Messy Coherence

Principle 1: We embrace messy coherence

“Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.” – Bill Bryson

Most of us seem to have an innate sense of when something is coherent, and when it isn’t. However, articulating this isn’t easy. I find it challenging to explain coherence, and often resort to giving examples of incoherence instead. We recognize incoherence easily, such as someone’s speech after a brain injury, or when they’ve had a little too much to drink.

Constraints or boundaries create coherence. A sentence makes sense when it exhibits the structure of a particular language (i.e., I am able to determine if it is English or Russian) and roughly follows grammatical rules. However, when these constraints are lacking, it becomes noise, a jumble of words or sounds that make no sense.

Language requires diversity – if the alphabet had only one letter, or only vowels and no consonants, it would be hard to form words. Similarly, if we only had a fixed set of words with prescribed meanings, we would not be able to express new concepts or ideas, and language would be purely functional, not a form of creative expression. When the need arises, new words are invented spontaneously, sometimes old words are repurposed (for example Brexit – itself a new word – gave us ‘remoaners,’ Covid-19 gave us ‘quaranteams’ and ‘Zoombombing’). And yet, with all of this flux, language remains understandable to us. It remains coherent as long as the messiness is bounded by the rules or principles of grammar. In this way, language is an excellent example of messy coherence, or in other words coherent heterogeneity. We can accommodate differences within boundaries that ensure coherence.

Cynefin is all about boundaries. In human systems, knowing the boundaries between contexts helps us make meaning, understand our identities, and relate to each other. Cynefin’s boundaries help us to know what kind of systemic context we find ourselves in, and when we are transitioning from one to another. Being able to locate ourselves also helps us determine the appropriate actions to take, and the methods and tools that are fit for that particular systemic context.

Methods, tools, and frameworks, however, are not universally applicable; there are no silver bullets. We articulate this in Cynefin with the term ‘bounded applicability’ i.e., we believe that most things are useful within certain boundaries. I find this notion particularly helpful when introducing decision-makers to something new or novel. It is extremely off-putting when someone tries to sell you on a new way of thinking by devaluing everything that you have used, or believed, in the past. By applying this principle, we can help decision-makers locate the methods and tools that they have found valuable thus far, validate their usefulness within certain boundaries, and show them how they are unhelpful in others. It is a much less triggering and arrogant approach.

So this principle of messy coherence enables us to accommodate much diversity of approaches, methods, and tools within Cynefin. Coherence comes from understanding the boundaries of their applicability.