Developed by Dave Snowden at IBM (Cynefin, a Sense of Time and Place, 2000), set out in full with Cynthia F. Kurtz (The New Dynamics of Strategy, 2003), and brought to managers with Mary E. Boone (A Leader's Framework for Decision Making, 2007).
Sorts a situation by how cause and effect behave (clear, complicated, complex, chaotic, or confused) and matches the way of deciding to the domain.
When to reach for it
When a team is applying best practice to something unpredictable, or endless analysis to an emergency, and needs to name the kind of situation it faces.
How it runs
- Name the situation that needs a decision.
- Ask whether cause and effect are obvious, knowable, retrospective, or absent.
- If unsure, treat it as confusion and make sense of it first.
- Match the approach: best practice, expertise, experiments, or fast action.
- Watch for the situation shifting domains.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- Cynefin, a Sense of Time and Place, Knowledge Horizons, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000
- The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-Making in a Complex and Complicated World, IBM Systems Journal 42(3), 2003
- A Leader's Framework for Decision Making, Harvard Business Review, 2007