For the past four years I’ve used the Cynefin framework to help managers to understand the varied nature of the issues they face and to appreciate that some of these issues are better understood as complex adaptive systems. The beauty of the Cynefin framework is that it accepts the validity of rational, linear, and mechanistic explanations, but it does not regard these as universally applicable for all problems.

Using the Cynefin framework typically consists of groups of people working together to develop a consensus on the nature of the issues being considered—known, knowable, complex, and chaotic. In applying this framework, it becomes apparent that the range of possible outcomes increases as one moves through the domains from known to knowable to complex to chaotic. As the diagram illustrates, an issue in the known domain has a single and clear outcome—a best practice. An issue in the knowable domain has a limited range of possible outcomes—a set of good practices. Complex issues pose a more difficult conceptual challenge. To understand this, it is necessary to explore the idea of ‘intention’.

A natural complex adaptive system—as distinct from an intentional system—evolves without purpose. Over an extended time, it is impossible to predict the outcome of, for example, the evolution of a species—because the direction of the natural system results from a complex co-evolution among the agents and their environment. Some agents thrive as the environment and agents change, whereas others perish. A recent example in Australia is the ‘Mangrove Monitor’—a reptile, which, until recently, has thrived in Australia’s north. The monitor is now under threat as poisonous cane toads migrate west from Queensland. The lizard’s previously successful strategy of eating frogs is now wreaking havoc on the monitor population as it eats cane toads instead of frogs.

In contrast, businesses have intention or a purpose. As Charles Handy points out, an organisation’s basic purpose is simply to exist and, through its existence, to achieve things that individuals cannot achieve. More specifically, however, organisations exist to achieve something which might be stated in their business strategy or, as suggested by Henry Mintzberg, their strategy has emerged and recognised in hindsight. Either way, a business has a purpose. When applying the Cynefin framework to organisational issues, any issue that is defined as ‘complex’ should at least be heading in a direction that is not in conflict with the purpose of the business. For this reason, in the diagram, I have drawn the range of possible outcomes for complex issues as being finite, but wide.

It is important to remember that each ‘complex’ issue is unpredictable. Therefore, whenever an intervention is implemented it is critical that monitoring is undertaken to observe the patterns that emerge. Unwanted patterns (those contrary to the organisation’s intentions) must then be disrupted, and beneficial outcomes must be nurtured. In dealing with complex issues, no end point is ever reached.

Finally, a chaotic issue can, and will, head in any direction. Because patterns are indiscernible, it is impossible to monitor and intervene as we would in the complex domain. The possibilities are limitless.

Is this a useful way to conceptualise the Cynefin domains?

A story on Malcolm Gladwell is Fast Company's cover story. He has a new book out called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It's all about how we make split second decisions. I hope he makes reference to Gary Klein's work in this area.

Stephen Wolfram has made the full text of A New Kind of Science available online. Worth a look.

The Cynefin framework can be used to identify complex issues. In this situation, the term ‘complex’ does not necessarily mean that things are ‘complicated’; rather the term means that these issues are more than the sum of their parts. In other words, it means that a group’s behaviour cannot be understood or predicted by looking at the behaviour of individuals. There is thus a difference between ‘complicated’ and ‘complex’.

Most modern businesses assume that their issues are complicated, and that problems can be solved through the application of analytical tools—such as trend analysis, fishbone analysis (determining cause-and-effect relationships), and psychometric testing. This Newtonian, linear, and mechanistic way of thinking dominates our working lives. Although it might be valid for the parts of a business that are ordered and regimented (such as well-defined business processes), this thinking is inappropriate for complex issues (such as culture, trust, innovation, and so on) in which many people are interacting and from which group behaviour emerges.

A Cynefin intervention design method called ABIDE (attractors, barriers, identity, dissent, and environment) recognises the difference between complicated and complex issues. ABIDE helps organisations to identify leverage points at which a small action can have a big difference. More importantly, it recognises that a business must relinquish control and direction if it is to harness complexity. It must focus on changing the barriers that encapsulates a group’s behaviour, and then monitor what happens at the group level. This is a new way of thinking about the management of organisational issues.

Using this approach, small interventions (rather than projects) are required to change the attractors and barriers. We call them ‘interventions’ because they are designed to intervene in the ‘natural’ way of things. They are undertaken to create a ‘disturbance’—thus allowing new patterns to form. This approach is different from a project in which a clear end-result is envisaged from the outset. A project approach assumes an ordered world. In contrast, interventions are small ‘probes’ that are designed to create new possibilities.

Interventions do not therefore constitute a ‘set-and-forget’ strategy. They must be monitored. Monitoring might take the form of collecting narrative at intervals to identify the new patterns that are forming. It might involve managers walking the floor and listening to people (especially the murmurers). It can involve observing behaviours, identifying the information brokers in the organisation’s social network, and listening to their views. It could involve seeking out the sceptics, seeking views from outside the organisation, and learning to ask non-direct and creative questions that reveal the early signs of new attitudes and beliefs being formed.

Every exercise in monitoring is like taking a snapshot that effectively ‘freezes’ time. This provides managers with the time they need to make decisions. As the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann has suggested, harnessing complex issues requires the taking of ‘coarse-grained’ images. Our natural tendency is to take fine-grained pictures so we can see each grain of sand on the beach. Understanding complexity requires coarse-grained images at a resolution that shows the overall pattern of the beach and the pattern of the bathers on it.

We started the Melbourne Emergence Meetup three months ago as an experiment in developing a face to face community of practice. Our aim (apart from learning about complexity) is to discover how a community might form without online discussion forums. We meet monthly at 6pm at the Melbourne City Library. This group consists of about 20 people who are interested in the application of complexity science to management practice. So far each meeting is has been attended by 5-6 people.

Our meetings have been characterised by lively and wide ranging discussions. Last night we explored possible tools to foster emergence. Andrew Rixon facilitated the session and introduced us to emergent development of font faces, online content such as wikipedia, and jazz. We then meandered through Cynefin's ABIDE method, trust as an emergent phonemena, the impact email has on trust, what was an attractor (mathematically and socially), email practices designed to put a spotlight on disfunctional email behaviour--such as implementing a 'no email Friday'.

We finished the meeting by asking the question: What will be the key characteristics that will help foster this type of community? Energy, interest, mutual respect and having people help organising events and activities for the group are a few things I think will be important.

What do you think?

However, it seems that these systems have not lived up to expectations, and the level of adoption is relatively low. As with many business initiatives in the broad field of knowledge management, the idea of expertise location was created by software companies that perceived a market in helping organisations to uncover their (often hidden) expertise. However, the software companies understandably emphasised the technological aspects of their solutions. As a result of this perceived technological bias, expertise location struggled to gain acceptance as a valid initiative. Gartner Group reinforced this perception by defining expertise location in narrow terms as: 'Identifying experts and their expertise to make these people and their knowledge more easily and broadly accessible. Expertise management is a class of technologies that enable this functionality.'¹

Given this background, it is pleasing to note that there is a new management practice that goes beyond expertise location and that is not dominated by a technological solution looking for a problem. Social network analysis (SNA) is a technique designed to understand the informal connections among employees. It has been developed in response to a growing understanding that organisational performance and the ability of employees to get things done are largely based on the informal relationships that exist within and between organisations. SNA reveals the number, structure, and types of these (mostly 'invisible') social networks using charts that show who is connected to whom. These charts are based on surveys that seek information such as: 'Please indicate the frequency with which you typically turn to each person below for information on work-related topics'.

Technologically driven, indiscriminate implementations that are designed to improve an organisation's ability to identify and access expertise fail to take into account the wide variety of ways in which employees can be informally connected. Expertise-location systems fell into this trap by attempting to offer a single solution to a multi-faceted phenomenon. SNA helps organisation to understand these dynamic social networks better--before interventions are designed. Starting with SNA makes sense, and it is to be hoped that it will pave the way for organisations to develop effective methods of tapping into this largely hidden resource.

¹. Harris, K. & Berg, T. 2003, One More Time: What is Knowledge Management? Gartner Group, , pp 1-14.

Michael Jones asked the question on this site, "how one could train someone in Cynefin or certify that the training was successful." Cynefin certification is gained through real projects and based on peer assessment and mentoring.

Those who are certified by the Cynefin Centre will have their names posted, with their projects and techniques used, on the Cynefin web site. The Cynefin web site is currently under construction but I believe it will be available in a week's time.

I'm off to Sydney tomorrow to conduct the Cynefin certification training with Dave Snowden. This year we are running two streams: one for practitioners and the other for researchers. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone.

Obtaining rich anecdotes from workers relies, in part, on asking good questions. But before people will provide their more personally significant stories they must feel comfortable and relaxed. A short 'warm-up' time is very conducive to genuine sharing.

The 'warm-up' might occupy the first 10-15 minutes of a session. In most cases I begin by setting the ground rules, explaining the project, and making introductions (if necessary). Then I offer a story of my own to get things started.

After the warm up, the first questions should be simple and easy to answer. They might even be closed questions--just to get people comfortable with providing a response. Once you feel that the group is ready, you can begin to ask open questions designed to elicit anecdotes.

In a future post, I will talk more about designing questions to elicit stories.

“The universe is made of stories not atoms.”
Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980, poet) – The Speed of Darkness

HRMonthly have given me permission to make Tell it like it is available online. It was first published in HRMonthly, December 2004. HRMonthly is published for the Australian Human Resources Institute

Denham Grey draws attention to Etienne Wenger's idea that communities of practice can form the centre piece of a knowledge strategy. And then makes the observation:

What I found missing here is the community level practices to grow knowledge - think patterns, ontologies, distinctions, concept mapping, collaborative writing, knowledge mapping and beyond

One of the community level practices I think is useful, which was employed on Etienne's community workshop, is the creation of home groups which focus on the mundane logistics of the community like organising speakers, suggesting topics for discussion and arranging face to face events. My friend, Paul Dowling, calls this 'peeling the potatoes', referring to those day-to-day jobs you do while (say) you are on holidays with friends that help you to get to know one another. Home teams (call them whatever you like) help create 'community'.

I heard the following anecdote the other day:

‘When I arrived I was told I should put every in writing as an email. This didn’t make sense to me and was contrary to how I normally worked, so I kept relying on conversations to get things done--at least until I was burnt the first time. Now I put everything in an email.’

This illustrates the power of email in embedding culture. In this case, it creates a culture of blame and mistrust. Contrast this approach with that of the New York diamond traders who conduct a majority of their business without contracts--business is done on a hand-shake. Think of the improvements in efficiencies and responsiveness!

I remember Dave Snowden describing email as an ‘addiction’, and suggesting that organisations should develop a ‘detox’ program--perhaps even disable the email platform for a while as ‘cold turkey’ therapy!

Everyone has his or her own way of dealing with email, and you will no doubt have your own. But here are a couple of approaches (perhaps you could call them ‘policies’) that people have adopted in an attempt to affect the culture of their companies positively.

• send an email only if the information is going to a group;
• avoid sending email to someone who is on the same floor--walk over and talk instead;
• routinely delete emails when you have been cc’ed;
• never use ‘bcc’ when all of the recipients of the email are colleagues;
• set up an online collaboration place and conduct discussions there--rather than sending email back and forth.

Do you have other examples of how email can be used to foster trust?

Love to hear them.

The December issue of HR Monthly has just published a version of my paper on how to use stories to size up a situation.

Denham Grey suggests 5 books to get you started in KM. I would add Nancy Dixon's Common Knowledge. Nancy provides a useful way of thinking about knowledge transfer.

Hi Nancy, thanks for your comment. Here is the abstract for the paper.

A new framework for communities of practice is required to unite the disjointed approaches currently employed to understand this organisational form. This paper proposes a framework based on complexity theory and applies a model developed by Axelrod and Cohen. A set of mechanisms are explored to understand how a designer might influence variety (of strategies and types) in a community of practice. Four mechanisms are addressed namely: the process of copying strategies and types, copying with error (mutation), recombination of ideas and the role of the physical environment. Understanding these mechanisms a designer can attempt to increase or decrease variety within a community of practice.

Downloaded Surely you're joking Mr Feynman from Audible on the weekend. What I've heard so far (300 pages retold in 12 hours) is one great story after another. Love the story about Feynman's radio fixing days at the age of 11. Not what you might expect from a Nobel winning physicist.