Some (unsolicited) observations on “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making.”

First disclosure: I am a fan of Cynefin. It is a superb conceptual framework that helped me understand why complexity is more than ephemeral buzz, and provides many ideas about what to do with that understanding. (I first came across the concept in the 2003 “New Dynamics of Strategy” IBM Systems article.)

I am very pleased the Harvard Business Review article arrived. The article explains Cynefin in a way that is clear and – as far as I know – accurate. I thought it was somewhat of a caricature, but not in a way that unfairly distorts the core ideas, at least as I interpret those ideas.

But the Harvard Business Review is always publishing how-to-do-something-new/different/better/right articles. My hunch is this article will be of most value in helping someone be retrospectively coherent about Cynefin. I don’t think it will shatter anyone’s perspective who is not already pre-disposed to the ideas Snowden (Kurtz) and Boone offer. I do think the article does a good job translating Cynefin into mainstream business speak. I think the article can be accused of (in the article’s description on page 74 of one leadership failure) “trying to impose order in a complex context” – i.e., life. It would be an unfair criticism; one that probably can be leveled at any non-poetic effort to describe the life part of a living system. If there is a fault in the article, it may be that it brings too much order to Cynefin.

The article is framed within a story of a multi-victim shooting in Chicago. A deputy police chief had to deal simultaneously with simple, complicated, complex and chaotic issues. The story introduces the reason for the article: “an approach to leadership that works well in one setting does not automatically work in another.” This is more than a simple restatement of contingency theory’s starting point. It draws attention to what I consider to be the central disruptive insight of Cynefin: questioning the assumption “that a certain level of predictability and order exist in the world.” (p.70) The New Dynamics of Strategy article goes into more details about this assumption, but the HBR article provides enough to describe why and under what circumstances challenging the “predictability and order” premise is worthwhile.

Most of the article describes and illustrates – again in very clear and helpful ways -- four of the five Cynefin domains. There is little discussion of the fifth (“disorder”) domain. The brief sidebar description was -- to me – somewhat disorienting. It gives the impression that Cynefin in general -- and disorder in particular – can be used in an almost mechanistic way: “The way out of this [disordered] realm is to break down the situation into constituent parts and assign each to one of the other four realms. Leaders can then make decisions and intervene in contextually appropriate ways.” (p.72)

I use Cynefin primarily to draw attention to the fact of complexity and to the accompanying promise that one can engage consciously, purposively, and emergently with complexity. I live in networks where “multiple perspectives jostle for prominence, factional leaders argue with one another, and cacophony rules.” (p. 72 description of disorder) Looking for the constituent parts of the cacophony seems to me an invitation to simplify complexity. I’ll think more about that suggestion, but my initial reaction is that the seemingly reductionist recommendation approaches being “unnaturalistic” (which my spell checker informs me is not a word). I doubt the deputy police chief in the opening story separated the shooting incident into its constituent parts – at least not prospectively. My experience tells me he handled the situation largely in the way the article describes how leaders ought to handle chaos (p. 74).

Retrospectively – as the article notes – the shooting incident can be reduced to its Cynefin parts. However, one would hate to see the framework turned into a machine. Its value, at least to me, is as a seed. In the article’s words, “leaders learn to define the framework with examples from their own organization’s history and scenarios of its possible future.” (p. 70) What a great idea – one defines Cynefin through one’s unique experience with it.

I would like to cast a vote against the re-designed Cynefin visual – especially in comparison to Shawn Callahan’s Sketchcast demonstration at http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/guest/2007/10/explaining_the_cynefin_framewo.php. I think the new visualization misses the neuron-like symbolism of the “traditional?” image.

But all of that is picking over a feast. It will be most interesting to see what happens as the attractor that is this excellent article about the enigmatic Cynefin strangely spreads.