As a leader, you have to make a lot of decisions. Big ones. Small ones. Decisions that can’t wait. And tricky ones. There’s always something that needs to be decided. Many of my clients are talking about how much harder it feels lately to make decisions they normally would feel at least reasonably confident about. Their felt sense is accurate—in today’s shifting landscape, many situations elude our typical decision-making approaches and preferred styles.
Leaders can be most effective when they match their decision-making approach to the context or landscape at hand. The Cynefin Framework, created by Dave Snowden, is a sense-making and decision-making framework that helps leaders identify and navigate in four types of contexts: Simple/Clear, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic.
In Simple/Clear domains, environments are knowable. Established rules of cause and effect determine outcomes. Following best practices, process, procedures, or rules provides the “right” answers.
In Complicated environments, order still exists yet leaders may not know the best answer or course of action themselves. Fortunately, information and experts are out there, and leaders can rely on those experts to access a range of good answers.
In Complexity, patterns will emerge with some time, space, and perspective. Leaders who thrive in such environments must step out of their comfort zones. An effective strategy is to conduct various “safe to fail” experiments and then act on what emerges. These leaders sense patterns over time, share results, and look for ways they might be wrong.
When Chaos rules, leaders need to get comfortable with imperfect information to make the best possible decision in the moment. They often have to take immediate action to simply “staunch the bleeding.” To navigate chaos, we gather diverse perspectives and update our understanding of fast-changing contexts.
In these uncertain times, Complex and Chaotic contexts predominate. These domains are unordered. You can’t easily discern cause and effect (except in hindsight.) Seeking right answers and best practices in these contexts is not useful.
How is your decision-making matching your current reality?
Practices
Reflect on your historical decision-making preferences and context:
- What kinds of decisions have you typically had to make in the past? Are there clear rules? Is there expertise available?
- What is your typical decision-making preference or style? Are you most comfortable when the rules are clear, when you have access to expert opinion, launching experiments and learning from them, or jumping into quick action?
Learn more about the Cynefin Framework for Decision-Making in the HBR article A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making
by David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone.
