Cynefin: weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world
As part of its landmark Cynefin® at 21 celebrations, Cognitive Edge (now The Cynefin® Company) published Cynefin®: weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world. Purchase the book on our website.
Introduction
Launched as part of the Cynefin® at 21 celebrations, Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World provides an invaluable window into the origins and development of the framework, and into what the framework has meant to practitioners who have worked with it over the years.
For more on Cynefin®, see the introductory page on this wiki: Cynefin®
Abstract
The Cynefin® sense-making Framework, brainchild of innovative thinker Dave Snowden, has never been more needed. The Framework empowers leaders across organizations, governments, and local communities, to work with uncertainty – to navigate complexity, create resilience, and thrive. As Snowden says, “The Framework guides us to make sense of the world, so that we can skillfully act in it.” Come with us on the remarkable 21-year journey of Cynefin, a framework that enables people from all walks of life to improve – their situation, their work, their business, their relationships, and their environment.
Cynefin practitioners share their wisdom, applications, and experiences using the Framework, across healthcare, leadership facilitation, organizational behavior, safety, software development, strategy, and well-being. You’ll discover how to not only ‘ride the rapids of complexity,’ but find in so doing, grace, power, and inexplicable opportunity.
Other content contributions by Milica Begovic, Elmi Bester, Chris Bolton, Mary E. Boone, Greg Brougham, Anne Caspari & Johann Entz-von Zerssen, Chris Corrigan, Jennifer Garvey-Berger, Carolyn Coughlin, Keith Johnston & Jim Wicks, Friso Gosliga, Riva Greenberg & Boudewijn Bertsch, Lou Hayes Jr., Steve Holt, Trent Hone, Harold Jarche, Iwan Jenkins, Alicia Juarrero, Gabriel Jurj, Liz Keogh, Marion Kiely & Ellie Snowden, Robert Koch, Steve McCrone & Ian Snape, Anne McMurray, Anna Panagiotou, Ann Pendleton-Jullian, Vivienne (Viv) Read, Kendra Rosencrans, Peter Stanbridge, John Turner & Nigel Thurlow, Jesko von den Steinen, Juanita Uribe & Andrés Jiménez, Simon Wardley, Gary Wong & Michael Cheveldave, and Jules Yim.
— Dave Snowden & Friends, Cynefin® - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World by Dave Snowden, The Cynefin® Company
Excerpt
The open-source preview chapters of Weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world contain an extended set of reflections by Dave Snowden. These highlight Anthro-complexity's roots in the early days of knowledge management, the emergence of rival schools of sense-making, dialogues over decades of teaching, trans-disciplinary inputs and more.
Additional chapters include contributions from many who have been involved since the early days, including Mary E. Boone and Viv Read.
Cynefin beyond 2021
Although the framework has not significantly evolved, a 2022 landmark publication on Substrate-Independence Theory became "the first to depict scaffolding as the defining characteristic between domains" - see Substrate-Independence Theory.