Clear & Complicated
Friends,
I hope all is well with you and yours.
Over the last few months – as I have been entirely open about – I have very much burned the proverbial candle from both ends. Although things have not slowed down much post Cannes, they are shifting to almost full-time writing. Beyond this newsletter, I am also working on the white paper on eCommerce together with James Hankins (which we recently discussed on the Uncensored CMO podcast), the book on the ABCDE framework that I am penning alongside Steve McCrone, and a couple of unannounced bits and pieces.
Without so much as a word of hyperbole, they are all shaping up to be the best material I have ever been a part of producing – and I cannot wait for you to read it.
But amid all the work, I have also been trying to move house and, well, even that which is meticulously designed and in mint condition is turning out to be extremely difficult to sell in the current housing market. We have had numerous prospective buyers come and have a look, yet the consensus appears to be to wait until this fall when, they assume in unison, the market will be even worse for us and better for them.
To be fair, I do not blame them, but it has been a rather frustrating experience not least since we have had to live at my parents’ place while the real-estate agent has been showing people around ours.
A week ago, we therefore decided enough was enough for the summer and moved back. And suddenly, I felt at home again.
Now, I know what you are thinking. Duh. Double duh. I was literally at home again.
But it was not the physical location as much as a sensation of somehow belonging. I will readily admit – particularly as I know that my wife is reading this – that I have lived there for far too long, but so many paths of my life have emerged from the place (even though I am only, at best, partially aware of them).
It is, one might say, my place of multiple belongings. Or what the Welsh would call Cynefin.
First Steps into the Sense-Making Framework
That a complexity-coherent sense-making framework would go by the same name is, of course, no accident; as its erudite creator Dave Snowden is quick to point out, he is Welsh, not English.
Unlike a lot strategy related work, which upon closer inspection turn out to hold little original thought, Cynefin is all Snowden. That is not to say that others have not helped him along the way (they have) or that his work does not have an exceptionally strong theoretical underpinning (it does), but it clearly comes out of him.
At its core, as long-time subscribers may remember, the framework is centered around the three systems that exist in nature – ordered, complex and chaotic – and it is there, today, that we will begin our deep dive into his work.
An ordered system is highly constrained and behavior is therefore predictable. This stands in stark contrast to chaotic systems which, conversely, lack effective constraints – behavior is completely random. Complex systems, lastly, are intricately interconnected. While behavior is uncertain, we can observe emergent patterns. In-between each system are phase shifts that demand or give off energy, much in the same way that water requires heat in order to boil and become steam.
The three systems create the foundation for the five Cynefin domains. As Chris Corrigan wrote in a very informative tour around the framework, it might be helpful to think of them as a slope, starting high in the bottom right and tapering counterclockwise around to the bottom left.
On the right side, there are the ordered domains – Clear and Complicated. In the former, cause and effect relationships are obvious and solutions to problems are more or less self-evident. This means that there is a definable best (i.e., better than all others) practice. In the latter, however, things get a bit more difficult, much as the name implies. While causal relationships exist, far from everyone can see them. Many approaches, all equally valid, may also solve the problem. Hence, there is not a single best practice, but many good ones.
The difference between the two can be, as Snowden does, illustrated by the use of a car. If you are driving down a road, you will clearly know what side to drive on; it is obvious. On the other hand, should your vehicle suddenly break down, chances are that a mechanic will be needed to diagnose the issue and fix it. In other words, one can say that Clear and Complicated are separated not by a phase shift (they are both ordered), but by a gradient of required know-how.
On the left side, the domains are what one might call unordered.
A Complex domain is demarcated not by causality but disposition, that is to say, it is dispositioned to exhibit a certain pattern although there is a high degree of uncertainty. The lack of causality (and thereby predictability) means that we have to test things out – probe the system – and practice is consequently emergent or exaptive (more on that next week).
In the Chaotic domain, lastly, cause and effect are entirely unclear. There are no patterns, and if we enter the domain accidentally (for example by over-constraining an ordered system; imagine not being able to drive on the other side of the road no matter the circumstance and a child suddenly running out in front of the car), we must act swiftly to stabilize it. From this follows two implications of particular note for anyone looking to innovate: a) practice will inherently be novel, and b) we can create temporary chaos by removing all constraints. It is for this reason, as Snowden likes to point out, that there is nothing quite like a crisis to drive innovation. We saw it during the pandemic and, as James Hankins and I have highlighted, we are about to see it in eCommerce cost mitigation.
The A and the C in the middle stand for aporetic and confused. Confused means that one is wrongly assuming to be in one domain when, in fact, one is in another (i.e., you are not getting it). Aporetic (from the Greek aporia), meanwhile, means an awareness of one’s lack of insight into the situation and a deliberate attempt to unconfuse oneself; it is an unresolved confusion.
A High Level of Recognition
Whenever I discuss Cynefin at strategic retreats and suchlike, participants are often quick to point out situations in their daily working lives that fall into any of the five domains. I would imagine that you, dear subscriber, already can identify a number of them too, just as I would imagine that you can think of instances where that assessment was different to those made by your colleagues and, even more likely, managers. Most of us have experienced having to break rules in order to get anything done – some experience it on a daily basis – or seeing experts brought in do more harm than good. The framework helps us understand why.
But I also know it is a lot to take in. Consequently, I will leave today’s introduction shallow; an amuse bouche to whet your appetite. Over the upcoming weeks, we will dig significantly deeper. As we shall see, beginning seven days from now, the implications for strategy will be profound.
Until then, have the loveliest of weekends.
Onwards and upwards,
JP
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