July 20, 2021
Unless this is the first time you have stumbled across this blog by accident, you might have come across the […]
July 19, 2021
Two interesting sets of interactions on social media triggered today’s post. One was a distinction made between cutting down a […]
July 11, 2021
I originally intended to publish this post way back in May and got all the notes together but a mixture […]
March 3, 2021
Cynefin has always been about boundaries which critical to human sense-making. Give people a spectrum and they will settle where […]
March 2, 2021
As indicated in yesterday’s post I promised to talk today about the recommended way to create the Cynefin Framework. It’s […]
March 1, 2021
As is now the tradition I am using St David’s Day to provide the annual update on Cynefin. Last year […]
February 14, 2021
My weekend was disrupted, but in a good way and no it wasn’t that Wales defeated Scotland in what we […]
February 1, 2021
There are two major forms of stupidity on the various debates that sprint on social media from time to time. […]
January 13, 2021
In this final, for the moment, post on creating aporia I want to focus on the ways in which physical […]
January 12, 2021
This is the second post in my three-part series on creating aporia and I will admit I was worried yesterday […]
January 11, 2021
My post of the day before yesterday expressed concern about the general dumbing down of discourse and I explicitly linked […]
January 2, 2021
I think a lot of people don’t realise how novel the complexity stuff still and how threatening (needlessly) it is […]
December 21, 2020
The more astute reader may have noticed that I have been writing a series of blog posts that update previous […]
December 2, 2020
Today’s post is a development of yesterday’s and I plan to look at the various overlapping aspects of a situation […]
December 1, 2020
Now I want to make it very clear up front that I know this doesn’t work as drawn, it’s an […]
November 8, 2020
When I was at school, way back in the days of the white-hot heat of technological optimism, the local printers […]
November 6, 2020
The first of what will be several piles of Cynefin books arrived today, my priority is to autograph copies for […]
November 1, 2020
We are coming to the end of our 21 days of Cynefin, and we are now on the last stop […]
October 26, 2020
I have just finished reading this amazing book cover-to-cover: In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century. I […]
October 22, 2020
We have taken a bit of a gander around South Asia and Southeast Asia, and now we will point our […]
October 20, 2020
Naresh Jain is an internationally recognised Technology & Product Development Expert. He started the Agile movement in India by creating […]
October 19, 2020
I met Ealden and Lhiza Escañan, both Agile coaches, when the husband and wife team attended a Cynefin Foundations training […]
October 16, 2020
Rudolf D’Souza‘s journey with Cynefin started in 2004 with a KM Asia Conference in Singapore. He has been a practitioner […]
October 15, 2020
October is busy! This week has been a whirlwind of activity. Cynefin is turning 21, did you hear? Have you […]
September 10, 2020
Back in October 2017, I published a blog post on what I was then calling the Ticotocon. The context of […]
March 27, 2020
These have been trying times. Yesterday, I watched our National Development Minister tear up at a national address as he […]
March 27, 2020
I don’t know if I displaying a keen anticipatory capability in focusing on Disorder, the all too often ignored fifth […]
March 16, 2020
In this penultimate post in the current series, I want to look at what you can manage in the complex […]
March 10, 2020
In my prior post in this series, I said I wanted to explore the idea of aporia in more depth but […]
March 3, 2020
In my first post in this series, I talked about the renaming of the disorder domain into A/C (for short) […]
March 1, 2020
On St David’s Day last year, I started a five-part series of posts to update the Cynefin Framework, all illustrated […]
October 22, 2019
In 2002 I published Complex Acts of Knowing, the first major article to include Cynefin in its near current form; if […]
October 15, 2019
A mycorrhiza is a symbiosis between a fungus and a green plant. The plant captures and transmits the energy of […]
October 14, 2019
I’ve been meaning to write about the “forest cycle” or the supposed necessity of chaos for some time. Yesterday’s post […]
October 13, 2019
From time to time in social media I resist the temptation to respond when people talk about the Stacy Matrix; […]
August 24, 2019
Various social media feeds link me daily to discussions about the use of the Cynefin Framework. Sometimes I take part, […]
June 8, 2019
This week CE hosted an open webinar on the topic of Cynefin & Theory of Constraints. This webinar featured CE practitioners and TOC […]
April 20, 2019
In my final post in this update series on Cynefin and I’m reserving the right to change things when I […]
April 19, 2019
I was searching for my original known-unknown-unknowable matrix for today’s post and, as you do, came across a variation of […]
April 18, 2019
The introduction of liminality to Cynefin necessitated a slight rethinking of the main dynamics within Cynefin. To be clear multiple […]
April 17, 2019
The introduction of the liminal version of Cynefin was probably the most significant change in recent years. One of the […]
April 16, 2019
It’s taken longer than I hoped but I now have the time to complete my series of five update posts […]
March 5, 2019
An email came in yesterday from our new CEO Marion asking if I could explain why I had changed simple […]
December 24, 2018
When I started this series I said I was going to follow the metaphor of creating a painting with a […]
December 23, 2018
In any art work the final adjustments mean that we are nearing completion, in cultural change I want to argue, […]
December 22, 2018
The big issues are now behind us in this series and the final three posts (with the promised twist on […]
December 21, 2018
Chiaroscuro is an art term, Italian in origin which refers to light and dark. It originated in an artistic technique […]
December 20, 2018
While having specific goals is not possible in a complex system, and any cultural change is complex, it doesn’t mean […]
December 19, 2018
I’m using the metaphor of a painting to provide structure to this series and all paintings have to start somewhere. […]
November 26, 2018
The Oxford English Dictionary defines culture as “The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively” and “The […]
September 27, 2018
The pictures here are from the first ever Cynefin Retreat in Snowdonia last year; our fourth retreat, the third of […]
June 14, 2018
I’ve got a lot more posts lined up in the Alice series, but I’m going to interrupt as the mood […]
May 25, 2018
For most of my life I’ve been working with various forms of symbiosis and synthesis. Bringing the natural sciences as […]
February 2, 2018
I finished off the foreword to a forthcoming book about Cynefin in Japanese a day or so ago. I wrote it in […]
January 20, 2018
I probably shouldn’t have brought an ancient scholastic text book with me but I still have a fondness for it, […]
January 19, 2018
I’ve talked about some of the intellectual origins of Cynefin and yesterday addressed the question of quiddity, on in more […]
January 18, 2018
For those not familiar with it, quiddity is not about games played by wizards (although for all I know it […]
November 4, 2017
I decided it would be a good idea to make the image of Cynefin available, if only to reduce the […]
October 30, 2017
The picture here is of Michael Bryant as Mathieu Delarue in the BBC production of Sartre’s The Roads to Freedom. […]
October 27, 2017
The liminal version of Cynefin has been slowly evolving over the last few months. It was getting close in August […]
September 10, 2017
Over the years I have had various emails, social media links and other links to various versions of the Cynefin […]
August 30, 2017
Coming to the end of two weeks in New Zealand and I’ve been struck by a dreaded lurgy, or possibly […]
August 27, 2017
I’ve been developing a theory of constraints both as a method for strategy mapping and as a way of […]
August 22, 2017
I was originally going to move on to post about constraints but a early meeting this morning involved a stimulating […]
August 21, 2017
I’ve been frantic the last few months with a lot of long standing wishes and dreams that are all coming […]
July 10, 2017
I debated using images of a mediaeval religious retreat to open this post, but then moved on to the […]
June 22, 2017
Remember Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cookoo’s Nest? Louise Fletcher won the Oscar for a brilliant portrayal of […]
June 20, 2017
The Cynefin framework tends to be used in the main to categories situations within the four main domains (and for […]
May 28, 2017
I’ve been teaching a masterclass her in India to a mixed group and took the opportunity to push myself to […]
February 1, 2017
Now bear with me on this as I am thinking aloud …. I woke up this morning to a […]
January 11, 2017
In my last couple of posts I have been talking abound boundary conditions in Cynefin. I now want to extend […]
January 10, 2017
I’ve done the ascent and descent of the path to Llyn Bochlywd at the base of Tryfan in North Wales […]
January 9, 2017
For various complex reasons which started with a casual throw away remark at Lean Agile Scotland followed by a brief […]
December 3, 2016
I made the point yesterday that the disordered domain within Cynefin is one of false confidence, assuming you know how […]
December 2, 2016
Most people who have walked in the mountains will have experienced a temperature inversion at some stage. You suddenly discover […]
December 1, 2016
I’m out to Milan tomorrow and I am starting to feel like a Typhoid Mary for the unexpected having been […]
October 1, 2016
I’ll never forget the first time I saw the murmuration of starlings. I’d arrived at the Hilton in Rome which […]
September 26, 2016
A long time ago I settling into a new strategic role within DataScience following the best part of a decade […]
September 25, 2016
I landed in Melbourne after two long flights but with the satisfaction of an email in box reduced to 40 […]
February 6, 2016
Back in May 2011 I got an email from Max Boisot, pictured enthusiastically engaged in a ritual food ceremony in […]
January 28, 2016
Back in June 2015, we began the Fragments of Impact programme, partnering with UNDP, to explore how to use SenseMaker® […]
January 25, 2016
One of the aspects of sense-making we emphasize in all our training programmes is the value of contrast. Since complex […]
September 9, 2015
One of my favourite Cynefin related Gaping Void cartoons. A key aspect of Cynefin is that it respects the value […]
August 28, 2015
In my last post I asked the question Are we doomed to chaos? I planned to answer the question with […]
July 31, 2015
One of the golden rules of sense-making is that any framework or model that can’t be drawn on a table […]
July 30, 2015
Cynefin as a framework has always been as much about dynamic movement between domains as it has been about the […]
July 6, 2015
I recently heard that Complex Acts of Knowing had been assessed as a classic paper in Knowledge Management, moreover it […]
July 3, 2015
A fractal in mathematics describes a phenomena where similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, each pattern or instance is […]
July 2, 2015
In yesterday’s post I looked at my decision to use constraints in the definition of the main Cynefin domains. I […]
July 1, 2015
Cynefin has always gone through mutations over time, sometimes the changes are visually significant, sometimes linguistically. One of the things […]
May 14, 2015
Cognitive Edge and UNDP are together launching a unique initiative to engage with new ways of working on difficult problems […]
December 11, 2013
I promised yesterday to clarify some aspects of Cynefin. This was triggered by Roger's Linked In post and some of […]
December 10, 2013
There is an interesting phenomena at the moment in that various people are trying to define themselves either by, or […]
September 8, 2013
Today was a rest and relaxation day here in Tuscany. I went for a swim at 0700, few others saw […]
September 3, 2013
Before moving on to the Simple Domain model I wanted to say a little bit more about the purpose and […]
September 3, 2013
In this continued series on the Cynefin domain models we now come to Simple, which leave Complex and a more […]
September 1, 2013
My last version of the chaotic domain model also went through significant change at the Seattle event, over and above […]
August 30, 2013
The advanced seminar we held in Seattle earlier this month was very useful in developing a whole bunch of stuff, […]
June 14, 2013
So in the last in this series of updates, we move to the chaotic domain. As I have previously explained […]
June 13, 2013
So moving on from yesterday we come to the Simple Domain. I normally present this with a Gaping Void cartoon […]
June 13, 2013
So moving on from yesterday we come to the Simple Domain. I normally present this with a Gaping Void cartoon […]
June 12, 2013
Part of the new training programme is a day two focus on Cynefin and the sub-domain models. I’ve previously […]
June 12, 2013
Part of the new training programme is a day two focus on Cynefin and the sub-domain models. I've previously […]
May 23, 2013
I often get asked about the two transitionary domains in Cynefin and its not in frequent for people to assume […]