Reflections on the Cynefin Framework
In today’s complex
business environment, most leaders typically rely upon their intuition and gut
instincts when it comes to unordered environments, such as complex and
complicated contexts. Unfortunately, it not enough to depend solely on these natural
capabilities. Leaders will need to depend on external guides and cues informing
them of the contexts of their surrounding environment and how best to integrate
their organizations into the appropriate approach for the given contexts (Snowden
& Boone, 2007).
In dealing with multiple
contexts across the five domains; simple, complicated, complex, chaotic and
disorder, leaders will be required to learn how to identify multiple contexts
occurring at the same time, and be able to shift their decision making
processes as well as the relative behavior in order to successfully manage a
collaborative environment in each of the domains. Likewise, leaders must be
open-minded during these shifts to keep themselves from controlling a
particular environment at any given time, remaining neutral, all the while
assessing and partaking in the decision-making process with the group (Snowden
& Boone, 2007).
Within my working
environment, a Joint Special Operations military command, I have had to shift
contextual environments two to three times a day. In these cases, they were all
separate, giving me time to reset and get organized and mentally cleared to
approach the next domain without expectations, so that I may be able to more
readily be able to identify the next context. Typically, I would say it would
be easy to carry over the same contextual mindset from one environment to the
next being in the military environment as long as I have been. However, getting
entrained in this line of thinking does not help myself, or my organization
approach the respective domain from a more effective collaborative
decision-making perspective.
I was asked to take over
an ‘Operations and Intelligence’ (O&I) meeting as an adhoc request. While I
did not have the experience of running this meeting before, I had relied on
what I had witnessed, and well as any relative experience I was able to bring
to bear. My approach to this complicated process included a slow, methodical,
yet authoritative disposition that allowed me to direct the meeting, yet remain
approachable for others to chime in and offer matter of value. Focusing on
running the meeting by topic, and issues for discussion, left me with less than
normal time to listen and process external input from the group.
Immediately following
this meeting that felt empowering, I was again asked to join in on a Joint
Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Video Teleconference pertaining to Global Force Manpower
concerns. However, under these circumstances, I was to be a fly-on-the-wall more-less,
for the sake of situational awareness, and learning the concerns of the JCS on
this particular issue. Shifting from a complex domain (probe, sense, respond)
where the answer to successfully running the meeting was being divulged as it
emerged from the meeting itself, to a complicated domain (sense, analyze,
respond), was a rather easy and enjoyable experience for me. While there was
not much collaboration occurring for me during the JCS VTC, there was much
internal dialogue and planning for responding to my Non-Commissioned
Officer-in-Charge (NCOIC) with relative questions.
Another example of
cross-domain interaction was while I was at home discussing how to plan out a
trip with a male counterpart over the phone, all the while emotionally sharing
in my wife’s frustration with how she was feeling and how the children were
behaving, as well as relating to my children as they were interrupting my phone
conversation. While possibly seen as a mundane shift in focus from one group to
another, there can most certainly be some formidable consequences if handled
inappropriately. It was quite easily identifiable as to which approach to use
with my male friend over the phone; sense, organize, respond (simple domain),
my wife; sense, analyze, respond (complicated), and my children as they dropped
and broke a glass around their bare feet; act, sense, respond (chaotic) (Snowden
& Boone, 2007).
In all cases, I relied on
my intuition and gut instinct based on experience, and what I had learned from
that. Had I known about, and learned to integrate the Cynefin Framework, I may
have been more deliberate in identifying and approaching the O&I meeting
with an intention to probe. While I have yet to approach an environment to
identify the context deliberately for the sole purpose of sensing, and
integrating decision-making, I have begun to become aware of the framework, and
self-aware in the need and benefits of employing it intentionally and
deliberately as an optional tool to align behaviors and decisions with the
environmental context (Snowden
& Boone, 2007).
In critically analyzing
the Cynefin framework to show how it can provide an improved context for
decision making, I offer the following:
1) Each
domain offers an opportunity to make sense of the leader’s contextual
environment by understanding what the context consists of, how to approach it, and
other domains from which to shift to/from if appropriate.
2) Each
of the domains provide the leader with opportunities to explore an environment
without assumptions by removing entrained thinking and focusing on an
identifiable domain for behavior and decision making processes.
3) Offers
the leader a framework from which to share contextual nuances with their
organization if effort to collaboratively decide how best to work with one
another in the decision-making process.
4) Can
assist in Operational Risk Management by offering control elements in which
leaders can systematically assess the framework’s context of a given
environment.
5) Provides
the leader with another tool within systems thinking to prevent organizational,
cultural, political, and personal bias from entering into negotiations,
storytelling, and decision making.
References:
Snowden,
D. J., Boone, M. E. (2007, November). Decision making: A leader’s framework for
decision making. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making
Stout-Rostron,
S. (n.d.). Coaching leaders: Understanding complex environments-by dr. sunny
stout-rostron. Retrieved by http://www.wabccoaches.com/blog/coaching-leaders-understanding-complex-environments-dr-sunny-stoutrostron/
Norton,
D. (2016, February 2). What’s the “best” leadership style? Retrieved from http://www.wearecto2.com/blog/2016/1/1/contextual-leadership
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