US ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE

US Army Command and General Staff School

Command and General Staff Officer Course (CGSOC) Advanced Operations Course (AOC)
Module I: Training and Deployment Operations/L400: Art of Command
L402: Complexity

L402: Reading A
Systems Thinking and the Cynefin Framework
Author: H. William Dettmer

L402RA Complexity October 2023

 CHAPTER 10 Systems Thinking and the Cynefin Framework

CHAPTER 10
Systems Thinking and the Cynefin
Framework
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
-Job 38:21

Between 1999 and 2003, synthesizing concepts developed by Boisot,2 Cilliers,3 and others,
Snowden and Kurtz developed the Cynefin framework (pronounced "ku-NEV-in")4 to help
visualize and understand how systems operate within a variety of domains.
The Cynefin framework posits that the external environment describes a continuum from
ordered to unordered.5 That continuum is further divided into general contexts, or domains.
These contexts represent the grouping of environmental factors and other systems in which a
particular system functions. Figure 10.1 illustrates this concept.

Figure 10.1 The Cynefin Framework

Four of the domains-including their systems and associated environmental factors/

systems-are simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic. The fifth domain, pictured in the center, is
disorder. The simple and complicated domains are closer to ordered than unordered. Complex and
chaotic domains are more unordered.

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It's worth noting at this point that the framework, which appears to be a matrix, is not
intended to categorize. Rather, Kurtz and Snowden intended it to be a sense-making
framework.6 What's the difference? Most matrices imply some value judgment about which cell
it's better to be in. The Cynefin framework makes no such assumption, other than that disorder
should be avoided. Instead, it merely describes domains. The chaotic or complex domains are
no less (or more) desirable than the complicated or simple, and there may not be any particular
virtue in attempting to migrate one's system from one domain to another-"it is what it is."
The boundaries between the domains are deliberately fuzzy, indicating that there are
transitional zones between them. Typically, a particular system in question will reside primarily
in one domain, though it may occupy a position that puts it at least partially in another zone, or
in the transition area. (See Figure 10.2)

Figure 10.2 Where Does Our system Lie?

Cynefin's value as a sense-making framework lies in helping system decision makers

understand approximately where their systems lie among these domains, and by extension, what
kinds of tools, approaches, processes, or methods are more likely to work successfully in a given
system. But what do these various domains really signify?

The Simple Domain

Systems operating in a stable context characterized by clear cause-and-effect relationships
are fairly well defined and simple or sequential in their activities. The variability of the
environment is narrow. People know what to expect, and each event or action carries with it a
limited number of potential outcomes that are predictable. Uncertainty and turbulence are
minimal. Causality is dear and well understood by everyone. "Right" answers are often self-
evident and undisputed.

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This context might be called the domain of "known knowns” (See Figure10.3), and most
decisions are unquestioned because everyone shares a common understanding. Decision makers
can typically sense, then categorize, what information they gather and respond directly.

Figure 10.3 What we Know?

Simple contexts are heavily process-oriented situations typically managed through the
application of standard practice. Both managers and employees have access to the information they
need, and a command and control style is usually preferable. Adhering to best practice makes
sense, and process re-engineering is a typical tool.7
Some examples of systems that fall into this domain include automobile repair shops, retail
merchandise stores, fast food restaurants, municipal government departments, church
congregations, and help desks that follow prescribed patterns of questions and answers in
responding to common problems.
The Complicated Domain
Snowden and Boone, who conceived the Cynefin framework. refer to the complicated part of
the framework as the domain of experts.8 There's a reason for this. Complicated domains don't have
single right

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answers to problems. There may be several effective answers, though finding them is not as
simple as in the simple domain. In the complicated domain the relationship between cause and
effect still pertains, though such relationships may not be obvious. Whether or not they are
obvious depends on the depth of people's knowledge about the environment and the system.
Variability and uncertainty increase in a complicated environment, increasing the potential range
of problems as well as the number of possible right answers.
In Figure10.3, this is the realm of known unknowns: We know the questions to ask, but
we don't know the answers. Thus, cause-and-effect analysis is only as good as the knowledge of
system or environment that one has available. Fortunately, in the complicated domain that
information is usually available somewhere. It's usually just a matter of research to find it.
Now, what about the system? A system in any domain may have a myriad of interacting,
interdependent parts. This may be less problematic in a simple domain, but in a complicated
domain, the variability is compounded. Complicated systems may coalesce into "silos" that are
highly specialized and require specialized functional knowledge to operate.
Consider, for example, a large-scale manufacturing company such as an automobile
manufacturer. Specialization renders marketing and sales a function unto and of itself. Industrial
engineers would be adrift there. The converse is also true: Marketing and sales specialists would
be incompetent to manage production operations. These functional silos, then, evolve into the
domain of experts. Such experts may be internal to the company, or they may be external
consultants. Either way, the preferred approach of most experts is analysis: The system is taken
apart and its component parts examined in an effort to obtain a better understanding of how the
parts function.
Each silo, function, or component of a complicated system searches for, or develops, its own
specialized tools or methods to cope with its obligations and the performance demands made upon
it. But because each of these systemic parts is a process within the overall system, these methods
almost invariably favor process analysis and improvement.
Nearly all the tools management has searched for (and used) over the past several decades
can be characterized as process improvement aids. In fact, the philosophy of continuous process
improvement (CPI) is rooted in the analytic axiom that the whole is the sum of its parts: "If
we hone and polish all of our processes to their maximum performance potential, then 'glue'
them together, we'll have the best overall system."

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This kind of thinking was the basis of Deming's fourteenth point9:

"Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the
transformation. The transformation is everybody's job." And it led
decision makers to implicitly assume that all parts of a system are equally
important to its performance outcomes. But there is ample evidence that
Deming didn't really intend the fourteenth point to be interpreted that
way, that his emphasis was on transformation, not on the function of
discrete processes. Later, in explaining what he referred to as the four
pillars of profound knowledge, Deming said:10

Optimization is a process of orchestrating the efforts of all components

toward achievement of the stated aim. Optimization is management's job.
Everybody wins with optimization.
Anything less than optimization of the whole system will bring eventual loss
to every component of the system. Any group should have as Its aim
optimization over time of the larger system the group operates in.
The obligation of any component is to contribute its best to the system, not to
maximizes its own production, profit. or sales, nor any other competitive
measure. Some components may operate at a loss to themselves in order to
optimize the whole system, including the components that take a loss.

So, while the importance of whole-system thinking and system optimization

was clearly important to Deming, that message was largely missed by analytically
oriented managers, and the consultants (both internal and external) who sought to
serve them. The result has historically been a plethora of process improvement tools
and method, but precious few system-level improvement tools.
As a result, the typical decision-making pattern in the complicated domain,
and in complicated systems, boils down to sense-analyze-respond. Take the
cornerstone process of the ubiquitous Six Sigma methodology, DMAIC (define,
measure, analyze, improve, control).11 What is this but sense, analyze, and respond?
Some typical examples of systems in the complicated domain might be
manufacturing (industrial production), insurance companies, hospitals or health care
providers, and public school systems. Two common characteristics of all
complicated systems and their environments is relative stability (most of the time)
and fairly well defined variability. While things may change or the unexpected may
happen, these phenomena are usually within the system's capability to respond without
major system modification or redesign.

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Entrained Thinking
Snowden and Boone emphasize the risk of what they refer to as entrained
thinking,12 a conditioned response that traps decision makers in the practices, policies,
techniques, and rationales that have successfully put them where they are. Entrained
thinking sounds like this: "I got to the top by doing things this way, why mess with
success?"
Another word for this is "complacency." Isaac Asimov once offered a rationale
for entrained thinking:13
To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to
run the old, old risk of failing to learn.
There are serious dangers in such complacency. Even simple domains evolve
over time with changes in the external environment. A decision maker who fails to
recognize such evolution risks falling behind events without realizing it. Notice in
Figure 10.4 the purple strip separating the simple domain from the chaotic-it marks a
zone of increased risk. The reason the Cynefin framework places the simple domain
beside the chaotic is that the complacency resulting from entrained thinking
significantly increases the risk of system collapse into chaos.

Figure 10.4, Zone of increased Risk

Entrained thinking is also a risk for systems in the complicated domain, but
in this case the ones at risk are not the leaders. Rather, it's the experts in functional
areas who are most likely to fall into the trap of tradition, and they tend to dominate
the complicated domain. The risk

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of entrained thinking in the complicated domain is that innovative ideas from non-experts may
be disregarded by experts interested primarily in building and reinforcing their own knowledge.14
As Deming observed, profound knowledge must come from outside the system-and it must be
invited in.15 Unfortunately, this doesn't happen as often as it should.

The Complex Domain

Most people, if asked, would say that their systems qualify as complex. This may well be
true in some cases, but those whose systems are really simple or complicated systems tend to
think so, too. So, what defines a complex system?

The key difference between a complex system and one that is merely complicated is
the inclusion of the concept of adaptation. Figure 10.516 provides more detailed
characteristics of complex systems without these characteristics (or most of them), a system
is merely complicated. Cilliers' list of complex system characteristics only implies
adaptation indirectly (see the next-to-last bullet). Snowden and Boone add an important
characteristic to Cilliers' list: emergence.17

• The number of elements is sufficiently large that conventional

descriptions (e.g., a system of differential equations) cease to assist in
understanding the system, the elements must also interact and the
interaction must be dynamic. Interactions can be physical or involve the
exchange of information.

• Such interactions are rich, i.e., any element in the system is affected and
affects several other systems.

• The interactions are non-linear which means that smaller causes can have
large results.

• Interactions are primarily but not exclusively with immediate neighbors

and the nature of the influence is modulated.

• Any interaction can feed back onto itself (recurrency) directly or after a
number of intervening stages, such feedback can vary in quality.

• Such systems are open; it may be difficult or impossible to define system

boundaries.

• Complex system operate under far from equilibrium conditions; there

must be a constant flow of energy to maintain the organization of the
system.

• All complex systems have a history; they evolve and their pasty is co-
responsible for their present behavior.

• Elements in the system are ignorant of the behavior of the system as a

whole responding only to what is available to it locally.

Figure 10.5 Characteristics of Complex Systems (Cillers, 1998)

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Essentially, emergence means that problems-and solutions-arise from circumstances,

often unpredictably. Complex systems have large numbers of components, often called
agents, that interact and adapt or learn.18 The key to complex systems is a high degree of
adaptive capacity, making them resilient in the face of perturbation. Agents within the
system have some latitude to react to those circumstances by changing the system, though
both the system and its internal agents constrain one another.
What kinds of systems would qualify as truly complex, and adaptive? Here's a partial
list:
• Stock markets
• Social insect and ant colonies
• The biosphere and the ecosystem
• Brains and immune systems
• Commercial business (national, international)
• Any human social group-based endeavors in cultural and social systems
(e.g., political parties, communities).
• New product development organizations
• Inventors/ innovators
• International relations organizations
• Unconventional warfare, insurgencies, transnational crime, etc.
• Conventional forces operating under maneuver warfare
• Revolutionary political movements
Complex systems are what Senge would refer to as learning organizations.19 The agents or
actors within complex systems are able to observe the impact of their initiatives and adjust
accordingly to achieve desired results. Kurtz and Snowden describe the complex domain:20
...there are cause-and-effect relationships between the agents, but both
the number of agents and the number of relationships defy
categorization analytic techniques. Emergent patterns can be perceived
but not predicted; we call this phenomenon retrospective coherence.
In this space, structured methods that seize upon such retrospectively
coherent patterns and codify them into procedures will confront only
new and different patterns for which they will be ill-prepared. Once a
pattern has stabilized. its path appears logical. But it is only one of many
of many that could have stabilized, each of which also would have
appeared logical in retrospect.
Patterns may indeed repeat for a time in this space, but we cannot be
sure

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that they will continue to repeat, because the underlying sources of

the patterns are not open to inspection (and observation of the
system may itself disrupt the patterns.) Thus, relying on expert
opinions based on historically patterns of meaning will insufficiently
prepare us to recognize and act upon unexpected patterns.

The old saying that "the only thing constant is change" applies in, complex adaptive systems.
A bad quarter, a change in management, or a merger or acquisition can introduce unpredictability,
uncertainty, and flux. In the complex domain, it's often only after the fact that we can understand why
things happen.21 Perhaps the best examples are major financial collapses, such as Enron in 2000 and the
international financial collapse of 2008. The dangers may have been obvious to a few in each case, but
it wasn't until after events unfolded that the complex causality became clear. In fact, in complex domains
most confusing and disconcerting issues that arise without apparent forewarning appear ominous in hindsight.
This brings us to a critical revelation about knowledge and tools: in the complex domain, the
knowledge of experts may be of limited value, and the effectiveness of cause and effect analysis is likely to be
marginalized, or of short duration.
This is not to say that expert knowledge is useless, only that its value in predicting future
events is likely to be limited. Snowden and Boone cite the Apollo13 crisis as an example. The
event-an explosion in an oxygen regenerator-was never anticipated (predicted), so the astronauts
and mission control team had never practiced for it. Yet the astronauts were ultimately returned
safely to earth, because:22
A group of experts is put in a room with a mishmash of materials-bits of
plastic and odds and ends that mirror the resources available to the astronauts in
flight. Leaders tell the team: This is what you have; find a solution or the
astronauts will die. None of those experts knew a priori what would work.
Instead, they had to let a solution emerge from the materials at hand. And
they succeeded. (Conditions of scarcity often produce more creative results than
conditions of abundance )

Complicated Versus Complex: Some Final Thoughts

From the preceding discussion, it might seem as if almost all systems would be complex,
and almost none complicated, especially in light of the contentions of Holland and Cilliers on agents
and the latitude they have to change their systems. After all, don't most industrial operations (and
even service organizations) have continuous improvement programs? Don't these represent agent-
initiated changes?

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Technically, the answer is "yes." But consider the nature of most of those
changes: modifications to processes or procedures. How many instances can you cite
in which dramatic, systemic changes resulted from continuous improvement
programs? After all, by definition "improvement" implies refinement of existing
processes, not wholesale replacement or redesign. Even the shift from manual labor
to computerized automation is embraced as an improvement, not as a departure from
the basic interactions of system elements. Moreover, even in continuous
improvement situations, any changes must invariably be approved by management,
so the agents' actual authority to effect change is arbitrarily limited.
Take the automobile industry, for example. With the advent of intensive
Japanese competition in the1980s, did American automakers institute major systemic
changes to the way they did business?
Cars still migrated down assembly lines. Employees still assembled them the
same way, though total quality initiatives modified processes and procedures. The
same number of interacting elements interacted in more or Jess the same way.
Variability and predictability improved, within already defined parameters. Drastic
perturbations-emergent situations-in the external environment (or even internal
operations) requiring creative, revolutionary systemic response are absent.
Another example: The airline industry in the wake of 9/11. The external
environment changed radically, requiring dramatic, creative responses-but the
airlines themselves tried to continue business the way they had always done it, albeit
with major process disruptions imposed by added security requirements. In essence,
they were complicated systems operating in an environment that has become much more
complex, which explains many of the difficulties they experienced adapting. In the
aftermath, some airlines didn't survive, or went into bankruptcy and reorganization.
Ultimately, to the degree that we attempt to standardize operations and make
processes replicable, most of our systems are really complicated, rather than complex.
But the external environment in which a system operates experiences no such
strictures. The most problematic situations occur when a complicated system finds
itself trying to function in a complex environment. Neither its tools nor its
management approach are likely to be suited for that kind of reality.

Cause-and-effect likewise has a different applicability in a complex

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environment. In simple and complicated domains, process-oriented problem solving

tools such as SixSigma's DMAIC or Five Whys are quite effective. They're lesson
in emergent situations, and the efficacy of the solutions they produce is likely to be
short-lived. This is not to imply that cause-and-effect is absent (or doesn't apply) in the
complex domain, merely that it's not discernible or predictable a priori. After the fact,
cause-and-effect can easily explain what happened, but often that's too late to do
system managers any good. The success of cause-and-effect in a complex domain will
depend highly on the depth of resident knowledge about the system and its environment
and how much-and how quickly-system agents can learn about them, the known
unknowns, and the unknown knowns (Refer to Figure 10.3).
Leaders of organizations operating in the complex domain run a serious
risk. Most of them have likely come up through simple and complicated systems
(or simple/ complicated parts of systems). Their experience is heavily grounded in
the characteristics and tools of those domains: known knowns, predictability, and
process-oriented tools.
They expect failsafe business plans with well defined outcomes, and their
leadership style may be more authoritarian. They may fail to realize that complex
domains demand a more experimental management approach that admits some
failure in the pursuit of understanding. If they find it difficult to tolerate failure-a
key element in experimental learning-they may over control their organizations
and pre-empt opportunities for new informative patterns to emerge.
The Chaotic Domain
Cause-and-effect relationships are both operative and discernible in the
simple and complicated domains. They are also potentially useful in the complex
domain, if the necessary content knowledge is available and it's clearly recognized
that its results can have a fairly short "shelf life" (i.e., a periodic re-do may be
necessary).
But as the name implies, the chaotic domain is turbulent and highly uncertain. In
the chaotic domain, cause-and-effect analysis is probably nearly useless. Causes
and effects may not be perceivable, and when they are, the environment may be
changing so fast that there isn't time to conduct an orderly cause-effect analysis.
Waiting for patterns to emerge may be a waste of time, or a recipe for disaster.23
This is the realm of unknown unknowns, and probably even unknowables. It's a
highly tense situation, with many decisions needing to be made and no time for
reflection or contemplation about them.

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Examples of situations in the chaotic domain include crises, such as the 9-11
terror attacks and the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown, natural disasters such as
the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes, post-apocalyptic society (after the breakdown of
law and order), civil revolutions such as Libya experienced in 2011, and organizations
with much slower decision cycles than their competitors.

Disorder
In the Cynefin framework, the domain of disorder abuts all the others. (See
Figure10.6) This is intended to signify that an organization in a given domain (simple,
complicated, complex, chaotic) can easily slip into disorder. As Snowden and Boone
describe it24

The very nature of the fifth context-disorder-make it particularly difficult

to recognize when one is in it Here, multiple perspectives jostle for
prominence, factional leaders argue with one another, and cacophony rules.
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.

f i g u r e 1 0 . 8 . D i s o r d e r Potentially Touches Everything

Implications of the Cynefin Framework

Consider the implications of these insights. Most managers and executives climbed the
corporate ladder in parts of organizations that were either simple or complicated. Asa result,
they learned "best practices," or maybe just" good practices" that worked well in these
environments. In most cases, the tools and methodologies were likewise very
structured, prescriptive, cause-effect based, and proven to succeed in simple and
complicated venues.

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Managers typically move up the organizational ladder to positions of

broader responsibility. As they do, the odds increase that the parts of the
organization they're responsible for will bridge the boundary between merely
complicated and definitely complex-and perhaps even chaotic. They see and
experience a larger number of possible outcomes and options, and greater
variability in those outcomes. This is true even before you consider the uncertainty
associated with the evolution of the external environment.
But psychologically they recognize that they reached their current position by
doing the same, familiar things over and over, and doing them well.25 So, they try
to apply the tools, methods, and knowledge that has worked for them in the past to
new domains and situations-domains that may be relatively unresponsive to the
tools that were effective in the ordered domains. Is it any wonder, then, that they
sense, try to analyze, and respond in situations when they should be probing,
sensing, and responding-or acting, sensing, and responding? Is it any wonder that
such managers avoid experimentation, with its consequent risk of failure, in favor
of options with quantifiable, predictable costs and benefits?26

Actions and Knowledge

As Fayol asserted some 90 years ago, management's functions include
planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. At their most essential,
the discharge of these responsibilities requires, first, decisions (what to do), and
second, action.27 But action without knowledge is like running in the dark-you
might get where you want to be, but you are more likely to kill yourself along the
way.

When one acts (or chooses not to act), three things can happen. (See Figure
10.7, next page) The situation improves, it experiences no change at all, or it
deteriorates. In other words, the action (or inaction) may be productive. non-
productive, or destructive. And if the situation does change, the outcome of that
decision may precipitate quickly or slowly, if it does anything at all.

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Figure 10.7 Outcome, of Action and i n a c t i o n

Absent effective knowledge of the situation-in other words, when running in the
dark-by acting, your odds are only one in three of doing something productive. And if
there is a range of possible actions, even if the action is productive, it might not produce
favorable [Link] quickly as needed. The same argument could be made for inaction,
whether inaction results from a passive decision (dithering) or an active one. If the system
is on an unfavorable trajectory, two of the three possible outcomes are bad, and declining
the initiative (inaction) leaves the range of play-out options entirely to chance. So, as
Elbert Hubbard once observed, positive anything is likely to be better than negative
nothing.28

But the operative word in the preceding paragraphs is knowledge. If one has it, the
odds of making the right decision-act or don't act- change. Instead of being a simple
one-in-three probability, relevant knowledge shades the odds in favor of improving the
situation. The Cynefin framework seems to imply the same thing. (See Figure10.8)
While it's primarily designed to guide executive action, with a little modification (and
some inputs from Snowden and Boone29), the same framework can effectively point us
in the right direction to skew the decision odds in our favor.

Organizations in the simple domain have nearly all the knowledge they need to
make decisions that produce highly predictable outcomes. They can observe what's
going on, sort it into the appropriate pigeon-hole, and respond with tried and t r u e
procedures.

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Figure 10.8 Cynefin Framework and the State of Knowledge

Organizations in the complicated domain know some of what they need to know to make
informed, effective decisions. But they also know the questions they don't have the answers to,
and they have a reasonably good idea of how to find those answers. They can't proceed on the
basis of existing knowledge, so they must sense and analyze-which may point them in the
direction of searching out the information they need but don't have.
Those in the complex domain have the knowledge available in the simple and complicated
domains, but because there is far more variability and more possible scenarios, they run out of
knowledge long before they run out of decisions to be made. They're much more uncertain about
what to do and how to figure it out. They may be able to research what they don't know (if time
pressures allow). Or, if the information is not readily available, they must probe by
experimentation (thoughtful trial and error), sense whether their experiments seem to be
succeeding or not, then respond based on those observations.
The worst case situation for an organization is to find itself in is the chaotic domain,
particularly if its entire history has been in the simple or complicated domains. What they
require to function effectively is unknown to them and, perhaps because of the turbulence and
rapid change in the environment, it may be unknowable. In this case, the organization's leaders
must act on their best intuition, observe the immediate effects, and rapidly decide to "pour on
the coals," if the action appears effective, or rapidly respond with another option if it doesn't. -

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This is a domain of instinctive (as opposed to thoughtful) trial and error, with the tacit
understanding that because of the chaotic environment effective solutions are likely to be
short-lived.
Discontinuous Innovation
It should be noted that, regardless of the domain (or combination of domains) that an
organization finds itself in, Social entropy is an ever-present threat. Social entropy refers to
the tendency of human networks and society in general to break down over time, moving
from cooperation and advancement towards conflict and chaos.30
In other words, without a positive effort to hold an organization effectively on
course, it will inexorably tend to run off the rails and into a ditch. ln the context of our
discussions on the Cynefin framework. this means that without constant attention to the
changes occurring in the external environment, and the performance of the system
within that environment, an organization can rapidly slip from a controllable domain
(simple, complicated, even complex) into disorder.
In other words, don't become complacent. Keep your attention on the job at
hand but maintain a situational awareness of what's going on outside the system, so
that you can determine whether it will ultimately invalidate your knowledge base.
For example, for centuries Swiss watchmakers had been refining and perfecting
their skills at creating precision mechanical watches. Yet in the space of ten years, a
centuries old industry came crashing down because the insular watchmakers, who dated
to the craft guilds of the 17th and18th centuries, failed to recognize the wave of the
future: in expensive quartz crystal electronic watch works that could deliver accuracies an
order of magnitude better than traditional mechanical works could achieve. Instead of
acknowledging the existential threat and creating ways to deal with it, they deemed it a
passing fad, and they ignored the technology completely- until the Japanese captured a
significant segment of the timepiece market and the Swiss watch industry had collapsed
to a shadow of its former self.31
Knowing what we do now about the Cynefin framework, we can see that the
Swiss watch industry was badly overwhelmed because it was a simple system (or, at
most, complicated) whose environment radically changed under its feet to become
chaotic. The Swiss watch industry fell victim to a phenomenon known as disruptive
innovation32 because it failed to perceive the quartz-digital technology as a threat to its market
niche. So, they failed to perceive the threat, or they perceived the threat and ignored it.

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The nature of today's global economy and geopolitics, combined with the rapid
expansion of technology over the past several decades, is such that discontinuous
innovation is now a way of life for organizations and systems everywhere. There are
actually organizations- competitors-who deliberately pursue disruptive innovation as a
way of life, a competitive edge.
Generational cycles are becoming shorter. The threat of entropy demands constant
attention of decision makers, not only on their own internal operations but on
developments in the external environment as well-developments that may invalidate
their world view (and what their organizations are doing). The risk of an organization
finding itself slipping into the chaotic domain is higher than ever.
Summary and Conclusion
The Cynefin framework (Figure 10.1) is designed to help decision makers-
organizational leaders and system managers-understand where their system stands in the
external environment. It provides knowledge about the general characteristics of the five
domains in which leaders could find their systems. It helps decision makers understand
what kinds of methods and tools will be likely to work in their particular organizations,
and which ones won't.
The Cynefin concept provides key insight that most leaders have likely been ignorant
about:
• The boundaries between simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic are indistinct.
Consequently, changes in external conditions or internal system modifications may
push a given system from one domain to another without leaders being aware of it. If
they aren't paying attention, they won't know to guard against it.

• A particular system may inhabit more than one domain simultaneously. For example, a
vertically integrated manufacturing company may find its production subsystem in the
complicated domain, but its sales and marketing may be in the complex domain (or
perhaps, in the economic conditions extant in 2011, teetering on the edge of the
chaotic.)

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• The spatial relationship among the domains emphasizes how easily (or insidiously) an
organization might slip from one domain into another, possibly without noticing it.
• The boundary between complicated and complex is less extreme than the boundary
between the simple and the chaotic. Consequently, the failure of management to
recognize a shift from complicated to complex, while problematic, is not likely to be as
catastrophic as the failure to recognize a shift from simple to chaotic. But all domains
are directly exposed to the zone of disorder, which should prompt leaders to heightened
awareness of their system's relationship with its external environment.
• Simple and complicated domains assume an ordered universe, where cause-and-effect
relationships are perceptible, and right answers can be determined based on facts.33
• Complex and chaotic domains are unordered, meaning that there is no apparent
relationship between cause and effect. This doesn't mean that there is no cause-and-effect,
just that it's not apparent or obvious. While the ordered part of the continuum
(simple and complicated) can be managed based on facts, the unordered part re- quires
intuition and recognition of patterns. Consequently, the tools and methods that work well in the
simple and complicated domains tend to be less effective (or completely ineffective) in the complex and
chaotic domains.
The Cynefin Framework provides a potentially invaluable aid to executive
decision making.

1. Anyone can make a decision, given enough facts.

2. A good manager can make a decision without enough facts.
3. A perfect manager can operate in perfect ignorance.
-Spenser’s Laws of Data34

ENDNOTES
1. Dettmer, H. William. He Said, She Said. p. 61.
2. Boisot, Max H. Information Space (1995).
3. Cilliers, Paul. Complexity and Postmodernism (1998).
4. [Link] pronounced ku-NEV-in, is Welsh word that signifies "the multiple
factors in our environment and our experience that influence us in ways we can never fully understand."'
5. 30. Snowden and Boone, Harvard Business review (2007)
6. Kurtz and Snowden., IBM Systems Journal (2003), p. 468

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 CHAPTER 10 Systems Thinking and the Cynefin Framework

7. Snowden and Boone, op. cit., (2007)

8. Snowden and Boone, op. cit., (2007)
9. Deming, Out of the Crisis, pp. 53, 100
10. Deming, The New Economics, (1993)
11. [Link]
12. Snowden and Boone, Op. cit., (2007)
13. [Link]
to_introduce_something_altogether_new_would_mean/[Link]
14. Snowden and Boone, op. cit., (2007)
15. Deming, The New Economics, op. cit., p.94.
16. Cimers Complexity u11d Posl11wdl':T1US111, pp. 3-4
17. Snowden and Boone, op. cit., (2007)
18. Holland, John H, (2006): pp. 1-8.
19. Senge, Fifth Discipline, (1990), p. 3.
20. Kurtz and Snowden (2003), p. 469
21. Snowden and Boone. Op. cit., (2007)
22. Snowden and Boone, Op. cit., (2007)
23. Snowden and Boone, Op. cit., (2007)
24. Snowden and Boone, Op, cit., (2007)
25. In other words, “I'm gonna dance with the one what brung me!"
26. 'There are people so conservative they believe nothing should be done for the first time. Source
Uknown.
27. In the words of the Nike corporate slogan. "Just do it."
28. [Link]
29. Snowden and Boone, Op. cit., (2007)
30. [Link] Social entropy
31. [Link]
32. [Link]
33. Snowden and Boone, Op. cit., (2007)
34. Dettmer, H. William. He Said, She Said: Timeless Management Prescriptions, p. 33.

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