Elevated decision making: The Cynefin Framework
The decision domains
We continuously make decisions: from getting out of bed, to choosing what to eat at breakfast and what clothes you’ll wear that day. Both your workday as leisure time are filled with 100s of these decisional moments. Some of them require deep thought while others are made spontaneously. If you look at it, the amount of decisions we make seems frightening at times, especially the complex ones. Luckily we have mental frameworks that can guide us in the process. Let’s dive in!
“The wrap”
Decision making
”The gift”
A new mental framework
One of the frameworks we particularly like at The Agile Mindset is Cynefin, pronounced kuh-nev-in. It is a Welsh word meaning habitat, a system or domain in which you naturally belong and thrive. The domain describes the relation between cause and effect of your decision and it dictates the type of decision that is most appropriate. If you match the type of your decision with the domain in which it is made you’ll notice, as matter of speaking, that the decision feels natural.
Decision domains
At its base, Cynefin describes three domains: clear, complex and chaotic. In the ordered domain, there is a clear and identifiable relationship between cause and effect. This is important: it allows us to predict outcomes, e.g. predict the future. The ordered domain in itself also can be split up into 2 systems: complicated and clear. In both of them there is a relationship between cause and effect: in the complicated domain you’ll just have to do a little bit more work, e.g. analysis, to determine the exact relation.
In the complex and chaotic domains that relationship is not identifiable. The difference between the two is that in the former you can deduce the relationship between cause and effect afterwards: it makes sense after the facts. Whereas the latter has no relation whatsoever between cause and effect.
Decision types
Let’s have a look at which type of decisions you want to make if you know in what decision domain you’re operating. A practical example of the clear domain is deciding which side of the lane you should choose to drive in in a certain Country. In Belgium, people drive on the right side of the road. We all see and know this, we can categorise it and know that the only good decision is to also drive at the right side of the road. These types of decisions are also known as best practices: we can repeat them with confidence that it will lead to the outcome we desire.
Best practices turn into good practices when we’re in the complicated domain. There is still a relationship between cause and effect, but it already requires some expertise to find out what the best decision to make is. Compare it to a surgeon who needs to find the best way to perform surgery. There might be several ways to go forward, but a good surgeon will know what to decide based on their expertise and experience. It’s not necessarily the best approach for another surgeon.
Moving on to the complex domain where no upfront relationship between cause and effect is known. In the complex domain, there are so many variables you don’t know and cannot control that experience and expertise alone will not help you. Each situation is unique in its kind. Most of creative work, like finding product-market fit for a new product, adheres to this domain. By carefully performing small experiments, seeing what effect these have and adapting accordingly, you thread along step by step. This is the domain of emerging practices. Intuition can help accelerate this proces, but be wary of biases.
Last, but not least, there is the chaotic domain. Again, no relationship between cause and effect, but also no time to lose with deliberate small experiments.On 9/11, the major of New York had to act swiftly, not knowing what the result would be and creating novel practices along the way.
With these basics, you have a blunt tool to analyse the decision domain you find yourself in. Cynefin provides us with a lens to observe the type of problem we’re faced with: known knowns, known unknowns or the worsts, unknown unknowns.
Once you know the right domain, you know what type your decision should be: leverage experience by choosing the best practice or one of many good practices, or thread the unknown by forming emerging practices or creating novel practices.
Lastly, it is possible to shape your environment and influence your decision domain, something we look forward to exploring with you in our next blog post in this series.
Read More:
https://thecynefin.co/about-us/about-cynefin-framework/
https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making