Risk and Complexity

This blog was inspired by a question on Twitter. To many people familiar with categorization matrices, the system of systems perspective afforded by the Cynefin framework remains a bit of a mystery. The primary cause of this mystery is that, while Cynefin is a sense-making framework, many just continue to use this as a categorization matrix, something that is very familiar to anyone who has done any course or reading in any domain of management. Cynefin enables us to deal with complexity. In systems engineering or business management, it provides an alternate worldview, a way of interacting with our vociferous peers in a structured and meaningful way, a technique for better understanding events - the accompanying risks and opportunities - that impact our organization, and provides insights into new options for interventions required to resolve or mitigate their impact. This blog is just a primer where we begin to explore the fundamentals of the Cynefin framework. In thi...