Cynefin Framework

David J. Snowden (b. 1954), a Welsh management scientist, created the Cynefin framework at IBM's Institute for Knowledge Management and founded the Cynefin Centre (later Cognitive Edge / The Cynefin Co.) to develop it. His 2007 HBR article with Mary E. Boone brought sensemaking-based decision frameworks to a mass leadership audience and won the Academy of Management's outstanding practitioner-oriented publication award.

Snowden's Cynefin framework gives leaders a sensemaking device: different domains demand different responses — best practice in clear contexts, experts in complicated ones, safe-to-fail probes in complexity, immediate action in chaos.

The era: Distributed & Complex — Distributed, dispersed, interdependent, embedded in interaction; leadership as learning; global competencies; combine all theories.

Clear, complicated, complex, chaotic — sense the domain, then act.

Where this work feeds the Open Sky frameworks.

Fellow travelers on these threads:

• Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader's framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68–76. Google Scholar ↗
• Kurtz, C. F., & Snowden, D. J. (2003). The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Systems Journal, 42(3), 462–483. Google Scholar ↗