Curiouser and Curiouser! on cynefin-framework

Dave Snowden: Cynefin dynamics

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 23:48:19 +0000

The following is a ~500 word summary of my notes from Dave Snowdens talk on the Cynefin framework and Dynamics (~2800 words). Please note that this is my interpretation of Daves words and any errors, omissions, falsehoods or downright lies are down to me, not Dave.

Also note that, due to personal circumstances, Dave was not able to be present in person. Instead he did the full hour and a half talk via phone. I thought he gave a great performance under difficult circumstances and I was very grateful that he made this effort. Thank you Dave!

After the party an After Action Review is used to evaluate performance of children & adults, leading to the creation of a "party best practice" database. Breathe a sigh of relief when one of them works and try to stabilize the pattern. Then head upstairs to disrupt the negative pattern forming around your 14 year old daughter and a bottle of vodka.

In Method B the focus is less on total design (input/output) control.

At the heart of the distinction: Systems of order and of unorder.

When you look backwards everything makes perfect sense but there was no way, at the time, of predicting that particular outcome. What happens is that 'patterns of interaction' stabilize and you can then understand how this occurred.

Structured methods from business schools and management systems do not cope. Instead an approach based upon complexity theory (boundaries & attractors) is required.

Ordered systems: The aspects of organisation that are highly structured and where things repeat.

Shift towards heuristics expressed as value alignment.

Order emerges as the result of the interaction of agents.

Additionally multiple collective identities can be held in sequence or in parallel leading to a 3rd level of complexity.

Neurophysics & cognitive science tell us that we actually make decisions based upon complex patterns.

Great leader comes in and pulls all the network controls into themselves, tightening to shift the problem back into the visible ordered space, e.g.

Oscillation between anarchy & control which is the common method of crisis management.

Boundaries (negative, repel) Brittle -- any rigid, when it breaks it breaks catastrophically with no recovery Elastic - middle Permeable -- crossed all the time but people know they've crossed them The more you constrain the less adaptable you have.

Whilst the model may be new they have never had a problem with the concept when applied to a real problem.

There is a critical distinction between hidden order and complex unorder. 9-11 was hidden order: we didn't join the dots. There are so many orders of magnitude difference in considering a problem of 1 pattern among 27 and 1 pattern among 3.4 trillian.

Do peoples personalities fit naturally into a domain?
Most innovation occurs under the age of 17 and over the age of 50. If the context shifts we are capable of changing. Personality can also act as a pattern entrainer.

UN peace keepers need permeable boundaries/rules, to be guided by underlying principles. In a riot situation officers delegate to NCO's. Officers understand strategy; NCO's understand tactics and execution.

It's informal systems allow it to survive, to make the formal systems work. The problem is that people designing the formal processes do not see this. Apparent conformity validates their model/view leading them to believe it is working and put in even more processes!

Think about yourself as a bundle of identities.

Getting Real with Stowe

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 21:46:17 +0100

Had a first chat with Stowe Boyd this evening. Enjoyed it very much despite some troubles with Skype (poor voice quality in one direction or another at various points) which we augmented with IM. We talked about K-Collector, IRC, Wiki, Sense making, Cynefin, social tools and how KM is suffering from fatigue. Thanks Stowe!

Turbulence

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:37:45 +0100

In the language of “chaos” theory, America – if not all of Western civilization – is in a state of turbulence of such intensity that efforts to restore order by recourse to traditional systems and policies will be to no avail. On the contrary, it is our insistence upon established practices that has led us to our plight; and only a fundamental, creative change in our thinking and behavior can extricate us from the destructive consequences of our prior assumptions. -- Via Butler Shafer

I started getting interested in complex systems by listening to David Snowden describe his work. The first time was almost 3 years ago to the day. I heard him again almost a year later and it reinforced his ideas and concepts.

Dave introduced me to the idea that some spaces are complex and in such spaces cause & effect is a retrospective coincidence so that the tools and techniques that used to yield results may cause unpredictable future effects. The challenge of complex spaces is that, when you're in them, they don't necessarily look any different to the knowable spaces we are comfortable with. (Dave also introduced me to the exploits of the incomparable Mulla Nasrudin for which I am very grateful).

From that point onwards I got very interested in sense-making and, given my background and my fascination for blogging, I became very interested in topics and topic maps as a tool for understanding and representing things of interest. In a sense my topic map defines my world, or at least the subset of my world I choose to make public. What has always tripped me up is how poor are the tools we have to work with. My own efforts in addressing this situation, small as they were, have stumbled and failed.

Originally my interest in these things was purely theoretical but over the last 3 years my interest in politics and the nature of the world around me has blossomed and my interests in complexity, systems, sense-making, and reasoning have seemed more practical. I have gone from being an unthinking socialist to a thinking... for want of a better word libertarian. I hesitate when I use the term because I still understand so little of the philosophical underpinnings that define it.

What I do know is that many people who hear me talk about politics and life these days appear to think I am, at best, misguided and, at worst, delusional. I'm treating that as a good sign. For people who believe they are in an ordered space where the old answers remain true then anyone who acts like they believe they are in a complex space may appear to be out-of-step or irrational. Of course I cannot utterly dismiss the possibility that I am misguided or delusional but I see no way to address that other than to keep asking questions.

Recently (although not so recently as I would like) I started studying psychology. I found it to be a fascinating subject both from the perspective of personal discovery but also as a source of tools for thinking about human problems. Social psychology has many interesting things to teach us. From a political perspective one need only consider GroupThink and then look around.

Lately I have been thinking about my future and what I would like to do, if finances and personal situation permit. I am a generalist and aspire to be a PolyMath. I believe that much of interest lies at the interstices of the sciences and arts. I have expressed an interest in doing research and am looking for the right opportunity.

In the meantime I continue to self-educate as best I can. Right now I am honing up my logical argument skills and beginning to read about the very interesting area of Systems Theory. Systems Theory seems to be the ultimate polymath science that seeks always to unify, it's exciting.

The goal of all this effort, like most of my goal, is not yet directed to any specific purpose (not even a political one) but to providing myself, and hopefully others, with better tools to master life. In Gregory Benfords fantastic novels about human future (e.g. Great Sky River) he describes how humans have an enhanced sensorium and access to the aspects of the wisdom of their dead.

I see the shearing forces that act on our society, like the evolution of technology outstripping the pace of social change, and the increasing uncertainty and turbulence we face and cannot but believe that we need new and better tools if we are to survive. Right now I believe that my lifes work is in researching, developing, and using such tools.

Phew... This post went somwhere other than I where I was expecting and, despite being something of a ramble, wanted to be written. I think that reflects my growing uncertainties about my present and my future: my own personal turbulence.