Cynefin
An organizational account describes Cynefin becoming a shared way of thinking, supporting safe-to-fail experiments and reflection on how people act and interact.
THE IDEA
The move from body to organization
Over the last ten years, as Cynefin has moved for us from a tool to a mindset, we have grown. We are now more than 50 people from 14 countries around the world. We have created a deliberately complexity-friendly, developmentally-oriented organization. Cynefin supports us at every turn as we make sense of our system and as we create safe-to-fail experiments to nudge us to the next stage and place. Cynefin helps us notice ourselves and our reactions. And it has led to a new sort of organization with new ways of acting and interacting.
When to use it
Organizational restructuring to become more complexity-friendly and developmentally-oriented.
Designing experiments for product development in uncertain or rapidly changing markets.
Leadership development focusing on sense-making, adaptation, and self-awareness.
Improving team collaboration by aligning on the type of problem (simple, complicated, complex, chaotic) and choosing the right response.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Categorizing Problems
A company uses Cynefin to classify issues as simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic, then applies appropriate decision-making strategies: best practices for simple, expert analysis for complicated, probe-sense-respond for complex, and act-sense-respond for chaotic.
Safe-to-Fail Experiments
A product team in a complex market designs a series of small, reversible experiments to test new features, using Cynefin to iterate on what works and abandon what doesn't without large-scale risk.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
What would change if your organization used Cynefin as an ongoing way of thinking rather than an occasional tool?
What safe-to-fail experiments have you created to nudge your system forward?
In what ways does Cynefin help you notice your own reactions and patterns of behavior?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World ED02 (Dave Snowden Sonja Blignaut Zhen Goh)