Cynefin in practice

The domains in brief

Cynefin distinguishes five domains. None is better than another, but each calls for a different way of acting.

Clear

Cause and effect are obvious to everyone. Rules and fixed procedures work. Example: An expense claim. If you know the rule, you are done quickly.

Complicated

There is a right answer, but it takes expertise and analysis to find it. Example: A car won’t start, and the garage looks for the fault.

Complex

Many people influence each other. Cause and effect only make sense in hindsight, so small experiments help more than a big plan. Example: How a team finds its feet after a reorganisation.

Chaotic

There are no patterns to see and no time for analysis. Act and stabilise first, understand later. Example: A core system goes down in the middle of the working day.

Confused

The centre: you do not know which domain you are in, so you reach for the tool you know best. Example: A meeting where every department wants to solve the problem with its favourite method.

A note on names: many explainers still call the clear domain simple. Dave Snowden dropped that name in 2014; today it is called clear. The centre used to have another name too, disorder. If older sources use different names, they usually mean the same thing.

How we work with Cynefin

For us, Cynefin is not a grid to fill in but the starting point for deciding what to do next. We offer two methods for that today.

Affordance Mapping

A workshop that maps what your organisation’s people, tools and structures actually make possible, including the capabilities nobody designed but everyone relies on. You see what could be put to new use. On the term: affordance.

Safe-to-fail experiments

For whatever sits in the complex domain: several small interventions in parallel, each designed so that the damage stays small if it fails. What works gets amplified, what doesn’t gets stopped. More in the glossary under safe-to-fail experiment.

We work remotely or on site, with organisations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Would you rather start on your own first? Read Getting started with Cynefin.

Client work

Lasse Alexandros Diercks has used Cynefin in work with these companies, among others:

• CandleScience
• XING
• Fielmann

Your consultant: Lasse Alexandros Diercks

Exaptation is the consultancy of Lasse Alexandros Diercks. The background includes the Cynefin Foundations course, taken in 2019 with Cognitive Edge, now The Cynefin Company. It was a course, not a credential.

Exaptation is neither a partner nor a licensee of The Cynefin Company, nor accredited by it. We work independently with the framework as Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Company openly describe it.

Further reading

The best source is the Cynefin wiki by The Cynefin Company. There, the people behind the framework describe it and its methods themselves, freely available.