Cynefin Basecamp
An entry-level programme designed to be taught by third parties
Contents
Overall learning objectives
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Preparation
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Structure
Session 1
Opening exercise
- Participants share an experience of what brought them to the course and their learning needs and plans for action
- In a reduced form of Silent listening each person is listed to in silence with participants writing down needs/ ideas and issues on individual hexies
- the hexies are then clustered and each cluster is given a name
- the exercise is used to illustrate the wider principles of Complex facilitation
The idea of a learning alliance is introduced
Systems
- A SYSTEM is a group of interacting or interrelated entities that form a coherent whole.
- A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning.
- An AGENT is anything which acts (has agency) within the system individual, group, story, idea etc.
Three types of system are then introduced
- Ordered where the system constrains agents to a level where they actions are predictable
- Chaotic were there are no effective constraints
- Complex where everything is entangled with most other things as the system itself changes over time and as a result of agent interaction
Ordered systems are defined by:
- predictable
- control levers (NEEDS EXPLANATION)
- repeatable
- aggregation
- the whole is the sum of parts
- long foresight
- constraints tend to contain
Chaotic systems are defined by:
- no effective constraints
- volatile
- not sustainable - always temporary
- no foresight
- nature is used as a positive with MassSense in Cynefin (this is a note not a characteristic)
Complex systems are defined by:
- constraints tend to connnext
- modulated and disposition no linear causality
- managed by influencing their change over time
- some foresight of dispositional state and probabilities
closing exercise
- What are your biggest insights from the pre-work and up to now?
- Which paradigms and worldviews do you think are no longer sufficient? Why?
- Is there anything you’d like to clarify?
Complexity
Joining up the dots used as an exercise together with the "Just because you can look back and connect the dots" quote from Boisot
Key characteristics
- complex systems are non-linear
- systems can be nested, overlap and interdependent
- have emergent properties
- dynamic, open systems that co-evolve with their environment
The metaphor of recipe & chef metaphor
There is a need for sense-making and a profound understanding of context
Session 2
Opening exercise
- The group is reminded of the Learning alliance
- Individuals reflect on the challenges of the Covid19 pandemic and list 5 actions and 5 reactions
- Combining in subgroups they work together to create 20-25 actions (each one on a yellow hexie) and reactions (each on on a blue hexie)
- This material is then used for the linear method to create Cynefin in two sections, firstly each froup places on the line and then thr groups combine to create Cynefin
Cynefin
Why use a contextualised framework?
- speed up decision making
- avoid unnecessary conflict
- create teaching databases WHAT IS THIS?
- showing different perspectives
Contextual v categorisation
Cynefin word defined as Place of our multiple belongings
Snowden definition of sense-making
What is Cynefin aout?
- sense-making for action, not only insight
- bounded applicability - ist things are useu within contet
- Descriptive self-awareness v providing answers
Definition of Anthro-complexity
Full Cynefin framework presented
Session 3
- Exercise on Cynefin (NEEDS DECRIPTION)
- constraint definition of Cyunefin
- Exercise - Constraint spotting in a children's playground
- Exercise - Constraint spotting in traffic
- Anthro-complexity heuristics for design and avoidance introduced
- HBR Table updated
Session 4
When constraints are incomplete or fail:
- Identify desire lines first through experimentation and probing WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
- Design for emergence
The following are then introduced at a high level for awareness only
Exercise on bounded applicability then asks what action or response is needed in each domain
- Clear - who should do what by when and how will success be measured
- Complicated - what group of experts or exploratory process will come to the right approach and at what cost over what time?
- Chaotic - how can we stabilised the situation to buy time and how do we use the Aporetic shift in Cynefin
Complex - how can we develop and monitor PARALLEL safe to fail probes (remember they may all fail and they are PROBES, not experiments. Seek out opportunities for exaptive or radical repurposing PLEASE NOTE SLIDE DOES NOT MATCH ARTICLE
Anthro-complexity heuristics for action introduced
Cynefin method eco system
Intervention
- Ritual dissent, Silent listening
- Story construction
- Vector theory of change
- probe design
- Trios & Entangled trios
Discovery
- Decision mapping, Knowledge mapping and ASHEN
- Constraint mapping
- Naive interviews
- Prompt question dsign
- Triopticon
Sense-making
Closing
Learning pathways shown and overall positioning
Final exercise
Take 5 minutes to reflect on your learnings over the last few days.
- What can you apply immediately and how will you do so?
- What will you do differently now?
- What questions remain?
Feed back to the big group.
