Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making Into the Fabric of Our World ED02

Order – To accommodate the disconnect between reality (ontology: how things are), perception (phenomenology: how we perceive things), and knowledge (epistemology: how we know things) in human systems,

“Cynefin is a Welsh word with no direct equivalent in English. As a noun, it is translated as habitat,

Cynefin says that there is nothing wrong with order, if you can achieve it. This is the principle of ‘bounded applicability,’ different things work or don’t work in different domains.

“Designing rules assumes an ordered universe in which we can predict the outcome of a defined action and in which we can know the range of possible circumstances. Heuristics, on the other hand, provide more general guidance; they have a level of ambiguity which makes them more adaptable.

Constraint In plain English, a constraint is often thought of as a limitation or restriction. However, in the Cynefin use of the term, a constraint refers to how we contain, couple, and link things. A constraint can therefore also be enabling, as much as limiting.

with all of this flux, language remains understandable to us. It remains coherent as long as the messiness is bounded by the rules or principles of grammar. In this way, language is an excellent example of messy coherence, or in other words coherent heterogeneity. We can accommodate differences within boundaries that ensure coherence. (For another

How do we move forward with an acute awareness that the ground is shifting as we go?

There are different types of practice in each of the Cynefin domains including the liminal areas. In the Complex domain practice is ‘exaptive,’ or focused on radical re-purposing of existing capability. In the Complicated domain we apply ‘good practice,’ in Clear we have the only legitimate application of ‘best practice,’ In the liminal area betwee

Methods, tools, and frameworks, however, are not universally applicable; there are no silver bullets. We articulate this in Cynefin with the term ‘bounded applicability’ i.e., we believe that most things are useful within certain boundaries.

Many of our methods are scaffolds, they create temporary structures within which new meanings can emerge.