making sense of cynefin

The metaphor is that of an ecologist who uses engineering, rather than an engineer who sees the ecosystem as something to conquer.

The principle of Estuarine mapping is to understand the substrate’s affordances, and to that, we add assemblage and agency in the 3As framework. In this view, a strategy’s basic principle is to respond to or manipulate the substrate before taking on the risk of a major intervention. This means starting with how things are rather than an idealistic... See more

Another key point is that this approach works at all levels – you can apply it to a corporate change programme, a software project or a military strategy. In effect it allows (to use military terms) Grand Strategy and Tactics to be non-linear in nature, building both from the same core components and allowing real-time modification and alerts.

Estuarine mapping creates an affordance map and can thus derisk any conventional change programme or project. It tells you where you are and what you can’t change. It helps to understand the viability of change; if you want a metaphor, it is preparing the ground before you plant the crops. As such, it can be sold as a pre-process. Once familiar, it... See more

Dinosaurs’ feathers, the cerebellum, drug discovery, and microwave ovens are all examples of these. What happens after the exaptation is multiple adaptations. So when the first dinosaurs glide that then triggers adaptations in bone structure, muscles etc. etc. The exaptive moment changes the affordances of the system and creates new pathways

Estuarine is a complexity framework (Cynefin is a decision framework that recognises complexity)

The purpose of a typology is to see things from different perspectives not to allocate things to types – always a difficult thing to get across.