Cynefin : The preliminary questions
A start-up founder needs to decide on the scaling-up strategy to improve customer acquisition. A teacher faces the task of addressing behavioural issues among students. A company plans to disrupt the market with a ground-breaking invention it has just patented. An athlete strives to beat the personal best scores. A student burns the midnight oil to prepare for exams. After a dangerous set of waves misplace his location, a sailor on his boat desperately searches for land.
At first glance, these situations seem completely different and unrelated.
Is that correct?
Not quite.
Despite their vast differences, these scenarios share a common thread: they all involve decision-making skills. There are a lot of decision making frameworks that give us approaches to situations in structured forms and provide solutions based on decision making skills. We have, at some point in time, heard about CSD Matrix, Decision Matrix, SWOT analysis, Pareto (80/20) rule, Multi-Vote, Multi-Veto, Impact Effort Matrix, PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) and the list goes on and on.
In this blog post, we focus on the Cynefin framework. Why Cynefin framework? One of the most popular frameworks, it is particularly effective for navigating complex and uncertain environments. From a first principle point of view, any situation presented as a challenge will always have a relationship between the cause and the effect. To identify the linkages between them, we define the various degrees of relationships and the expected outputs.
How do you think it should be pronounced? No, it is not Sai-Ne-fin. Keep a guess ready, we’ll find that out later.
The 5 Cs of Cynefin
The Cynefin framework categorizes problems into five Contexts –
1. Clear
2. Complicated
3. Complex
4. Chaotic
5. Confusion
Let’s scan through each one of them
1. Clear (or Simple)
As the name suggests, the relationship between cause and effect is clear, simple and straightforward. Any such rudimentary activity should be done keeping the “best practices” in mind. The leader/responder follows the “sense-categorize-respond” method. The process here is crystal clear. If X happens, doing Y is the undisputed norm. These situations can be easily qualified as no-brainers.
Are you hungry? You need to eat. Is it raining? You need an umbrella. Is your phone battery low? You need to charge it. Is your car out of gas? You need to refuel. Is the light bulb burnt out? You need to replace it.
2. Complicated
This one is a tad more difficult than the clear context. Here, the relationship between cause and effect requires expertise and sound judgement. These situations need to be solved using the “good practices”. You may or may not have more than one right answer or solutions. The situation may be clear to you, but probably not for many people. The leader/responder follows the “sense-analyse-respond” method. The weighing on options becomes crucial sometimes. If X happens, analyse how doing Y may solve the problem. Check if doing Z (or both Y AND Z) is also an option or not.
Let’s say you catch a cold and get feverish. The instant response is to pop in a tablet. What if the temperature increases after an hour? What if you get rid of the cold but fever persists? In this situation, it is best calibrated by experts (a general physician who may prescribe tablets, and may also ask for blood tests for better diagnosis)
3. Complex
This is a notch higher than the complicated context. Here, the relationship between cause and effect will always be established in hindsight or retrospect. These situations need to be solved by applying “emergent practices”. You never knew whether there was a right solution in the first place or not. You can simply deduce as and when the situation keeps evolving with time. Any introduction of unpredictability or a flux can make the circumstances complex. The leader/responder follows the “probe-sense-respond” method.
A person has an accident and as a result gets severe back pain. A specialist team of doctors conduct a thorough examination and share their insights. The rheumatologist considers autoimmune conditions, the orthopaedic evaluates structural issues, and the physiotherapist assesses movement patterns. Together, they collaborate to identify the underlying cause of the pain to develop a comprehensive treatment plan. This multidisciplinary approach is targeting a long term relief for the patient. The pain might persist or evolve, the treatment will keep needing ongoing adjustments as per the reports. This uncertainty is a hallmark of complex situations, where solutions often emerge through continuous learning and adaptation.
4. Chaotic
A level up from complex, there is no clear relationship between the cause and effect. Events here qualify to be in the “too confusing to wait for any knowledge based response”. These conditions just need action, any sort of action to set things rolling. “Novel practices” need to be applied here. One cannot wait for patterns to emerge, but just provide a rapid response. The leader/responder HAS to “act-sense-respond”.
Imagine a fire breaks out in a house. The leader/responder(s) must act quickly, as every second counts. Should they wait for the firefighters to arrive, or take immediate action to rescue as many people as possible? In such chaotic situations, swift and decisive action is crucial. The responder may decide to use blankets, fire extinguishers, etc. The responder may also opt to wait if they sense that the act may potentially harm the victims more, rather than save them. Crisis management is crucial in such cases.
5. Confusion (or disorder)
No way can anyone get clarity on any cause or effect. This is the darkest setting where it is a catastrophe, and there is no solution in sight, no knowledge on which of the other domains can be applied. Here there is no direct scope for symphony, but pure cacophony. The way out is to accept the disorder, gather as much information as possible, break it down into sub-events or sub-sections and evaluate whether the sections can be assigned to one of the 4 entities and embrace the change.
Events like an initial stage of a pandemic cannot be classified under any of the 4 entities, thus creating a disordered environment. There needs to be a multi-pronged approach in containing the pandemic. One section is to find the cure for the infected, another section is to not let it spread, another section is to prevent it from recurring, etc and the list goes on. The plan should be to bring them down moving from higher degrees of chaos to lower degrees of complicated and eventually ending towards simple.
Application of the Cynefin framework in tech
Why would such a non technical framework be useful in tech, you ask?
The answer is simple. This framework helps in navigating complexity in tech. Due to the rating, upgrading and relegating nature of activities, we can create rule-sets prepared for complexities and benchmarks to measure the same. In today’s age where advanced technologies are growing fast, Cynefin framework provides guidance on data pre-processing or resource gathering, fine-tuning, removing biases, observability and monitoring, intuitive learning, experimentation, model training, etc.
Knowledge of this framework helps in adapting to newer approaches by encouraging planned actionable for each bucket, thus also helping in mitigating risks, anticipating potential issues, probing cyber-security threats, identifying patterns and preparing responses while being transparent about the grading of the events and the decisions devised to fix/improve them. Will I still call this framework non-technical? Nope!
Closing thoughts
The world is aligning to newer paradigms and having clarity on how to get clarity is of utmost importance. The applications of decision making are limitless, it is up to us on how we can leverage these principles to maximise our responses.
The Cynefin framework offers a structured approach to navigate these diverse challenges by categorizing them into distinct domains. While it definitely excels in complexity, other notable frameworks like Decision Trees or the OODA Loop might be better suited for more straightforward or iterative decision-making processes. The best framework often depends on the specific context and nature of the decision at hand. However, the Cynefin Framework’s unique ability to provide clarity in complex and chaotic situations makes it an invaluable tool for decision-makers across the globe.
And coming back to an old question, it is pronounced as Kuh-nev-in.