences that
(it is claimed) can be mapped and identified, and then
replicated. The desire for order can even lead people to
accept completely abhorrent working conditions and political
structures simply to avoid "chaos" (a tendency exploited by
dictators from Pisistratus to Hitler and beyond). All of these
approaches and perceptions do not accept that there are
situations in which the lack of order is not a matter of poor
investigation, inadequate resources, or lack of understanding,
but is a priori the case -- and not necessarily a bad thing,
either.
..
Complexity science. A new awareness of the ancient
counterpart to order began over a century ago with Poincare
and several others, and has surged in recent decades.
7–10
In fact there is a fascinating kind of order in which no
director or designer is in control but which emerges through
the interaction of many entities. Emergent order has been
found in many natural phenomena: bird-flocking behavior can be
simulated on a computer through three simple rules
11;
termites produce elegant nests through the operation of simple
behaviors triggered by chemical traces
12;
each snowflake is a unique pattern arising from the
interactions of water particles during freezing.
13
The patterns that form are not controlled by a directing
intelligence; they are self-organizing.
14
The new science of complexity spawned by these findings is
interdisciplinary, touching fields from mathematics to
evolution to economics to meteorology to telecommunications.
15
In the domain of emergent order, the goal "to predict (and
thereby control) the behavior of systems not yet studied (but
similar to those that have been studied) under conditions not
yet extant and in time periods not yet experienced"
16
is difficult if not impossible to achieve -- but other goals are
achievable.
..
Awareness of emergent order has as yet had comparatively
little influence on mainstream theory and practice in
management and strategy, though some authors have been
exploring these topics with some success.
17–21
We are sorry to say that in our opinion too many of the books
written for a popular business audience on the subject have
been marred by misunderstandings, misapplications, and most of
all misplaced zeal (some even falling into pseudo-scientific
and pseudo-religious thinking). Our group has been using ideas
based on complexity science in our action research work for
the past several years, and the work we will describe here
benefits from that influence.
..
Contextual complexity. A considerable amount of
research and some early practice is taking place using complex
system principles, mainly using computing power to simulate
natural phenomena through agent-based models.
12
Well-known examples include routing optimization of airfreight
and telecommunication signals based on large volume data
modeling in which each agent is programmed to operate on
simple rules, the result of which is the emergence of complex
patterns of behavior.
22
We believe that such tools are valuable in certain contexts,
but are of more limited applicability when it comes to
managing people and knowledge. There are at least three
important contextual differences between human organizations
and those of ant colonies that make it more difficult to
simulate them using computer models. In a sense, because we
have not seen these issues addressed as fully as we would
like, we put them forth as challenges to agent-based
simulation of human behavior.
..
Humans are not limited to one identity. In a
human complex system, an agent is anything that has identity,
and we constantly flex our identities both individually and
collectively. Individually, we can be a parent, sibling,
spouse, or child and will behave differently depending on the
context. Collectively, we might, for example, be part of a
dissenting community, but in the face of a common threat, we
might assume the identity of the wider group. Accordingly, it
is not always possible to know which unit of analysis we are
working with.
..
There are generally three solutions to this problem of the
unit of analysis in the social simulation literature.
23
First, individuals are modeled and group behavior is explained
by the concept of "norms."
24
But identity goes deeper than norms -- it determines not only
reactions but perceptions and patternings of experience. A
second solution is to model groups as agents, but much
internal diversity and patterning is suppressed in this
approach. It also makes assumptions about intent and
predictability that are difficult to sustain. The third
solution to the unit-of-analysis problem is to consider the
rule or idea or "meme" as the unit of analysis,
25
but again we find that insufficient to capture the dynamics of
multiple identities. We would like (but do not expect) to see
simulations of human behavior able to encompass multiple
dynamic individual and collective identities acting
simultaneously and representing all aspects of perception,
decision-making, and action.
..
Humans are not limited to acting in accordance with
predetermined rules. We are able to impose structure
on our interactions (or disrupt it) as a result of collective
agreement or individual acts of free will. We are capable of
shifting a system from complexity to order and maintaining it
there in such a way that it becomes predictable. We are
capable of shifting a system from complexity to order and
maintaining it there in such a way that it becomes
predictable.[sic] As a result, questions of intentionality play a
large role in human patterns of complexity.
3
It is difficult to simulate true free will and complex
intentionality (for example, retrospective elaboration,
duplicity, groupthink, rumor, self-deception, manipulation,
surprise, confusion, internal conflict, stress, changes in the
meanings of previously unambiguous messages, the deliberate
creation of ambiguity, inadvertent disclosure, charisma,
cults, and pathologies) within a rule-based simulation. Social
simulations have addressed issues such as cooperation,
reputation, gossip, lying, and trust,
26
but always within an artificial framework which allows only
limited numbers of options and considers limited numbers of
phenomena operating at once. It is interesting that searching
the Internet for "simulation" and most of the terms listed
above brings up instances of simulations with which a user
interacts to explore patterns.
27
This may represent a gap between agent-based simulation and
human behavior similar to that found by the "strong artificial
intelligence (AI)" school of the 1970's whose goal was to
reproduce human intelligence.
28
We do not mean to say that there is no value to simulation of
human behavior, but we do think we should not expect it to
succeed any time soon in predicting what people will do in any
particular circumstance.
..
Eventually the concept of "intelligent augmentation"
29–30
grew in popularity and could be said to bridge the gap between
strong AI and reality. It is possible that a middle ground
between the belief that all human behavior can be simulated
and the belief that the very effort is questionable will be
found in the use of simulation not to explain or imitate but
to support human decision-making.
..
Humans are not limited to acting on local
patterns. People have a high capacity for awareness of
large-scale patterns because of their ability to communicate
abstract concepts through language, and, more recently,
because of the social and technological infrastructure that
enables them to respond immediately to events half a world
away. This means that to simulate human interaction, all
scales of awareness must be considered simultaneously rather
than choosing one circle of influence for each agent. There is
also the matter of simulating the interaction (conflict,
reinforcement) between local and global awareness. Many of the
emergent patterns we see in nature depend critically on the
limited (that is, local) ability of activators to diffuse
through a viscous medium.
13
We have not yet seen addressed how these issues cause complex
patterns in human societies to differ from complex patterns in
systems of locally aware agents.
..
We call our practice of keeping the human context foremost
in our considerations phenomenological or more commonly
"contextual complexity." It means mainly that when we use
agent-based simulation (and we do, in certain circumstances),
we use it as a tool for the exploration of possibility and
generation of ideas, not as a tool for recommending courses of
action.
..
Order and un-order. To avoid much repetition of the
longer terms "directed order" and "emergent order," we call
emergent order "un-order." Un-order is not the lack of order,
but a different kind of order, one not often considered but
just as legitimate in its own way. Here we deliberately use
the prefix "un-" not in its standard sense as "opposite of"
but in the less common sense of conveying a paradox, connoting
two things that are different but in another sense the same.
Bram Stoker used this meaning to great effect in 1897 with the
word "undead," which means neither dead nor alive but
something similar to both and different from both. According
to R. D. Cureton, e. e. cummings also used the prefix this way
in his poetry. Says Cureton,
31
"In normal usage, being and existing are stative concepts.
They are not actions which a person must consciously perform,
engage in, create. Words such as unbe and unexist, however,
force the reader to see the dynamic nature of human
existence...." Thus by our use of the term "un-order," we
challenge the assumption that any order not directed or
designed is invalid or unimportant.
..
Keep the baby, lose the bathwater. Let us sound a
quick warning about running into the trap of believing that
everything is complex. Some recent popular books on complexity
in business and management have been full of breathy
enthusiasm for the "edge of chaos" and would have businesses
maintain themselves as far from equilibrium as possible,
regardless of context or purpose. We think this is throwing
out the baby with the bathwater. We cannot simply go from
saying "things are ordered" to saying "things are un-ordered"
and leave it at that; things are both ordered and un-ordered
at once, because in reality order and un-order intertwine and
interact. Kostof
32
puts it well in his description of cities: "...the two primary
versions of urban arrangement, the planned and the `organic,'
often exist side by side.... Most historic towns, and
virtually all those of metropolitan size, are puzzles of
premeditated and spontaneous segments, variously interlocked
or juxtaposed...." In other words, it is useful to
artificially separate order and un-order so that we can
understand the different dynamics involved, but we should not
expect to find one without the other in real life. In many
organizations, for example, formal command structures and
informal trust networks support (while simultaneously
competing with) each other.
33–34
The joke that "the only thing worse than an inefficient
bureaucracy is an efficient bureaucracy" has some ground in
reality.
..
Methods for un-ordered space
Ordered-systems thinking assumes that through the study of
physical conditions, we can derive or discover general rules
or hypotheses that can be empirically verified and that create
a body of reliable knowledge, which can then be developed and
expanded. As we have mentioned, this assumption does not hold
in the domain of un-order.
..
In practice, all decision makers know this: however much
they might like things to be ordered, they know that there are
also circumstances in which "cultural factors," "inspired
leadership," "gut feel," and other complex factors are
dominant. All of these are patterns, which arise through the
interaction of various entities through space and time. In the
space of un-order the seeds of such patterns can be perceived,
and new ways of thinking can emerge. In fact, learning to
recognize and appreciate the domain of un-order is liberating,
because we can stop applying methods designed for order and
instead focus on legitimate methods that work well in
un-ordered situations. Tom Stewart
35
references the case of a group of marines taken to the New
York Mercantile Exchange in 1995 to be taught and to play with
simulators of the trading environment. Naturally the traders
won each time. But when the traders visited the Marine Corp's
base in Quantico and played war games against the marines,
they won yet again. What they realized is that the traders
were skilled at spotting patterns and intervening to structure
those patterns in their favor. The Marines, on the other hand,
like most business school graduates, had been trained to
collect and analyze data and then make rational decisions. In
a dynamic and constantly changing environment, it is possible
to pattern un-order but not to assume order.
..
In another case, a group of West Point graduates were asked
to manage the playtime of a kindergarten as a final year
assignment. The cruel thing is that they were given time to
prepare. They planned; they rationally identified objectives;
they determined backup and response plans. They then tried to
"order" children's play based on rational design principles,
and, in consequence, achieved chaos. They then observed what
teachers do. Experienced teachers allow a degree of freedom at
the start of the session, then intervene to stabilize
desirable patterns and destabilize undesirable ones; and, when
they are very clever, they seed the space so that the patterns
they want are more likely to emerge.
..
In the ordered domain we focus on efficiency because the
nature of systems is such that they are amenable to
reductionist approaches to problem solving; the whole is the
sum of the parts, and we achieve optimization of the system by
optimization of the parts. In the domain of un-order, the
whole is never the sum of the parts; every intervention is
also a diagnostic, and every diagnostic an intervention; any
act changes the nature of the system. As a result, we have to
allow a degree of sub-optimal behavior of each of the
components if the whole is to be optimized.
..
Pattern entrainment
Humans use patterns to order the world and make sense of
things in complex situations. Give a child a pile of blocks,
and he or she will build patterns out of them. Give an adult a
daily commute, and he or she will build patterns within it.
Patterns are something we actively, not passively, create, as
Mary Douglas
36
so well pointed out:
...whatever we perceive is organized into
patterns for which we the perceivers are largely
responsible....As perceivers we select from all the stimuli
falling on our senses only those which interest us, and our
interests are governed by a pattern-making tendency,
sometimes called a schema. In a chaos of shifting
impressions, each of us constructs a stable world in which
objects have recognizable shapes, are located in depth and
have permanence.... As time goes on and experience builds
up, we make greater investment in our systems of labels. So
a conservative bias is built in. It gives us
confidence.
..
Visually, we hold in sharp focus at any one instant a mere
tenth of a percent of our visual range, so even the process of
seeing is one of putting together many disparate
observations.
37
We fill in the gaps to create an experience-based pattern on
which we act. This aspect of human decision-making is a great
source of power, but it also brings limitation.
..
A television advertisement for a liberal broadsheet
newspaper in the United Kingdom illustrates this well. The
advertisement is set in a terraced inner city street. It is
dusk; litter blows down the street; overall, a threatening
environment.
..
Scene One: The camera points down the street and
picks up a skinhead who comes around the corner. A police
car stops beside the skinhead, who immediately runs towards
the camera. Pattern entrainment of decision-making: what do
we assume? The skinhead must be running from the police.
..
Scene Two: The camera now changes its perspective;
it is now behind the skinhead, and we see that he is running
towards a well dressed man who is clutching a
briefcase -- which must be full of money, as the man conforms
to the stereotype of a rent collector. We can also see that
the man is terrified in the face of the rapidly approaching
skinhead. Pattern entrainment of decision making: what do we
assume? The man is going to be mugged.
..
Scene Three: The camera changes perspective for
the final time; we are now looking down on the street from
above, and we see the skinhead grab the man and pull him
into the portico of a building just before a crate of
building material would have fallen on his head and killed
him.
The unspoken message of a brilliant advertisement is, "See
things from a different perspective; read the newspaper."
..
Most of the time if you are standing in a run-down inner
city area at dusk carrying a briefcase full of money, and a
skinhead suddenly runs towards you, it is not a good idea to
stand there and say "Ah, I may be about to be rescued from a
crate of falling building material"; you should run for your
life. The issue in decision-making is to know when to run and
when to stand still. A choice must be made between allowing
the entrained patterns of past experience to facilitate fast
and effective pattern application and gaining a new
perspective because the old patterns may no longer apply. We
will address these differences in the following section.
..
The Cynefin framework
The name Cynefin is a Welsh word whose literal
translation into English as habitat or place fails to do it
justice. It is more properly understood as the place of our
multiple affiliations, the sense that we all, individually and
collectively, have many roots, cultural, religious,
geographic, tribal, and so forth. We can never be fully aware
of the nature of those affiliations, but they profoundly
influence what we are. The name seeks to remind us that all
human interactions are strongly influenced and frequently
determined by the patterns of our multiple experiences, both
through the direct influence of personal experience and
through collective experience expressed as stories.
..
The Cynefin framework originated in the practice of
knowledge management as a means of distinguishing between
formal and informal communities, and as a means of talking
about the interaction of both with structured processes and
uncertain conditions. It has now outgrown its application in
knowledge management, having been in use by our group for
several years in consultancy and action research in knowledge
management, strategy, management, training, cultural change,
policy-making, product development, market creation, and
branding. We are now beginning to apply it to the areas of
leadership, customer relationship management, and supply chain
management, with other topics to come. It has also been used
by third parties.
38
We consider Cynefin a sense-making framework, which
means that its value is not so much in logical arguments or
empirical verifications as in its effect on the sense-making
and decision-making capabilities of those who use it. We have
found that it gives decision makers powerful new constructs
that they can use to make sense of a wide range of unspecified
problems. It also helps people to break out of old ways of
thinking and to consider intractable problems in new ways. The
framework is particularly useful in collective sense-making,
in that it is designed to allow shared understandings to
emerge through the multiple discourses of the decision-making
group.
..
We make a strong distinction here between sense-making
frameworks and categorization frameworks. In a
categorization framework, four quadrants are often presented
in a two-by-two matrix (for examples, pick up any management
textbook or analyst report). Typically, it is clear (though
often unstated) that the most desirable situation is to be
found in the upper right-hand quadrant, so the real value of
such a framework is to figure out how to get to the upper
right. In contrast, none of the domains we will describe here
is more desirable than any other; there are no implied value
axes. Instead, the framework is used primarily to consider the
dynamics of situations, decisions, perspectives, conflicts,
and changes in order to come to a consensus for
decision-making under uncertainty.
..
As can be seen in
Figure 1,
the Cynefin framework has five domains, four of which are
named, and a fifth central area, which is the domain of
disorder. The right-hand domains are those of order, and the
left-hand domains those of un-order.
..
Figure 1
..
Ordered domain: Known causes and effects. Here,
cause and effect relationships are generally linear, empirical
in nature, and not open to dispute. Repeatability allows for
predictive models to be created, and the objectivity is such
that any reasonable person would accept the constraints of
best practice. This is the domain of process reengineering, in
which knowledge is captured and embedded in structured
processes to ensure consistency. The focus is on efficiency.
Single-point forecasting, field manuals, and operational
procedures are legitimate and effective practices in this
domain. Our decision model here is to sense incoming data,
categorize that data, and then respond in accordance
with predetermined practice. Structured techniques are not
only desirable but mandatory in this space.
..
Ordered domain: Knowable causes and effects. While
stable cause and effect relationships exist in this domain,
they may not be fully known, or they may be known only by a
limited group of people. In general, relationships are
separated over time and space in chains that are difficult to
fully understand. Everything in this domain is capable of
movement to the known domain. The only issue is whether we can
afford the time and resources to move from the knowable to the
known; in general, we cannot and instead rely on expert
opinion, which in turn creates a key dependency on trust
between expert advisor and decision maker. This is the domain
of systems thinking, the learning organization, and the
adaptive enterprise, all of which are too often confused with
complexity theory.
18
In the knowable domain, experiment, expert opinion,
fact-finding, and scenario-planning are appropriate. This is
the domain of methodology, which seeks to identify
cause-effect relationships through the study of properties
which appear to be associated with qualities. For systems in
which the patterns are relatively stable, this is both
legitimate and desirable.
..
Our decision model here is to sense incoming data,
analyze that data, and then respond in accordance with
expert advice or interpretation of that analysis. Structured
techniques are desirable, but assumptions must be open to
examination and challenge. This is the domain in which
entrained patterns are at their most dangerous, as a simple
error in an assumption can lead to a false conclusion that is
difficult to isolate and may not be seen.
..
It is important to note here that by known and knowable we
do not refer to the knowledge of individuals. Rather, we refer
to things that are known to society or the organization,
whichever collective identity is of interest at the time. If I
look up my organization's policy on travel to Iceland, I may
not know what I will find there, or even how I will find it,
but I know I can find something, because I know it is known to
the organization. If I want to know how fish sleep, I may not
know how or where to find out, but I have a hunch that
somebody knows.
..
Un-ordered domain: Complex relationships. This is
the domain of complexity theory, which studies how patterns
emerge through the interaction of many agents. There are cause
and effect relationships between the agents, but both the
number of agents and the number of relationships defy
categorization or analytic techniques. Emergent patterns can
be perceived but not predicted; we call this phenomenon
retrospective coherence. In this space, structured
methods that seize upon such retrospectively coherent patterns
and codify them into procedures will confront only new and
different patterns for which they are ill prepared. Once a
pattern has stabilized, its path appears logical, but it is
only one of many that could have stabilized, each of which
also would have appeared logical in retrospect. Patterns may
indeed repeat for a time in this space, but we cannot be sure
that they will continue to repeat, because the underlying
sources of the patterns are not open to inspection (and
observation of the system may itself disrupt the patterns).
Thus, relying on expert opinions based on historically stable
patterns of meaning will insufficiently prepare us to
recognize and act upon unexpected patterns.
..
The decision model in this space is to create probes
to make the patterns or potential patterns more visible before
we take any action. We can then sense those patterns and
respond by stabilizing those patterns that we find desirable,
by destabilizing those we do not want, and by seeding the
space so that patterns we want are more likely to emerge.
Understanding this space requires us to gain multiple
perspectives on the nature of the system. This is the time
to "stand still" (but pay attention) and gain new perspective
on the situation rather than "run for your life," relying on
the entrained patterns of past experience to determine our
response. The methods, tools, and techniques of the known and
knowable domains do not work here. Narrative techniques are
particularly powerful in this space. We have described
elsewhere a range of methods designed to stimulate emergent
patterns in complex knowledge interactions by increasing the
number of perspectives available to a decision maker.
39
..
Un-ordered domain: Chaos. In the first three domains
we have described, there are visible relationships between
cause and effect. In the chaotic domain there are no such
perceivable relations, and the system is turbulent; we do not
have the response time to investigate change.
8
Applying best practice is probably what precipitated chaos in
the first place; there is nothing to analyze; and waiting for
patterns to emerge is a waste of time. The chaotic domain is
in a very real sense uncanny, in that there is a
potential for order but few can see it -- or if they can, they
rarely do unless they have the courage to act. In known space
it pays to be canny, that is, to know how to work the
system in all its intricacies (canny meaning not only shrewd
but safe). But in chaotic space, a canny ability gets you
nowhere (there is no system to be worked). You need a
different type of ability, one that is uncannily mysterious,
sometimes even to its owner. Canny people tend to succeed in
their own lifetimes; uncanny people tend to be recognized and
appreciated only centuries later, because during their time
their actions appeared to be either insane or pointless. Each
of these styles has a unique ability to succeed in a
particular space, and each is necessary.
..
The decision model in this space is to act, quickly and
decisively, to reduce the turbulence; and then to sense
immediately the reaction to that intervention so that we can
respond accordingly. The trajectory of our intervention will
differ according to the nature of the space. We may use an
authoritarian intervention to control the space and make it
knowable or known; or we may need to focus on multiple
interventions to create new patterns and thereby move the
situation into the complex space. Chaos is also a space we can
enter into consciously, to open up new possibilities and to
create the conditions for innovation.
..
The domain of disorder. The central domain of
disorder is critical to understanding conflict among decision
makers looking at the same situation from different points of
view. Often in a group using the Cynefin framework, people
agree on what the extremes of the four domains mean in the
context they are considering, but disagree on more subtle
differences near the center of the space. As a result,
individuals compete to interpret the central space on the
basis of their preference for action. Those most comfortable
with stable order seek to create or enforce rules; experts
seek to conduct research and accumulate data; politicians seek
to increase the number and range of their contacts; and
finally, the dictators, eager to take advantage of a chaotic
situation, seek absolute control. The stronger the importance
of the issue, the more people seem to pull it towards the
domain where they feel most empowered by their individual
capabilities and perspectives. We have found that the
reduction in size of the domain of disorder as a consensual
act of collaboration among decision makers is a significant
step toward the achievement of consensus as to the nature of
the situation and the most appropriate response.
..
The apple-orange problem
People are often confused by the apple-orange nature of the
four Cynefin domains: they say, "Why not known, knowable,
somewhat knowable and unknowable?" or, "Why not simple,
complicated, complex and chaotic?" The distinction is
intentional. The Cynefin framework is a phenomenological
framework, meaning that what we care most about is how people
perceive and make sense of situations in order to make
decisions; perception and sense-making are fundamentally
different in order versus un-order. The framework actually has
two large domains, each with two smaller domains inside. In
the right-side domain of order, the most important boundary
for sense-making is that between what we can use immediately
(what is known) and what we need to spend time and energy
finding out about (what is knowable). In the left-side domain
of un-order, distinctions of knowability are less important
than distinctions of interaction; that is, distinctions
between what we can pattern (what is complex) and what we need
to stabilize in order for patterns to emerge (what is
chaotic). Thus we often draw the framework with the vertical
boundaries strong and the horizontal boundaries weak, denoting
their relative importance in sense-making.
..
The Cynefin framework is based on three ontological states
(namely, order, complexity and chaos) and a variety of
epistemological options in all three of those states. We are
currently engaged in further conceptual and experimental work
to more strongly develop the separation of ontological from
epistemological aspects of the framework in order to root the
framework in a variety of scientific disciplines while
maintaining the essential interweaving of ontology and
epistemology, which appears to be an essential aspect of human
sense-making in practice.
..
Connection strengths of Cynefin domains
Another way to look at the Cynefin framework is in the
types of component connections that are most prevalent in each
domain (
Figure 2).
On the side of order, connections between a central director
and its constituents are strong, often in the form of
structures that restrict behavior in some way -- for example,
procedures, forms, blueprints, expectations, or pheromones. On
the side of un-order, central connections are weak, and
attempts at control through structure often fail from lack of
grasp or visibility. In the complex and knowable domains,
connections among constituent components are strong, and
stable group patterns can emerge and resist change through
repeated interaction, as with chemical messages,
acquaintanceship, mutual goals and experiences. The known and
chaotic domains share the characteristic that connections
among constituent components are weak, and emergent patterns
do not form on their own.
..
Figure 2
In any of these domains, a reasonable strategy capitalizes
on the stability afforded by strong connections without
allowing them to harden so much that they destroy flexibility
and also capitalizes on the freedom and renewal afforded by
weak connections without allowing them to permanently remove
useful patterns.
..
How the Cynefin framework is used
In our engagements with clients, we use the Cynefin
framework at several different levels, depending on the
context and purpose of the project. Several complementary
exercises and programs help people to internalize and make use
of the framework. Some groups consider only the five domains
and what sorts of situations or problems can be found there;
some consider distinctions between extreme and equivocal
conditions within domains; some consider multiple perspectives
and how they can be resolved or used to advantage; some talk
about boundary transitions, boundary sensing, and boundary
management; some talk about dynamics ranging over the whole
space of the framework. For example, groups might use the
Cynefin framework to gain new insights on a contentious issue,
plan interventions to move a situation from one domain to
another, consider how they should approach or manage different
formal and informal communities, or differentiate their
strategies for knowledge retention based on multiple contexts
of knowledge exchange.
..
Contextualization. This is a critical exercise that
enters into nearly every Cynefin project. Contextualization is
also a good example of how the Cynefin framework concentrates
on collective sense-making as a consequence of discourse. We
will describe a typical contextualization session here. The
session begins with the collection of many items through
structured brainstorming. The items might be communities,
products, actions, motivations, forces, events, points of
view, beliefs, traditions, rituals, books, metaphors,
anecdotes, myths, and so on: they are any items that are
important to the sense-making process. The items are related
to one theme or issue of concern, which should be broad but
not infinitely so. Whatever sorts of items are chosen (and
multiple types are permissible), they should be diverse and
concrete in nature: diverse to allow multiple perspectives to
emerge, and concrete to move away from existing entrained
abstract beliefs. We assure diversity by giving different
groups of people different directions, by giving directions
that are deliberately ambiguous and so can be taken in diverse
ways, and by changing group compositions frequently so that
people do not fall into entrained thinking. To keep items
concrete, we rely heavily on narrative methods. These provide
a rich context that allows patterns of experience rather than
opinion or belief to emerge.
..
We use an array of different methods to help people prepare
a contextually meaningful field of items for sense-making,
including:
Narrative database. We might prepare in
advance a narrative database of relevant stories surrounding
the issue, drawn from oral histories, collected anecdotes,
published reports, historical documents, and the like.
40
Workshop participants might be asked to review the material in
advance and answer some sense-making questions about it. In
the first part of the workshop, we may ask people to talk
about their thoughts on the material and the narratives which
they found most compelling. From these discussions a list of
such items as situations, actors, events, and forces might be
generated.
..
Convergence methods. Rather than pulling
items directly from anecdotes discussed, we might go through
one of several convergence methods in order to integrate much
disparate material and achieve a stronger set of sense-making
items. For example, we might ask people to construct composite
fables from anecdotes by using one of a variety of fable
templates, working from either the narrative database or their
own experiences as source material.
41
This exercise is especially useful when we need to bring
people into the realm of fiction so that they can more freely
express their true opinions on sensitive subjects. It is also
a useful integrator of diverse sources. In a room of 50 people
constructing fables in small groups, several hundred anecdotes
may be considered as material for creation of each group's
fable. Items are then drawn from aspects of the integrated
fables (characters, events, situations) for sense-making.
..
Alternative history. Another useful method
(with or without preparatory material) is the use of
alternative histories. In this method, we ask people to
describe the history of an organization, society, or event,
always working backwards from the present (to any starting
time they think is appropriate). We ask them to determine
turning points (moments when small events caused large
changes), write them simply on hexagonal sticky notes, and
array them on a wall. (We prefer hexagonal notes because
people tend to cluster them in beehive shapes, while people
tend to categorize square notes.) When the factual history is
complete, we then ask people to choose two extreme states, one
positive and one negative; each of these must be utterly
inconceivable. They then work backwards (always backwards, to
avoid entrained "what usually comes next" thinking) with
fictional timelines to reach points on the factual timeline.
These connection points are not determined in advance, but
emerge from the growing reverse fiction. The turning points
may then be considered and described, listing, for example,
actors, communities, and factors in play during those moments.
These become the sense-making items.
..
Next, as shown in
Figure 3A,
the group comes together with their assembled sense-making
items, perhaps derived from multiple processes, and discusses
the extremes (not the domains) of the Cynefin space. They
consider the corner where everyone knows the right answer, the
corner where an expert could be expected to know the right
answer, the corner where the situation only becomes clear
retrospectively, and the corner in which there is no right
answer. If possible, items are selected from the set that
exemplify that dynamical extreme in the context of the issue
or events being considered. This is an important step, because
it begins to build the framework. We say "build the framework"
because the Cynefin framework is created anew each time it is
used, with distinctions meaningful to the current context. To
some extent, it does not even exist in the way we describe it
here, devoid of context, but is always used to enable
sense-making in a particular setting. (It can also be used to
negotiate meaning between contexts, but that use is beyond the
scope of this paper.)
..
After the extreme situations are considered, all of the
sense-making items are placed within the overall Cynefin
space -- without boundaries -- where the items seem to fall, using
dynamic placement. (We sometimes ask people to think of it as
though the item they are placing has four elastic bands
connecting it to the four corners, and to find the place where
it comes to rest depending on how hard the different bands
pull on the item. We then ask them to check the placing of
each item in relation to others.) Clusters are allowed to form
where items seem similar in the space, but are not required.
This is often done in person using large walls and hexagonal
sticky notes; it can be done electronically, but must be done
socially.
..
It is important to mention at this point that discussion is
encouraged during the placement of items. This is unlike the
methods of affinity diagrams, in which people are asked to
refrain from speaking.
42
In our experience, although the proponents of affinity
diagrams are correct that silence equalizes the verbal
contributions of those who speak up and those who hold back,
the placement of items is not equalized by silence: often
people just watch very carefully what the boss is doing. In a
sense this only drives power differences underground rather
than removing them. We find it is better to remove large power
differences before contextualization; in fact, we have found
that comparing the patterns made by people at different levels
of management working on separate contextualizations can be of
great value, especially for tackling difficult management
issues. Another significant element of the placement of items
is that, as in the group construction of affinity diagrams, we
encourage people to consider all items together and to keep
moving any items they like until the patterns they have
produced make sense.
..
When all the items are placed, as shown in
Figure 3B,
lines are drawn between hexagons that are clearly in one
domain or another, leaving a possibly large central area of
disorder. Then, as shown in
Figures
3C and
3D,
the boundary lines are "pulled in" to make the distinctions
between domains more complete. Hexagons that lie on the new
lines are bifurcated, trifurcated or quartered, forming new
clusters of hexagons on either side of the boundaries. This
stage involves much discussion, as consensus has to be
reached.
Figure 3
At this point, the characteristics of each domain and
boundary -- as they pertain to the context at hand -- can be
considered using the sense-making items in place.
..
Use of the contextualized framework. After the
Cynefin framework has been created, we may move on to other
exercises in which the items in specific areas (for example,
near the boundaries or at the extremes) are considered in more
detail -- or conversely, in which the entire contextualized
framework is used to describe the changing dynamics in a
historical case or a contemporary situation, possibly from
different points of view.
..
We should point out here that though we draw the framework
as four simple areas in two-dimensional space (because it is
quick to draw and grasp), this is only a quick reference for
discourse, and that simple drawing expands into something more
multidimensional in use. For example, we might ask people to
consider different aspects of or perspectives on a single
situation that might be located in different areas or moving
in different directions. In this sense, all sense-making
exercises transcend the simple representation of the framework
at some point. We consider the framework to be a "jewel of
contemplation" that has many facets, like a geographical
information system, in which many layers of information are
overlaid so that they can be integrated or separated at will;
but the ultimate reality is that every representation
(including the entire framework itself) is created for a
purpose.
..
The value of the completed contextualized framework lies in
two main benefits. First, nearly every contextualization
exercise we have seen has ended with expressions of surprise
from those participating. They often see, for the first time,
patterns that overturn their entrained beliefs about the issue
they are considering and about their purpose, goals, and
identity. For example, one group completed their Cynefin
framework and reviewed it. They had done alternative histories
to derive their sense-making items, and they had been asked to
provide at least one accident in each fictional time line. On
their Cynefin framework, the only items in the chaos domain
were those (color-coded) accidents. One participant looked at
them and said, "We are being complacent, aren't we?" The
participant meant that they had only been willing to consider
wholly chaotic situations when they had been forced to add
accidents to the list.
..
This increased awareness (reflected in many other such
stories) is the highest achievement of the completion of the
contextualization exercise: that the group should accomplish
Descriptive Self-Awareness, or a greater understanding of
their own biases and potentials. This is also our goal in
helping people go through the process, because it is our place
to enable clients to achieve self-awareness rather than to
provide "expert" advice, which has a much lower value in
practice.
..
The second benefit of the contextualized Cynefin framework
is that it provides a new shared language with which the
members of the decision-making group can discuss situations,
perspectives and possible actions. This new language is unique
to the concerns of the group and abstract enough to cover many
particulars, but resonant with meaning so that it tends to be
brought up spontaneously when issues are discussed. It can be
used to talk about interpretations of current conditions based
on gathered data, to evaluate strategic interventions, and to
constructively manage conflict and bring about consensus,
without removing conflict. Also, multiple groups who have
created their own contextualized frameworks can use them as
artifacts for negotiation of common meaning. For example, if
one group placed "the influence of the Internet on
globalization" in complex space and another group placed it in
knowable space, both groups would learn something about their
respective perspectives. We have been helping groups to use
such frameworks to guide discussion among different government
branches, for example.
..
We previously contrasted Cynefin as a sense-making
framework with categorization frameworks. We do sometimes use
the contextualized Cynefin framework for categorization within
a particular context, meaning that the terms used are not
generic but specific. Categorization in context has some
excellent uses: for example, for training in standard
operating procedures, for aligning perspectives and objectives
among groups (for example, strategic and operational), or for
initiation of new people into the group.
..
Wider implications
As we mentioned previously, the contextualization exercise
is just one of several elements involved in using the Cynefin
framework to support people making decisions and crafting
strategies. As part of the work we are doing for public-sector
and private-sector bodies, including the government, we are
designing computer software that uses the Cynefin framework as
a sense-making mechanism in tandem with massive narrative
databases of world history and contemporary events, in order
to support policy-making and decision-making at both the
operational and strategic levels in government and
industry.
..
Other elements of our work over the past several years,
those having more specifically to do with the use of narrative
to enable multi-perspective understanding in the complex
domain, are also heavily involved in this work, but we do not
have the space to describe them here. Boundaries are possibly
the most important elements, in sense-making, because they
represent differences among or transitions between the
patterns we create in the world that we perceive. They are
described in recent papers,
40-41,
43
and we plan to feature them strongly in an upcoming book on
the subject. Instead, we will delve a little more deeply into
some more advanced topics related to using the Cynefin
framework.
..
Cynefin boundaries
Boundaries are possibly the most important elements in
sense-making, because they represent differences among or
transitions between the patterns we create in the world that
we perceive. Depending on how you look at it, any gradient can
be a boundary and any boundary can be a gradient, so there is
always room for interpretation. We distinguish between types
of boundaries on an experiential basis, in the sense of: How
does the essence of this boundary, as I perceive it, affect my
sense of the situation and of what I should do? In that sense,
the boundaries we consider are more like phase changes than
physical boundaries (though they could be physical boundaries,
if those boundaries coincide with phase changes).
..
We use a range of metaphor sets to create an understanding
of boundaries. One of the most effective is a geographical
set, as follows:
- The shallow river can be crossed by anyone at any
place, and thus control over crossing is difficult to
achieve. However, it is easy to tell when one has crossed it
(or when others have) because one's feet get wet. Most of
the important events of our lives (e.g. birth, marriage,
parenthood, death) are shallow-river boundaries, because
anyone can go through them and they "mark" us with the
change. Ritual tends to be strongly associated with this
type of boundary. An organizational example might be the
transition from a new employee to someone who knows the
inside stories of the organization. Maintaining
shallow-river boundaries is most useful when you want to
encourage as much diverse exchange over the boundary as
possible, but still retain the capacity to monitor and
intervene.
..
- The deep chasm can be crossed only at bridges,
which can be built, demolished, and controlled at will. It
is not easy to tell when one has crossed the boundary, but
such a marker is not required because only some are allowed
through. An example of a deep-chasm boundary might be the
front page of a community Web site that requires visitors to
register with their names and addresses in order to
participate, but does not record individual movements during
regular visits to the site. This type of boundary is most
useful when the exchange is too important or dangerous to be
left open to all possible movements. The selectively
permeable barrier found in our cells is a boundary of this
type.
..
- The high plateau is the boundary with the most
potential danger, because you may not be aware that you have
crossed the boundary until it is too late and you drop off
the other side. One of us once volunteered on a mountain
rescue team. The worst place to get lost was on a
plateau -- there are often heavy mists on high plateaus, and
people lose their sense of direction and head directly off a
cliff. When you are on such a plateau, it is nearly
impossible to know where you will come out. (Those fans of
certain science fiction programs will recognize this type of
boundary in transportation devices, which offer the enticing
possibility of putting you somewhere you had not meant to
go.) An organizational example of a high-plateau boundary
might be the transition that happens during a corporate
restructuring, when groups are wandering around looking for
support and no one knows who will survive. There are, of
course, times when a high-plateau boundary is just what you
need: to confuse an adversary, to promote innovation (in
limited circumstances), or to disrupt old patterns that have
become limiting.
..
When we are using the Cynefin framework as contextualized
by a group to their context and purpose, we ask them to
consider the boundaries between Cynefin spaces by using
metaphorical types of boundary. We explain that each boundary
might have a different form in one direction or the other, and
this is where we must break away from the two-dimensional
drawing somewhat. In addition, one boundary might have
different forms for different people, whose perceptions or
circumstances make their experience of the boundary different.
Generally, we find three basic levels of sophistication in the
use of Cynefin boundaries for sense-making. First, one
considers an awareness of crossing the boundary, so
that one can respond quickly to new conditions after one has
arrived on the other side. Second, one considers an awareness
of approaching the boundary, so that one can sense when
change is incipient and respond before the boundary is crossed
(perhaps to cross it purposefully, perhaps to avoid it).
Third, one considers managing the boundary and the
perceptions surrounding it, so that one can, for example, put
a deep-chasm boundary in place for one's adversary while
maintaining a shallow-river boundary for one's own use.
..
One thing we have found in using boundaries as part of the
Cynefin framework is that different people, with different
training and personalities, seem to benefit from different
uses of boundaries. People who are used to classifying items
into categories benefit from removing boundaries, as takes
place in the standard contextualization exercise described
earlier. However, people who are used to thinking in a more
fluid way -- about gradients rather than boundaries -- seem to
benefit more by constructing boundaries than by removing
them.
..
For example, when the workshop is large enough or when we
feel that it is required, we often hold a parallel session of
contextualization in which people are asked to distribute
their sense-making items along a line, ranging from the most
tractable items to the most intractable items. After the line
has been completed (and there are many negotiations to place
items in relation to each other), we ask people to find places
along the line at which they feel that the underlying dynamic
has shifted. In other words, we ask them to create boundaries
along gradients. We then pull the line into a rainbow curve
and place it on the Cynefin framework, with the most tractable
items in the known domain and the most intractable items in
chaotic space. This produces an alternate contextualization,
with the same ultimate effect of creating the Cynefin
framework anew, but with a stronger emphasis on the
negotiation of where boundaries are found. We sometimes ask
people to negotiate boundaries as though they were
representatives of the different domains, coming up with a
mutual agreement on what the boundary means and where it is
placed.
..
The boundary issue is one on which we continue to pursue a
strong research agenda (although of course the entire
framework is a work in progress), especially with regard to
its use for strategic decision support.
..
Cynefin dynamics
When people use the Cynefin framework, the way they think
about moving between domains is as important as the way they
think about the domain they are in, because a move across
boundaries requires a shift to a different model of
understanding and interpretation as well as a different
leadership style. Understanding the differences among the
different movements in the framework increases the
sophistication of the response of a decision-making group to
rapid change. We describe here some of the patterns of
movement which we use to help groups consider historical,
contemporary, and future change. In general, one of the
functions of the Cynefin framework is to increase awareness of
the upper domains of the framework and their potential to
create sustainable change; several of these movements are
designed to make the upper domains more accessible.
..
Movement at the known-chaos boundary. This boundary
is the strongest of the four, in which a perfectly working
machine operates inches away from a devastating fire. For that
reason, this boundary is the most dangerous -- and the most
powerful if treated with respect.
Asymmetric collapse (Item 1 in
Figure 4)
is movement from the known to the chaotic, disastrously. We
have seen a tendency for organizations to oscillate between
the domains of the known and the chaotic, avoiding the upper
domains. Organizations settle into stable symmetric
relationships in known space and fail to recognize that the
dynamics of the environment have changed until it is too late.
The longer the period of stability and the more stable the
system, the more likely it is for asymmetric threats or other
factors to precipitate a move into chaos. The decision makers
in the system don't see things that fall outside the pattern
of their expectation, and they continue not to see them until
finally the system breaks and they find themselves in
chaos.
Figure 4
The final stage before the break point is witnessed
frequently in history. A good example is the trial of Galileo,
in which the Catholic Church accepted that the earth went
round the sun for the purpose of mathematic calculation,
provided no one said it was actually the case. In retrospect,
this was an untenable position, which only delayed and made
worse the inevitable collapse. This phenomenon of grasping at
order is common in people, governments, academia, and
organizations of all shapes and sizes. Often the strongest
dominant player in a market will continue with behavior long
after its utility, perceived from a different perspective, is
exhausted (Boisot
44
uses IBM as an example of this). Also, senior decision makers
and their policy advisors will find ways of fitting reality
into their existing models rather than face the fact that
those models are outdated, and they will punish dissent (the
history of science and business provide examples). Galileo is
tried afresh in modern organizations on a regular basis.
..
Imposition (Item 2 in
Figure 4)
is movement from the chaotic to the known, forcefully. The
consequence of asymmetric collapse is chaos, and the
consequence of chaos is frequently Draconian imposition of
order, in which the situation is so catastrophic that people
accept what would have previously been unacceptable as the
price of order. The problem with this dynamic is that it
introduces a new stability that in turn becomes more rigid
until the new order breaks in its turn. A familiar example in
organizational life is the cyclic reorganization of authority
by industry, then by function, then by industry, and so on in
an endless cycle; or the fact that well-intentioned
revolutionaries sometimes put into place bureaucracies even
more stifling than those they overthrew. However, we do not
mean to imply that all such transitions are pathological. When
order is well aligned with needs, it can bring needed savings
and calm. Anyone who has seen a talented teacher take control
of a frantic classroom through authority and respect, or a
policeman calm a panicked crowd, can understand the utility of
imposed yet well-placed order.
..
Movement at the known-knowable boundary. This is the
boundary where the scientific method is believed to operate,
though in practice most agree that some un-order is involved
in most scientific work (for example, hunches, analogies,
networks, local practices, and shared beliefs). This boundary
is fluid and permits much traffic as people go about the
business of building technologies and pursuing lines of
inquiry.
..
Incremental improvement (Item 3 in
Figure 4)
is movement from the knowable to the known and back,
repeatedly. This type of movement is the best-known and
accepted of the types we list here. For many situations, this
remains the movement of choice. In a sense, the cyclic flow of
information across this boundary is the engine of
technological growth. However, it can become pathological if
cyclic movements between known and knowable depart ever
further from observed reality (as with, for example, the
epicyclic models of the solar system or the "science" of
phrenology). This sort of movement should be linked
occasionally with one of the larger movements we mention
later.
..
Movement at the knowable-complex boundary. The
boundary between the knowable and the complex can be a
fruitful one for science, and in practice complements the
known-knowable border as an engine of new ideas. It is not as
permeable as the known-knowable boundary because transitions
must translate between two systems of order and from one set
of rules to another.
Exploration (Item 4 in
Figure 4)
is movement from the knowable to the complex, selectively.
This movement is often mentioned in the literature on
complexity as exploration versus exploitation.
17
Exploration is an opening up of possibilities by reducing or
removing central control without a total disruption of
connections. In organizations, exploration takes many forms,
but trust is key in this movement. One is, in effect, taking a
risk by allowing constituent connections to form and
strengthen at the expense of central control, and that
requires not only good planning and awareness of the "shadow"
side of the organization, but also careful (but unobtrusive)
monitoring of the situation. Informal communities, which may
range from public to secret in their profile, provide a rich
and fertile source of knowledge and learning. In most
organizations there is a strong and often untapped resource to
be found in exploratory moves such as this. For example,
informal communities, which may range from public to secret in
their profile, provide a rich and fertile source of knowledge
and learning that is too large and complex to be formally
managed. One study of actual practice in IBM Global Services
34
indicated some 50–60 official knowledge areas, complemented by
many tens of thousands of private areas. By providing spaces
in which members of the organization could naturally share
with people they trust, a fertile source of learning was
created.
..
Just-in-time (JIT) transfer (Item 5 in
Figure 4)
is movement from the complex to the knowable, selectively.
This movement is often called exploitation in the complexity
literature, and it involves the selective choice of stable
patterns in complex space for ordered representation. In the
IBM example just cited, the 50–60 official communities are
able to draw on information coming out of the informal
trust-based communities as long as they refrain from
disturbing their delicate balance. Knowledge can be moved into
the formal space on a just-in-time basis: knowledge is made
available when it is needed. Techniques to achieve this
include subject-matter flagging and privacy-ensured searching
of content. The issues here are those which gave rise to JIT
techniques in manufacturing some decades ago: organizations
realized that the cost of maintaining stock on the factory
floor was out of all proportion to the benefits, with high
levels of wastage over and above stock holding costs. In
consequence, stock holding shifted back to the suppliers,
entering the factory just in time.
43
..
Movement at the complex-chaotic boundary. This
boundary, like the known-knowable boundary, is fluid and in
fact difficult to delineate. In nature, systems move back and
forth across this boundary often. In that sense, traffic
across this boundary mirrors that across the known-knowable
boundary: one is an engine for technological and scientific
order, and the other is an engine for organic order. In the
social sphere, we can use the engine of complexity to enable
emerging patterns that prove useful.
..
Swarming (Item 6 in
Figure 4)
is movement from the chaotic to the complex, to the knowable;
first, in an emergent manner and then, selectively. Draconian
imposition of order is most appropriate in symmetric
conditions and partial remediations, but under asymmetric
conditions, or when whole-system interventions are required,
we need to move from chaos to the complex, not to the known.
The boundary between chaos and order is a chasm difficult to
cross, but a vertical transition across the more permeable
boundary between chaos and complexity is inherently more
manageable. A transition from the chaotic to the complex is a
matter of creating multiple attractors, or swarming points,
around which un-order can instantiate itself, whereas a
transition from the chaotic to the known requires a single
strong attractor. For example, if one were trying to evacuate
a panicked crowd in a theater on fire, it would make more
sense to shout out "the blinking orange lights are above the
exit doors," which is a complex swarming-point trigger that
relies on local knowledge only, than to shout out "come
towards the back of the theatre," an ordered trigger that
relies on global knowledge which may be unavailable.
..
After we have achieved the shift from chaos to the complex,
then we have the possibilities of many patterns forming around
the new attractors; those we find desirable we stabilize
through a transfer to the exploitable domain of the knowable;
those that are undesirable are destroyed. We have found in
several recent engagements that the contrast of
swarming with imposition provides a new language
for executives and appears to provide new perspectives on
crisis management. We will be studying actual behavior and
creating more "subjects" in this field over the next year as
our use of dynamic movements within the Cynefin framework
develops.
..
Divergence-convergence (Item 7 in
Figure 4)
is a movement from the complex to the chaotic and back,
repeatedly. The active disruption of a complex system to
precipitate its move to chaos is less of a change than moving
it to either of the ordered domains, and this is easier to
manage across a permeable boundary. In knowledge management,
for example, informal communities that occupy the complex
domain are more resilient when asked to undergo radical
disruption in an innovation program than the expert
communities of the knowable domain.
39
Small start-up companies handle disruption better than large
bureaucratic ones, but even within large bureaucratic
organizations, there are small groups that can act in the role
of start-ups, and they can increase the adaptability of the
organization.
..
Our complexity-inspired workshop techniques, as explained
above, make intensive use of the boundary between the complex
and the chaotic, in effect cycling between the dynamics of the
two states as a sort of pattern generator to create a rich
variety of patterns among which to choose -- to stabilize and to
disrupt -- in order to facilitate sense-making.
..
Visiting chaos
There are some good reasons to move deliberately from order
to chaos. There are times when it is necessary to break rigid
structures in precipitation of a natural collapse (as one
approaches the boundary), so that the transition can be
managed more carefully; and there are times when a strong
disruption is the only mechanism that will break up a strong
but unhealthy stability. The last three movement types we will
consider use the chaotic space for temporary disruption of all
connections (possibly within a restricted context) as a
stimulant to new growth.
..
Entrainment breaking (Item 8 in
Figure 5)
is movement from the knowable to the chaotic to the complex,
periodically. In entrainment breaking, we move from the
knowable to chaos and thus stimulate the creation of new
complex systems as the system rebounds into the complex
domain. This is a common approach to disrupt the entrained
thinking of experts who, in our experience, tend to be the
most conservative when it comes to radical new thinking. The
move to complex space is not radical enough to disrupt those
patterns; we need to challenge at a more basic level the
current assumptions of order. By using the complex space as a
staging post, we create a more fertile space of interactions
from which we can select stabilization points for the movement
to the knowable. A knowledge management example is the
creation of formal communities by clustering and swarming
informal activities from existing trusted relationships.
39
In strategy, this method can be used to create and validate
new sources and structures for decision-making.
Figure 5
Liberation (Item 9 of
Figure 5)
is movement from the known to the complex to the knowable,
periodically. Organizations tend to assume that they can
design the nature of new systems. For example, an organization
that needs new expertise in an area might commission a
university to carry out a study, recruit specialist staff, or
identify individuals within the organization and assign them
new responsibilities. This is a successful and effective
strategy when the conditions are suitable for ordered
approaches. However, if the situation is uncertain, it is more
useful to shift the problem from the domain of the known to
the complex. Organizations need to increase both internal and
external levels of contact to the point where new patterns can
emerge. Boisot
44
makes the point that companies need to use both hoarding
strategies, in which they place defensive barriers around what
they know and focus on exploitation, and sharing strategies,
where knowledge is shared within and outside the organization
with the intent of increasing the volume of opportunities,
with the strategic advantage shifting to speed of exploitation
of knowledge.
..
For an organization, sharing strategies involve a process
of letting go, of creating freedom within heuristic boundaries
to allow new patterns and new leadership to emerge. One of the
techniques we use in this area is Social Network
Stimulation,
39
which aims to stimulate the interactions of agents (or rather
identities) within systems to allow the emergence of new
coalitions, alliances, and leadership. To use a metaphor, we
cast seeds (ideas, deliberately ambiguous goals), which are
cheap, across a broad landscape and see where growth occurs.
As soon as growth is evident, we respond quickly to shift the
newly emergent idea or leaders or coalition into the knowable.
We have called this movement liberation because it
breaks the entrainment of bureaucracy -- but like all letting go,
it is difficult. This is one of the most threatening of
transitions to entrenched managers, but one of the most
important.
..
Immunization (Item 10 of
Figure 5)
is movement from the known to the chaotic, temporarily.
Immunization in chaos is a smaller "visit" to chaotic space
that shakes up "the way things are" enough to cause reflection
but not enough to destabilize the entire system. Immunization
serves two purposes. First, it inures people to the
devastating force of chaos so that they will be better
prepared to face those forces in the future. A perfect
example: it is said that the great director Buster Keaton was
able to craft his death-defying stunts (such as a house
falling around him, a rescue from a drenching waterfall,
amazing pratfalls, and so on) because as a toddler he was
lifted out of bed by a tornado and set down unhurt in the
street.
45
Second, immunization brings new perspectives, which cause
radical disruptions in stable patterns of thought and lead to
new complex patterns. Examples of such events are scattered
throughout literature, in the accident that changes a
politician's career, or the chance encounter that causes a
lonely woman's life to fill up with new meaning, or in many
other kinds of radical departures that make everything on
which one had relied seem meaningless and restricting.
..
Metaphors are particularly useful agents of immunization
because they allow conversation about painful things, enable
disruptive and lateral thinking, prevent entrainment of
attitudes, and clear out the cobwebs of stagnant ways. One
technique we use for this purpose is called the "Grendel game"
(material available from the authors, not yet published),
which combines anthropological study, complexity theory, and
managed war games to create an exciting and innovative
learning event. Here, following a study of the organization,
using anthropological techniques developed and proven within
earlier research into anecdote collection, a fictional planet
is populated by aliens selected to reflect the current culture
and new scenarios. This is done with a leading scientist, who
in his spare time designs consistent alien environments for
use by science fiction and fantasy writers. Members of the
organization then seek to colonize the planet in a managed war
game. They face their own organization in a metaphorical
setting that allows more profound and meaningful learning.
Newness is simulated without threat, and the participants are
habituated to perspective shift and uncertainty.
..
Background movements
In any consideration of deliberate change, one must
consider what is already going on. The forces of the past tend
to cause clockwise drift in the Cynefin space: people living
together and sharing mutual needs lead to the emergence of
ideas; convenience leads to stabilization and ordering of the
ideas; tradition solidifies the ideas into ritual; and
sometimes, either lack of maintenance or the buildup of biases
leads to breakdown. The forces of the future push dynamics to
the counter-clockwise: the death of people and obsolescence of
roles cause what is known to be forgotten and require seeking;
new generations filled with curiosity begin new explorations
that question the validity of established patterns; the energy
of youth breaks the rules and brings radical shifts in power
and perspective; and sometimes imposition of order is the
result. In a sense, these two forces are always pulling
society in both directions at once, and this is reflected in
organizations as well. The old guard is forgotten at the same
time that its beliefs affect newcomers in ways they cannot
see. An awareness of these dynamics in the organization must
precede any deliberate attempt to affect it by deliberate
change.
..
Use of Cynefin dynamics in practice
Our use of the boundary transitions described here relies
on narrative because boundaries are essentially about change
and narrative is about change. We may ask people to consider a
situation in the past and what movements took place in it from
different perspectives, or we may ask people to envision
fictional narratives about the past, present or future in
which selected movements form the backbone of the story.
(Remember this is all done not in the abstract, but using the
contextualized Cynefin framework that makes sense in the
context of concern.) These narratives of change are used in
the sense-making process, in which they may be quickly created
and discarded, or they may be saved and used to generate a
shared language about change in much the same way as cycles of
folk tales long ago. They are not, however, allowed to
stabilize into expectations; they must remain fluid to be
useful.
..
A critical distinction between this type of narrative
generation and that of scenario planning
46–47
is that the source of Cynefin-based narratives is not a set of
expected ranges of expected variables, but a consideration of
dynamics in which the variables and ranges are sometimes
unknown and perhaps even unspecified. This creates a more
diverse, flexible, and changeable set of narratives that
should be truly surprising. For example, a scenario-planning
exercise done by a police force might result in scenarios
exploring the space from high to low crime, corruption, and
terrorism. These scenarios are useful in considering a future
in which those axes are the most important -- but what about the
situation where they are overridden by a previously irrelevant
factor? Narratives generated using a contextualized Cynefin
framework explore spaces in which the dynamic situation arises
from any source. Optimally, a wide range of diverse
possibilities (chaos from a nuclear accident, a coup, an
epidemic, an alien invasion) is best, even though some
scenarios might be inconceivable or even nonsensical.
Conceivability is not the point: preparation for the
unexpected is.
..
Note that we do not believe these methods should supplant
scenario-planning in all contexts, because that method works
well in knowable space, where its results are productive. We
do believe, however, that these are the methods of choice in
complex situations where a wider range of possibility needs to
be explored. In fact, as we increase the number of methods
available for the un-ordered domain, methods that work well in
the ordered domain get even stronger because they are no
longer used in situations in which they have limited
applicability.
..
Relationship to other frameworks
We do not pretend that all the basic ideas inherent in the
Cynefin framework are new or unique. They can in fact be found
floating around history for thousands of years. The
distinction between order and un-order (and their
interactions) is ancient, as we mentioned, as well as being
taken up by recent authors.
48
The chaotic-complex distinction has been much debated in
recent years, with some saying complexity exists at the "edge
of chaos,"
10
some saying that the two phenomena have separate origins and
cannot be placed together,
19,
49
and some even saying that the distinction is artificial and
arbitrary.
50
The distinction between known and knowable is widespread and
goes back to ancient philosophy. As we increase the number of
methods available for the un-ordered domain, methods that work
well in the ordered domain get even stronger. We do claim
originality for the development of the ideas behind the
framework in its full form (as we have described it, and in
some other aspects outside the scope of this paper) and for
the methods we use to make the framework useful in practice
(though of course they have their relationships with other
action research and sense-making methods).
..
Courtney's
51
framework, in which he distinguishes between four states of
increasing "residual uncertainty" (uncertainty that cannot be
reduced by analysis) questions universal assumptions about the
use of known-space methods and tools. He does seem to believe,
however, that the level of uncertainty can be "defined" -- that
is, he has no domain of disorder (which is essentially a state
of uncertainty about uncertainty). This, we suspect, may cause
people to gravitate to the domain they find most plausible, as
we have seen happen. Also, his "toolkits" of choice for each
level of uncertainty seem to cover only the known and knowable
spaces in the Cynefin framework, with a slight nod to
narrative methods in complex space. In effect, he does not
break out of the righthand side of the Cynefin framework. He
also does not seem to consider the possibility that a single
circumstance may contain competing aspects and perspectives
with different degrees of uncertainty or that such differences
can be used to strategic advantage. Certainly there is much to
be gained from all attempts to diversify responses to
differing contexts, however.
..
Returning to assumptions
To complete our circle, we should address the three
assumptions we identified at the start of this paper. As we
said at the beginning, these assumptions are valid in some
circumstances, but not in others. Let us examine each one
again and consider how we can expand these assumptions to a
universally applicable set. We will also briefly speculate on
emerging applications of the Cynefin framework to management
science and practice.
..
The assumption of order. Relaxing this assumption is
the basis of the Cynefin framework, which proposes instead two
types of order, each with distinctions inside, and a
recognition that uncertainty may exist in distinguishing these
types (the domain of disorder). The assumption of order holds
for ordered space, the known and knowable, so we need new
assumptions for the domains of un-order and disorder. In
complex space, we can safely assume that patterns will form,
unpredictable in their details but usually recognizable in
their basic forms, and that with practice we can learn to
detect these forming patterns, stabilize or disrupt them
depending on their desirability, and seed desirable patterns
by creating attraction points. In chaotic space, we can assume
that all connections have been broken, that possibility
reigns, that old patterns have been disrupted, and that the
outcome is not predictable. In the space of disorder, we know
something very valuable -- that we do not know. We need to gain
more understanding (in every way possible) so that we can find
patterns and react to them.
..
In management, relaxing assumptions of order means
recognizing that not all effective solutions are efficient
solutions. It does not mean that trust has to be given blindly
or that complex processes cannot be affected; it only means
that when the means match the context, less energy need be
expended for the same result. In a very real sense, managers
have successful models available in the domains of un-order in
the way they manage their children; they use boundaries and
interventions to encourage desirable behavior but do not
attempt to control it through goal-based direction. The use of
these methods is opening some high-potential developments in
managing organizations following mergers and in creating the
conditions for continuous learning and innovation.
..
The assumption of rational choice. Relaxing this
assumption means that context and perspective become as
important as rationality. This is an important reason that the
Cynefin framework is not about "objective" reality but about
perception and understanding; it helps us to think about the
ways in which different people might be perceiving the same
situation. For example, there is an old folk tale from India
52
in which a wise man decides that in order to escape an
impossible royal demand, he will fake insanity in the king's
court. He is operating in complex space because he is using
cultural shorthands to provoke predictable reactions but is
gambling that his ruse will seed the pattern he wants to
create. He knows that from the perspective of his audience,
who are operating in the space where things are bound by
tradition and thus known, he appears to be acting chaotically,
because they can conceive of no other reason for him to act
this way in front of the king (who would surely behead him if
he was faking). Thus by proving that he cannot be faking, he
pulls off the fake. Understanding not only that there are
different perspectives on an event or situation, but that this
understanding can be used to one's advantage, is the strategic
benefit of relaxing this assumption. Narrative techniques are
particularly suited to increasing one's exposure to many
perspectives on a situation.
..
In management, there is much to be gained by understanding
that entrained patterns determine reactions. This realization
has major implications for organizational change and for
branding and marketing. Our own work on narrative as a
patterning device is gaining presence in this and other areas.
Speculating, one of the most significant possible applications
of this understanding is a move away from incentive-based
targets and formal budgeting processes -- both of which, we
contend, produce as much negative as positive behavior. It is
a truism to say that any explicit system will always be open
to "gaming." Paradox and dialectical reasoning are key tools
for managers in the un-ordered domains.
The assumption of intentional capability. The effect
of relaxing this assumption is also one of considering
context, but more of context on action than on perspective. It
means asking not, "What did they have in mind when they did
that?" but, "What does it mean that this happened?" John F.
Kennedy was presented with such a dilemma when he received two
letters in rapid succession from the Soviets during the Cuban
missile crisis, one conciliatory and one hard-line.
53
Which letter was a wink and which was a blink? It turned out,
of course, that both letters were winks but of different
actors (Khruschev and the Politburo, respectively). The
different authors of the letters probably saw their actions
from the complex space of the Cynefin framework because they
understood the internal politics that produced them. To
Kennedy, however, receipt of the two letters plunged him into
chaotic space, where he could conceive of no sensible
intention to send such contradictory letters -- to confuse,
perhaps, or to delay while the missiles were being prepared.
It was only after scrutiny by linguists that the Kennedy
administration was able to understand that the intentions
behind the two letters came from different sources. This moved
his understanding into complex space where he could respond.
It is only possible to consider alternative explanations for
actions when one relaxes the assumption that all actions are
deliberate.
..
In management and in strategy, the issue of assumptions
about intentions can have pronounced effects. For example, one
may assume that the rejection of a new initiative by employees
is intentional, when in fact it is an accident of emergent
patterns of interaction. Treating the rejection as intentional
may create exactly the reaction that the managers wished to
avoid in the first place. The same is true of over-reaction to
accidental competitor behavior that is presumed to be
intentional.
..
Conclusion
This paper outlines a new approach to strategy, both in
policy formation and in operational decision-making. While it
is new, this approach also recognizes as critical the value of
what has been done to date. As such, it starts to break the
fad cycle that has bedevilled management science for several
decades. It recognizes the progression of human knowledge, in
that something which has provided value is not rendered
valueless by new thinking, but is bounded by new insight and
legitimized within boundaries, and thereby, made more, rather
than less, effective. This approach is, we think, unique in
that it recognizes the value and interaction of order and
un-order. As such, it also allows us to make a critical
distinction between efficiency and effectiveness. Human groups
need to be effective; machines and structured human
interactions (such as manufacturing processes or the
application of rules of engagement) need to be efficient.
..
Accepted for publication April 24, 2003; Internet
publication July 17, 2003
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
At this point, the characteristics of each domain and
boundary -- as they pertain to the context at hand -- can be
considered using the sense-making items in place.
Figure 4
The final stage before the break point is witnessed
frequently in history. A good example is the trial of Galileo,
in which the Catholic Church accepted that the earth went
round the sun for the purpose of mathematic calculation,
provided no one said it was actually the case. In retrospect,
this was an untenable position, which only delayed and made
worse the inevitable collapse. This phenomenon of grasping at
order is common in people, governments, academia, and
organizations of all shapes and sizes. Often the strongest
dominant player in a market will continue with behavior long
after its utility, perceived from a different perspective, is
exhausted (Boisot
44
uses IBM as an example of this). Also, senior decision makers
and their policy advisors will find ways of fitting reality
into their existing models rather than face the fact that
those models are outdated, and they will punish dissent (the
history of science and business provide examples). Galileo is
tried afresh in modern organizations on a regular basis.
Figure 5
Liberation (Item 9 of
Figure 5)
is movement from the known to the complex to the knowable,
periodically. Organizations tend to assume that they can
design the nature of new systems. For example, an organization
that needs new expertise in an area might commission a
university to carry out a study, recruit specialist staff, or
identify individuals within the organization and assign them
new responsibilities. This is a successful and effective
strategy when the conditions are suitable for ordered
approaches. However, if the situation is uncertain, it is more
useful to shift the problem from the domain of the known to
the complex. Organizations need to increase both internal and
external levels of contact to the point where new patterns can
emerge. Boisot
44
makes the point that companies need to use both hoarding
strategies, in which they place defensive barriers around what
they know and focus on exploitation, and sharing strategies,
where knowledge is shared within and outside the organization
with the intent of increasing the volume of opportunities,
with the strategic advantage shifting to speed of exploitation
of knowledge.