Cynefin framework

Terminology

Cynefin is a Welsh word meaning haunt, habitat, acquainted, accustomed, familiar. It carries with it a sense of rootedness—temporal, physical, cultural or spiritual. The word is similar in meaning to Heimat in German and has been compared to the Maori word turangawaewae, a place to stand. The idea of the Cynefin framework is that it offers decision-makers a "sense of place" from which to view their perceptions.

History

Dave Snowden, then of IBM Global Services, began work on a Cynefin model in 1999 to help manage intellectual capital within the company. He continued developing it as European director of IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management, and later as founder and director of the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity, established in 2002. Snowden and Cynthia Kurtz, an IBM researcher, described the framework in detail the following year in a paper, "The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world", published in IBM Systems Journal.

The Cynefin Centre—created as a network of members and partners from industry, government and academia—began operating independently of IBM in 2004. In 2007 Snowden and Mary E. Boone described the Cynefin framework in the Harvard Business Review. The paper, "A Leader's Framework for Decision Making", won Snowden and Boone an "Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in OB" award from the Academy of Management's Organizational Behavior division.

Overview

Cynefin offers five contexts or "domains" of decision-making: simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and a centre of disorder. The domain names have changed over the years. Kurtz and Snowden (2003) called them known, knowable, complex, and chaotic. Snowden and Boone (2007) changed known and knowable to simple and complicated. Since 2014 Snowden has used obvious in place of simple.

These domains offer managers a "sense of place" from which to analyse behaviour and decide how to act in similar situations. The domains on the right, simple (or obvious) and complicated, are "ordered": cause and effect are known or can be discovered. The domains on the left, complex and chaotic, are "unordered": cause and effect can be deduced only with hindsight or not at all.

Simple

The simple domain represents the "known knowns". There are rules (or best practice), the situation is stable, and the relationship between cause and effect is clear: if you do X, expect Y. The advice is to "sense–categorize–respond": establish the facts ("sense"), categorize, then respond by following the rule or applying best practice. Snowden and Boone (2007) offer the example of loan-payment processing. An employee identifies the problem (for example, a borrower has paid less than required), categorizes it (reviews the loan documents), and responds (follows the terms of the loan). According to Thomas A. Stewart,

This is the domain of legal structures, standard operating procedures, practices that are proven to work. Never draw to an inside straight. Never lend to a client whose monthly payments exceed 35 percent of gross income. Never end the meeting without asking for the sale. Here, decision-making lies squarely in the realm of reason: Find the proper rule and apply it."

Snowden and Boone write that managers should beware of forcing situations into this domain by over-simplifying; by "entrained thinking" (being blind to new ways of thinking); and by becoming complacent. When success breeds complacency ("best practice is, by definition, past practice"), there can be a catastrophic clockwise shift into the chaotic domain. They recommend that leaders provide a communication channel, if necessary an anonymous one, so that dissenters (for example, within a workforce) can warn about complacency.

Complicated

The complicated domain consists of the "known unknowns". The relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or expertise; there is a range of right answers. The framework recommends "sense–analyze–respond": assess the facts, analyze, and apply the appropriate good operating practice. Stewart writes:

Here it is possible to work rationally toward a decision, but doing so requires refined judgment and expertise. ... This is the province of engineers, surgeons, intelligence analysts, lawyers, and other experts. Artificial intelligence copes well here: Deep Blue plays chess as if it were a complicated problem, looking at every possible sequence of moves."

Complex

The complex domain represents the "unknown unknowns". Cause and effect can only be deduced in retrospect. There are no right answers. "Instructive patterns ... can emerge", write Snowden and Boone, "if the leader conducts experiments that are safe to fail." Cynefin calls this process "probe–sense–respond". Hard insurance cases are one example of this domain. "Hard cases ... need human underwriters", Stewart writes, "and the best all do the same thing: Dump the file and spread out the contents." Snowden and Boone write:

In a complicated context, at least one right answer exists. In a complex context, however, right answers can’t be ferreted out. It's like the difference between, say, a Ferrari and the Brazilian rainforest. Ferraris are complicated machines, but an expert mechanic can take one apart and reassemble it without changing a thing. The car is static, and the whole is the sum of its parts. The rainforest, on the other hand, is in constant flux—a species becomes extinct, weather patterns change, an agricultural project reroutes a water source—and the whole is far more than the sum of its parts.

Stewart identifies battlefields, markets, ecosystems and corporate cultures as complex systems that are "impervious to a reductionist, take-it-apart-and-see-how-it-works approach, because your very actions change the situation in unpredictable ways."

Chaotic

In the chaotic domain, cause and effect are unclear. Events in this domain are "too confusing to wait for a knowledge-based response", writes Patrick Lambe. "Action—any action—is the first and only way to respond appropriately." In this context, managers "act–sense–respond": act to establish order; sense where stability lies; respond to turn the chaotic into the complex. Snowden and Boone write:

In the chaotic domain, a leader’s immediate job is not to discover patterns but to stanch the bleeding. A leader must first act to establish order, then sense where stability is present and from where it is absent, and then respond by working to transform the situation from chaos to complexity, where the identification of emerging patterns can both help prevent future crises and discern new opportunities. Communication of the most direct top-down or broadcast kind is imperative; there’s simply no time to ask for input.

The September 11 attacks were an example of the chaotic category. Stewart offers others: "the firefighter whose gut makes him turn left or the trader who instinctively sells when the news about the stock seems too good to be true." One crisis executive said of the collapse of Enron: "People were afraid. ... Decision-making was paralyzed. ... You've got to be quick and decisive—make little steps you know will succeed, so you can begin to tell a story that makes sense."

Snowden and Boone give the example of the 1993 Brown's Chicken massacre in Palatine, Illinois—when robbers murdered seven employees in Brown's Chicken and Pasta restaurant—as a situation in which local police faced all the domains. Deputy Police Chief Walt Gasior had to act immediately to stem the early panic (chaotic), while keeping the department running (simple), calling in experts (complicated), and maintaining community confidence in the following weeks (complex).

Disorder

The dark disorder domain in the centre represents situations where there is no clarity about which of the other domains apply. By definition it is hard to see when this domain applies. "Here, multiple perspectives jostle for prominence, factional leaders argue with one another, and cacophony rules", write Snowden and Boone. "The way out of this 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."

Moving through domains

As knowledge increases, there is a "clockwise drift" from chaotic through complex and complicated to simple. Similarly, a "buildup of biases", complacency or lack of maintenance can cause a "catastrophic failure": a clockwise movement from simple to chaotic, represented by the "fold" between those domains. There can be counter-clockwise movement as people die and knowledge is forgotten, or as new generations question the rules; and a counter-clockwise push from chaotic to simple can occur when a lack of order causes rules to be imposed suddenly.

Applications and reception

Cynefin was used by its IBM developers in policy-making, product development, market creation, supply chain management, branding and customer relations. Later uses include analysing the impact of religion on policymaking within the George W. Bush administration, emergency management, network science and the military, the management of food-chain risks, homeland security in the United States, agile software development, and policing the Occupy Movement in the United States.

It has also been used in health-care research, including to examine the complexity of care in the British National Health Service, the nature of knowledge in health care, and the fight against HIV/AIDs in South Africa.

Criticism of Cynefin includes that the framework is difficult and confusing, needs a more rigorous foundation, and covers too limited a selection of possible contexts. Another criticism is that terms such as known, knowable, sense, and categorize are ambiguous.