From: jimruttshow8596
Dave Snowden, the creator of the Cynefin framework, has extensively explored the intersection of complexity science and practical organizational decision making. His work emphasizes the critical role of narratives and systematic journaling, especially during times of crisis.
Understanding Crisis and Complexity
A crisis is understood not merely as a complicated problem but as a situation within a complex adaptive system. Unlike complicated systems that can be unfolded and re-folded without changing, complex systems are “entangled,” constantly shifting, and changing [00:03:59]. In such systems, there is no linear material causality, but rather “dispositionality” that can be modulated [00:06:09]. Complex systems are inherently open and not subject to the second law of thermodynamics at their system level [01:12:04], [01:12:06].
Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the need for systems that can handle “unknowable unknowns”—things that cannot be predicted until they actually happen [00:21:33], [00:21:40]. Traditional management approaches, focused on scientific management and rigid processes, often fail in these non-stationary situations because they attempt to remove human judgment and assume a Gaussian distribution of events, rather than the fat-tail distributions common in complex systems [00:16:47], [00:16:57], [00:17:05].
The Power of Narrative in Human Systems
Snowden argues that narrative has a “material reality in human systems” [01:13:28]. These narratives, when they form “assemblages,” create attractors that influence behavior and make certain outcomes more probable [01:13:35], [01:13:38]. Changing a culture or system isn’t about imposing a new one, but about subtly shifting the current one or finding “lines of flight” – leverage points that break the existing attractor mechanisms [01:14:08], [01:14:15].
To effectively manage complex systems, particularly during a crisis, the focus must be on three manageable aspects:
- Boundary conditions [01:14:31]
- Catalysts for attractors [01:14:34]
- Allocation of energy (used as a catch-all for resources and attention) [01:14:36], [01:26:01], [01:26:08]
Sense-Making with Narratives
Snowden’s tool, SenseMaker, facilitates mass generation of narratives [01:13:12]. This involves gathering “micro scenarios” or stories from the workforce, which can then be used to map the organization’s current state and what is perceived as possible next [01:10:18], [01:10:20], [01:10:29], [01:10:31]. This approach creates “narrative topographies” that act as fitness landscapes, indicating where a system can realistically go next, rather than where a strategic plan dictates it should go [01:11:09], [01:11:16], [01:11:18].
A key aspect of this is collecting data at the “right level of granularity” [00:29:57], [00:30:53], [01:13:14]. For human systems, this often means collecting raw, uninterpreted stories directly from individuals, such as those told by community members to children ethnographers [00:23:08], [00:33:34], [01:04:42]. This raw, “finely grain” data provides continuous weak signals, which are crucial for timely responses in non-stationary environments [00:43:03], [00:43:10], [00:43:14], [01:14:35].
The Role of Journaling: Gamba
A critical practice in crisis management is “comprehensive journaling,” or “Gamba,” a term derived from Japanese manufacturing concepts [00:39:54], [00:39:58]. This involves individuals continuously documenting their experiences and observations.
Benefits of Journaling
- Real-time data: Journaling provides better, real-time data from multiple “agents” compared to traditional, often delayed, reporting [00:40:21].
- Reduced administrative burden: It can significantly cut down on the administrative cost of traditional bureaucracy by eliminating the need for separate reports [00:18:11], [00:40:31], [00:42:08].
- Enhanced engagement: By giving people time back and allowing them to contribute continuously, journaling can increase employee engagement [00:40:39], [00:48:08].
- Informal networks: It builds a functional network that can be activated for extraordinary needs, creating a resource for real-time questions [00:40:46], [00:43:52], [00:43:57].
- Lead indicators: In uncertain conditions, attitudes measured through stories are crucial lead indicators, being highly volatile but quickly reflecting changes [00:23:52], [00:23:58], [00:24:04].
- Early signal detection: By collecting continuous, finely grained data, organizations can detect weak signals of emerging problems earlier, allowing for more agile responses [00:43:00], [00:43:03].
- Lessons Learning: Journaling supports “lessons learning” (continuous, real-time insights) rather than “lessons learned” (post-hoc, often distorted recollections) [00:44:08], [00:44:11].
- Addressing microaggressions/fraud: Encrypted journaling can capture patterns of sensitive issues like microaggressions or fraud that individuals might not formally report due to fear of secondary abuse. This allows for anticipatory alerts based on aggregated patterns [00:41:31], [00:41:47], [00:41:51].
- Improving decision making: The combination of journaling and “entangled trios” (informal networks of roles) allows people to make quicker decisions in the field with better auditability, enhancing resilience [00:48:14], [00:48:21], [00:48:27].
Granularity and Abstraction
Journaling captures data at a granular level, enabling emergent narratives and allowing for “acceptation” – the repurposing of existing knowledge or technology for novel uses, akin to an adaptation in evolutionary biology [00:30:15], [00:32:56], [01:00:27], [01:00:51]. For example, a technology designed for one purpose might be acceptated for an entirely different one, as seen with a lighting company’s “urine saturated staircase” technology repurposed for decorative swimming pool lights [00:32:44], [01:00:38], [01:02:45]. This process involves associating things through abstraction rather than concrete definitions [01:01:51].
When collecting data, the “right level of granularity” means breaking down information until there is agreement on its placement or interpretation, which humans are surprisingly adept at doing when asked the right questions [00:31:15], [00:32:08], [00:32:24]. By presenting “metadata” structures before raw data, people are forced to see patterns and make novel connections, leading to radical changes they might not otherwise consider [01:04:00], [01:04:49].
Strategic Interventions and Option-Increasing Decisions
In a crisis, leadership must act decisively to stabilize the situation, not necessarily to solve the problem directly, but to create more options for others to solve them [00:34:30], [00:34:37], [00:34:41]. This is about making “option-increasing decisions” that preserve optionality in the future, rather than decisive decisions that may limit choices [00:35:07], [00:35:16]. This requires “anticipatory thinking” – taking small actions now that provide more options and reduce future necessary actions [00:35:58], [00:36:00].
Strategic interventions start by mapping the present, not a predetermined future state, and identifying where the system can go next [01:09:50], [01:10:09], [01:10:10]. By using narrative landscapes, organizations can determine “what can I do tomorrow to create more stories like these and fewer stories like those” [01:12:38]. This “Vector theory of change” allows for fractal representations of the narrative landscape, meaning that individuals at different levels of an organization can view the same source data, aggregated to their level of competence to act, fostering alignment without rigid top-down control [01:12:47], [01:13:12], [01:13:20].
This approach aligns with Constructor Theory, which focuses on enumerating what is impossible, rather than defining what is doable [01:17:14]. By mapping constraints onto an “energy cost of change” versus “time to change” grid, organizations can identify a “counterfactual line” representing what cannot be changed [01:18:27], [01:18:32], [01:18:41], [01:18:49]. The strategy then becomes about making micro-actions to change the “dispositionality” of the system, increasing the probability of desired outcomes by shifting energy costs and time gradients [01:19:26], [01:19:29], [01:19:37]. This dispositional management, rather than outcome management, is seen as a “complexity alternative to Porter’s five forces” for strategy [01:21:32], [01:21:25].
Ultimately, the goal is to make “the energy cost of virtue less than the energy cost of sin” [01:20:12], allowing for many small, parallel actions, which afford more failure and thus more learning, enabling the “steering of the ship” through complexity [01:14:45], [01:14:49], [01:14:52].