Dave, irritation 2 and 3 are mostly out of your control, but #1 might be reduced by at least including the name of the domain in the model from now on AND add a short relevant decription of what the disorder domain is about, just like there is for the other domains.

And maybe it would also help to make the domain a bit bigger. I suspect for most early users the disorder domain might be bigger than for the more initiated :-)

Dave - I acknowledge how irritating this must be for you - may I suggest that you make a short video clip about the Cynefin Framework with all the attributions to yourself and others in it so that those of us who are using this Framework can use this clip to explain to our audiences. This would give all of us in KM Land an authoritative version of the Framework which does cover all five dimensions. I would love to see this as I use the framework much of the time when explaining why we use narrative.

I must admit, I'm guilty of the first one - mostly because I have a hard time explaining disorder, beyond it being the region where there is no discernable cause and effect. (is that right?) If people accept that, I'm OK, but if they ask what the difference between that and complex is - specifically why problems in the disorder domain don't display properties of retrospective coherence - I'm all at sea. Sorry, Dave.

This is a worthwhile gripe - I remember at a workshop a few years ago listening to one my Executive Directors who is not an econimist, explain the relevance of an economic phenomena in such a simplistic way he actually distorted the picture. I was trying to understand psychology then and when I heard how wrong he was decided I will stick to my trade.

Limiting something to only Doctoral-level anthropologists limits the scope of the work and what can be done with it.
Surely Honours and Master's level should be good enough for the sort of work required in organisations

Thanks for all the comments!

• Harold and Nerida - see my post of yesterday, we are setting up to record a whole set of material
• ThaboM - I agree with you there, although I would still be dubious about the title Corporate/Organisational Anthropologist if someone had an undergraduate degree and little practice, just adopting the title as a consultant in later life. My real gripe was about people without any qualification other than some basic reading on the subject.

Amen.

Generally I describe the Cynefin model as a landscape rather than a matrix.

The anthropology/ethnography thing is tricky. Ethnography is a practice so arguably anyone can do ethnography (whether or not they can do it well is another matter). I have done "observation" but I wouldn't call myself an anthropologist or ethnographer - just as I have occasionally tinkered with my car but wouldn't call myself a motor mechanic.

Apparently ethnography is no longer as trendy as it was in marketing a few years ago - so-shul meeja is the new new thing...

I remember the 'Team Ethno' guys at Lancaster University used to talk about 'quick and dirty ethnography' but I think the problem might be a lack of patience with empiricism, rather than etnhography per se. Clients want to say their decisions are evidence-based, but relatively few have the courage to find out something that doesn't confirm what they thought already.

I've also found it can be very hard persuading clients to pay for nuance and subtlety, when they'd much rather have unambiguous, unequivocal prescriptions, with a strong brand behind them. Maybe we should invent the ethnographic equivalent of Starbucks.

Thanks for all the helpful info on the blog. I did have a little chuckle at irritation # 1 - you'd better have a look the ppt some bloke did for Civil Service College, Singapore July 2009 with only 4 quadrants....

Irritant No 1 - Dave, I apologise and stick up my hand (or the other way around). I hope you agree that I'm not guilty of No 2 and will haul me up personally if I do. But there is an issue of translation for a particular audience - an anthropologist once accused me of 'taking anthropology's clothes and wearing them to lesser effect' because I was interpreting some very dense analysis for an audience who mistrusted anthropology. Should I have stuck to the precise message and hoped that something would make it through the mistrust, or simplified and targeted with more certainty that it would have impact?

Another thought - I have faffed about trying to recreate the five domain model in ppt, excel etc. and it all looks like rubbish (though is not a real excuse for then turning it all into a four domain model). Could you post a blank domain model somewhere on this site, so we could download it and use the correct version as the basis for what we put on top of it? Having a blank template would make my life easier, which means I'd be more likely to use it... And if it's cc licensed you could also specify how it should be referenced.

I would like to recommend that the Wikipedia entry for Cynefin be updated with the HBR figure showing all 5 domains. The current figure in Wikipedia now only shows 4 domains. I would try to do it but the HBR figure is copyright protected.

Disorder is therein the model - its the black bit in the middle but unlabeled. I am constrained on the wikipedia as to what I can do on Cynefin or my own page (which is dire) so anyone doing something would be appreciated. The HBR article is not available, but I can load others which show disorder prior to Cynefin construction if you want.