Cynefin rules

A Leader’s Framework for Decision-Making by David Snowden and Mary Boone is the lead article of the latest issue of Harvard Business Review. It’s not an easy read but if you believe that our world is the result of the interplay of complex adaptive systems, these five pages may help you get your head around it.

HBR Editor Tom Stewart describes the article:

…often people respond to issues almost reflexively, like the proverbial man with a hammer to whom everything looks like a nail. Smart leaders choose their tools according to their sense of the kind of decision they face. Simple situations are best met with simple tools, like rules: “Don’t stick your finger into an electrical outlet,” for instance. Other situations—for example, complicated problems with many different parts that nevertheless have a right answer—call for the services of an expert: If your wiring is bad, better call an electrician rather than try to fix it yourself. Still other cases are so chaotic, so senseless, that a leader should simply step in and do something, like a teacher wading in to stop a school yard squabble.

The situations leaders encounter most fall into none of these classes but rather into a fourth: circumstances that are complex, where the truth is not immediately evident even to an expert but emerges over time, where cause-and-effect relationships are not well established, where positive results come from offering incentives rather than issuing commands, and where, consequently, the tools of influence and decision making are subtle and ill-defined. Most leaders are told that it is important to be (or appear to be) decisive. Fair enough—but how is one to reconcile the imperative of decisiveness with the reality of ambiguity? There’s a growing body of academic research about decision making under uncertainty. Not much of this research has worked its way into practical frameworks for managers. To me, one of the great values of “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making” is that it lives up to its title. In so doing, it connects sense-making to action in ways that are both wise and practical.

Dave Snowden downs a brew at our eLearning/KM Blogger Fest last Wednesday.