Welcome to today’s episode. We’re gonna look at the Cynefin framework. It’s a tool that helps people make better decisions. Dave Snowden made it in nineteen ninety nine, when he worked at IBM Global Services. He called it a sense making tool, a way to see what kind of situation you’re in, before you act. The word Cynefin is Welsh, and means habitat.
You might’ve seen a simple drawing of the framework, including versions people like Edwin Stoop shared. The picture helps, but the real value is how it guides choices.
Cynefin gives us five kinds of situations, also called domains. They’re clear, complicated, complex, chaotic, and confusion. These help managers and teams notice what they’re seeing, and pick a response that fits. The ideas come from the theories of systems, complexity, network, and learning.
Let's review the history behind the framework. Snowden started the model in nineteen ninety nine at IBM, to help manage the company’s knowledge. He kept building 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, in two thousand two. With IBM researcher Cynthia Kurtz, he wrote a full paper in two thousand three in the IBM Systems Journal, called the new dynamics of strategy, sense making in a complex and complicated world. The domain names changed over time. In two thousand three, they were known, knowable, complex, and chaotic. In two thousand seven, known and knowable became simple and complicated. From twenty fourteen, Snowden used obvious instead of simple, and by twenty fifteen, he used clear. The Cynefin Centre became independent from IBM in two thousand four. In two thousand seven, Snowden and Mary Boone wrote about Cynefin in the Harvard Business Review, and that paper won an award for helping leaders in practice.
Domains. The updated picture shows five spaces. Clear and complicated sit on the right, and are ordered, where cause and effect are known, or can be found. Complex and chaotic sit on the left, and are unordered, where cause and effect show up only later, or not at all. The center is confusion.
One. Clear. This is the land of known knowns. Rules or best practice exist. Things are stable. If you do X, you get Y. The move is sense, categorize, respond. First, find the facts. Then, place the case in a known box. Then, follow the rule, or the best way we already trust. A simple case is loan payment work. A worker spots a short payment, checks the loan papers, then applies the terms. This space includes law, standard procedures, and proven ways. But don’t force every case into clear. If you oversimplify, get stuck in old habits, or grow too sure of yourself, you can miss danger. When best practice turns into past practice, a quick fall into chaos can hit. Leaders should make safe ways, even anonymous ones, for people to speak up, and warn about risk early.
Two. Complicated. Here we face known unknowns. Cause and effect are real, but not plain to see. You need study, skill, or expert help. There can be more than one good answer. The move is sense, analyze, respond. Engineers, surgeons, analysts, and lawyers work here. Computers do well here too, like in chess, by checking many paths, then picking a move.
Three. Complex. Here we face unknown unknowns. You only see cause and effect after things happen. There’s no single right answer. Patterns can still show up, if you run small, safe to fail tests. The move is probe, sense, respond. Markets, nature systems, and company culture act like this. What you do, changes the thing you’re looking at. That’s why a simple take apart and measure way, is often not enough. Leaders should run a few small tries, watch what starts to work, grow what works, and shrink what doesn’t.
Four. Chaotic. This is crisis land. There aren’t helpful rules, and problems don’t link in neat ways. If you wait to study, things can get worse. The move is act, sense, respond. First act to make some order. Then sense where any order is. Then respond, and try to pull the case toward the complex space. In twenty twenty four, Snowden said he’d been too sure that the word chaos was clear. He showed a few meanings. One is math chaos, very hard to predict, like gas compared to liquid or solid. You can’t model it with normal tools, so you simulate it, or poke it, and watch. Another use is when people can’t talk with each other at all. Some folks use that as a trick in decision work, but Snowden’s not sold on it. A third use is plain disorder, a tangle, even a kind of dark mess before order. In that case, don’t wait for perfect knowledge. Make just enough structure so you can sort parts into complex, or ordered, spaces. Then move on. Action first, then sense, then respond. Real life shows all these spaces at once. After the nineteen ninety three Brown’s Chicken murders in Palatine, Illinois, police had to act fast to calm people, keep the department running, call in experts, and later, help the town heal. After the September eleven attacks, leaders and teams had to do the same kinds of shifts, from fast action, to clear routines, to expert study, to long, careful community work.
Five. Confusion. In the middle is confusion, once called disorder. Here, you don’t know which space fits. Many views fight for the front. People argue. Noise grows. The way out is to break the big thing into parts, and put each part in one of the other four spaces, so you can choose actions that fit the context.
Moving through spaces. As people learn, a case can move clockwise, from chaotic, to complex, to complicated, to clear. Bias, pride, or poor care, can cause a sudden drop from clear to chaotic. That’s the hard edge between them. There can also be a move the other way, as people leave, knowledge fades, or new folks question old rules. Sometimes, when there’s no order at all, people jump straight from chaotic to clear, by forcing rules in fast.
Where people use it. At IBM, teams used Cynefin in policy, product work, new markets, supply chains, branding, and customer work. Later, others used it in government policy, emergency work, network science and the military, food chain risk, homeland security in the United States, agile software work, and in policing the Occupy movement. In health care, people used it to study how care is complex in the British National Health Service, how knowledge moves in care, and how South Africa fought HIV and AIDS. In twenty seventeen, the RAND group used it in a review of decision models. The European Commission shared a field guide that uses Cynefin to help people handle crisis.
What people say against it. Some say it’s hard, or unclear, or not strong enough as a theory, or that it covers too few kinds of cases. Some say words like known, knowable, sense, and categorize, aren’t clear. Still, some scholars, like Simon French, say it helps a lot, since it sorts decision cases, and helps people face uncertainty. They link it to older work by well known thinkers in methods and planning. Others, like Firestone and McElroy, say Cynefin is mainly a way to make sense, not a full way to manage knowledge end to end.
Cynefin and the theory of constraints. Steve Holt puts them side by side. The theory of constraints says most systems have bottlenecks, and if you improve a part that isn’t the bottleneck, you just push pressure onto the real limit. Holt says we often move from complex to complicated by using hunches and guesses first, then logic, then a small test. He also maps Cynefin’s constraint types. Fixed constraints fit clear. Do things in a set way, and order. Governing constraints fit complicated. Rules and policies guide what folks do. Enabling constraints fit complex. They set the shape of play, and let good patterns form, but don’t control each step. He also says the theory’s injections match enabling constraints.
So here’s the bottom line. Not all problems are the same. Some are clear, and need rules. Some are complicated, and need experts. Some are complex, and need small, safe tests, and learning. Some are chaotic, and need fast action to steady the ground. Sometimes, we’re just confused, and first we need to sort the parts. Cynefin helps us see where we are, so we can act in a way that fits what’s real.
