Knowledge Management: Cynefin to Understand

Knowledge Management: Cynefin

To understand the comparatively new concept, we must first understand what this means. 'Cynefin' is a word originally Welsh, and when translated into English it means habitat or place. Yet this does not provide the full connotations and should be understood to be the place where all our identities live. What this means is that we all have different identities through the culture that we belong to, religious beliefs, geographic location and tribal origin, etc. The implications of all these belongings are often not fully understood, yet they are a great influence on our development and growth. The word 'Cynefin' tells us that all our interactions are based on our previous experiences and these experiences come from two origins - some are directly experienced by the individual while others are experiences that the individual hears about and believes. (Welcome: The Cynefin Centre)

Analysis:

The center of all the action in this matter is now at the Cynefin Centre. This is an international network to focus on the application of this complex science for management and organizational practice. The Centre was earlier a part of IBM but separated in July 2004. The center is housed within a network of academic institutions. Established in 2002, Cynefin was the first such management research centre in Europe. Then there was an agreement between Cardiff University and IBM to enable the world-class Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity to be based at Cardiff Business School. This was not a permanent arrangement and the centre was to move to the University later in the year, and Mr. Snowden was to continue as director. The centre offered an opportunity to address many of the major business and social issues that directly affected the future of Wales. (Cardiff Business School and IBM establish world-class management centre at Cardiff University)

The concentration of the Cynefin Centre is making a distinction between ordered and unordered systems, and from that "the consequent recognition that systems with fundamentally different qualities require the application of contextually differentiated methods for both diagnosis and intervention." (CompleXimple Bits&Pieces: Cynefin Centre) The organizational structure and methods used by the Cynefin Centre are based on the concepts of social complexity. There are three interlinked focus areas of SOCIAL COMPLEXITY which is in helping the establishment of this new discipline, and application of this complexity science to human systems; OPEN SOURCE which is starting an open source movement for consultancy practice and for theories focused on social complexity; and DISTRIBUTED RESEARCH or the development of trans-disciplinary research focused on participation, emergence and co-evolution. (CompleXimple Bits&Pieces: Cynefin Centre)

However, for the Cynefin mission to be achieved there has to be a concentration on a three stage life cycle which are focused on three application areas of SENSE MAKING which necessitates the distinguishing between various kinds of system and thus permits the use of appropriate application of methods and tools; NETWORKS which involve understanding issues related to human identity and interaction with them in their natural state and the starting of new networks and NARRATIVE or gathering, interpreting, representing and creating narrative types of human interaction. Dave Snowden is the founder and Director of the Centre. Christian Hauck is also a member of the Centre, and that gives it a link with Novartis. (CompleXimple Bits&Pieces: Cynefin Centre) This is the present position of the Cynefin concept in the world.

Uses of Cynefin:

Once a person gets some insights into the methods of using narrative techniques to break through or improve our natural pattern matching, it can help the individual operate as a better manager. Cynefin is a method so as to categorize domains as order, and understand complex situations and chaos within an organization. This helps in identifying methods to create a phase shift from one to another. Every individual gets into situations in organizations where they have to understand values and power structures quickly, and then Cynefin is a possible usage method. (Agile Experience: Cynefin) Even before the separation during the summer of 2003 Cynefin, were working in partnership with Asken Ltd. And received a commission from Gwynedd Council to evaluate the implications of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. They were to be the advisors on the benefits and costs of different approaches to implementation of the Act.

Each of the five parts of the Act - "access to open countryside, public rights of way and road traffic, nature conservation and wildlife protection, areas of outstanding natural beauty and miscellaneous and supplementary" - was evaluated in terms of their likely impact on the Council's resources. Another evaluation done by Cynefin is concerning a practical education initiative in the counties of Gwynedd and Anglesey. The initiative was in response to recent actions of the National Assembly for Wales for extending education so that sustainable development is achieved. The scheme is called 'The Green Schools Scheme' and targets to provide education and awareness concerning sustainable development, as well as helping school children to target the reasons rather then the effects of environmental damage. (Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 - Obligations and Opportunities)

Gwynedd countryside access network is a sustainable tourism initiative and Cynefin produced a report making clear the opportunities that exist for stimulating economic growth through the further development, promotion and sustainable management of public rights of way in Gwynedd. The report showed in monetary terms the benefits that would be received to the area in terms of increased visitor expenditure, job creation and job retention in that particular market segment. The organization also worked with Sustrans to develop a strategic cycle route network in the part of Northern Snowdonia. The study made it clear that a cycle network could be fully integrated along with public transport, could be related to popular destinations and vie it with existing facilities.

The economic benefit of the network was also evaluated and reported. The report provided detailed maps and specifications which were prepared after carrying out an extensive survey of the study area. The study is to be used as a basis for promoting further cycle access. Cynefin has been made responsible for the ecological surveying and environmental monitoring along the length of the Welsh Highland Railway, which is now being restored between Caernarfon and Porthmadog. On the sides of the railway are particular habitats for wildlife, various statutorily protected species and working farms. The planners, landscape designers and environmental scientists of the organization work together with the railway engineers and landowners, as well as the planning and other statutory bodies, to ensure the work being carried out fits well into the scenic natural environment on the sides of the route. (Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 - Obligations and Opportunities) Thus one can reasonably say that the organization is now functioning as a provider for maintenance of environment in Wales, which was where the concept first started.

The basic beliefs in Cynefin:

The attempt of this method comes from the belief that whatever we perceive is organized into patterns and these patterns are often what seem to us to be the deciders of our destiny. Thus the concepts among us are something for which the perceivers, we are largely responsible. Since we are the perceivers we select from all the stimuli that fall on our senses only those which interest us. Selection patterns are based on our interests and these are governed by a pattern- making tendency, which is also called a schema. Today there is a chaos of shifting impressions and each and every one of us constructs a stable world in which all objects have recognizable shapes, are located in depth and have permanence. This is required by us and as time goes on and experience builds up, we make more and more development of our systems of labels. Thus a conservative bias is built in and this is what gives us confidence to face the world. (Complex Knowledge: The emergence of Contingent Complexity)

This is clearly a certain philosophy of looking at the world around us and probably this philosophy makes the human beings more responsible. In other cases often all matters are left to the desires of God, and the human beliefs are viewed to be the real objects. In this concept there are clear differences between objects and their concepts in the human mind. In simple cases, the objectives of business is felt to be the maximization of profit without consideration of the costs to society as the costs to society do not come out of the businessman's pocket. This is clearly an example of an individual look at the world.

The development of Cynefin:

The developers of Cynefin started working in the areas of knowledge management, cultural change and community dynamics, then extended into product development, market creation and branding, and later had started working more and more in the field of national and organizational strategy. There were different sources of funds for this work. Some had been directly funded by the U.S. government via DARPA -- Defense Advanced Research Project Agency and by other government agencies, particularly Singapore who were also interested in new approaches which support policy-making. In their analysis they used the Cynefin framework for sense-making. This started with disputing the universality of three basic assumptions that control practices and to a lesser extent theories of decision-making and policy formulation in organizations. (The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world)

The earlier theories have certain basic assumptions. The first among these are the assumption of order. This assumes that there are underlying relations between cause and effect in all human communications and markets, all of which are capable of being found and separately verified. As a result of these assumptions, it was possible to lay down prescriptive and predictive models and design methods to permit us to attain goals. This implied that if one understood or determined any causal links in past behavior, then it would permit the person to define "best practice" for future behavior. This clearly implied that there is always a right or ideal way of doing things. The second theory was the assumption of rational choice. This means that when faced with a choice between one or more alternatives, humans have to make a "rational" decision on the basis of only their understanding of the choices to minimize pain or maximize pleasure.

When this concept is extended to groups, individual and collective behavior can be managed through the manipulation of pain or pleasure outcomes and through information that will make those consequences evident. The third basic assumption was one of intentional capability. What this means is that when there is an acquisition of capability it is also points to an intention to use that capability. After this, the actions from competitors, populations, nation states, communities, or any other groups that are under consideration are due to the original intentional behavior. In effect, the assumption is that every "blink" of eyes that we see are "winks" and we should act accordingly. For our own actions we are willing to understand that that we do things by accident, but assume that others do things deliberately. (The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world)

All organizations also must know what they have to do when changes will come. The training in this aspect is most important for the deciding group. Often it is sufficient to take only the leadership of the organization into a chaotic environment. It is important for them to know that the environment is chaotic for humans manage boundary transitions through rituals that make them aware of the transition, and will become equally aware of their new roles, responsibility and social mores associated with the new space that they will meet. (Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self-Awareness)

Chaos is not unusual. In Enuma Elish, which is the Babylonian epic of creation, the world began under the reign of Tiamat, or the mother of all things. In Tiamat's world, at that time, "none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained." Then there were a few generations, and Tiamat's god-children appointed a champion in order to seize control of the world. The god-child of Tiamat, Marduk not only defeated the ancestor, but "split her up like a flat fish into two halves" and those halves became heaven and earth. This may be viewed as a fight between order and disorder and thus it is clear that the forces of order and chaos existed with each other throughout ancient times. All these attitudes changed when the concept of ordered science came and caused a massive growth in human knowledge. (The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world)

The effects were spread over many disciplines. As an example, sociology grew out of philosophy and this was an attempt to create a "science of society" that could duplicate the advances being made in physics and biology through a process of systematic observation and causal explanation. It was argued by many philosophers of that time that it was theoretically possible to discover laws similar to those of physics that would provide the explanation of the behavior of people in societies. The growth of technology and the dominance of engineering-based approaches started from the need for automation. For the implementation of processes of automation and increases in scalability there was the requirement for order. In popular literature, the belief that all things can be known was the general feeling and this feeling continued well into the twentieth century.

In the meantime there was the development of management science, and that started from stopwatch-carrying Taylor to business process reengineering. This also carried a firm belief that systems were ordered and it would take just some time and resources before the relationships between cause and effect could be discovered. This can be seen in the case study approach of many M.B.A. programs and the demand for precise recommendations from policy teams and external consultants. These also reflect the underlying concept of universal order. This leads to good leadership being linked to certain competences that can be noted and identified, and then replicated in other situations. The desire for order even leads people to work in totally abhorrent working conditions and under the control of political structures simply to avoid "chaos" coming into the society. This was the reason that helped dictators from Pisistratus to Hitler. (The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world)

All of these approaches and perceptions do not take into account of situations in which the lack of order is not due to poor investigation, less of resources, or lack of understanding, but is the system within the case and this is not necessarily harmful. On the other hand a different type of order has been found in many natural phenomena. An example is that bird-flocking behavior can be simulated on a computer by means of three simple rules. Another is that termites produce elegant nests by means of the operation of simple behaviors which are caused by chemical traces and even that every snowflake has a unique pattern arising from the interactions of water particles during freezing. This changes some of our earlier concepts through establishing that patterns for forms are not controlled by a directing intelligence, but form on their own. This is a new science - a science of complexity that comes from these findings. These observations are interdisciplinary and touch fields from mathematics to evolution to economics to meteorology to telecommunications. (The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world)

Today the sheer number of informal and semi-formal communities in an organization is very large so as to allow formal management of all the different communities. Apart from this, the informal, complex space also contains a lot of knowledge that is not required to be an organizational asset. The biggest difficulty is that even if we knew what we should know, we cannot find out in advance what we have to know from within the organization, and what is even more important when we need to know it. At the same time, development of this knowledge is important for this may help us on certain occasions. (Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self-Awareness)

It is difficult to create a situation of true free will and complex intentionality as is seen in "retrospective elaboration, duplicity, groupthink, rumor, self-deception, manipulation, surprise, confusion, internal conflict, stress, changes in the meanings of previously unambiguous messages, the deliberate creation of ambiguity, inadvertent disclosure, charisma, cults, and pathologies." (The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world) It is more difficult within a rule-based society. Social simulations have earlier addressed issues like reputation, cooperation, lying, gossip and trust. But the issues are always within an artificial framework and that allows only limited numbers of options and considers limited numbers of phenomena operating at once. On the other hand, in real life, all decision makers know that however much they might like things to be ordered, there are also circumstances in which "cultural factors," "inspired leadership," "gut feel," and other complex factors are dominant factors in decision making. All of these are methods of decision making which arise through the interaction of various factors present in space and time. (The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world)

When the views are taken without the viewing glasses of order, such patterns can be seen, and new ways of thinking can come out. In fact, learning to recognize and appreciate the lack of order frees our thinking because we can stop applying methods designed for order and instead focus on legitimate methods that work well in situations which do not correspond to our concept of order. There is the case of a group of marines taken to the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1995 to be taught and then play with simulators of the trading environment. Naturally the traders won every game. The surprising part of it is that when the traders returned the visit to the Marine Corp's base in Quantico and played war games against the marines, they still won, again. It has to be understood that the traders were skilled at spotting patterns and intervening in a manner to use those patterns in their own favor. The Marines had been trained to collect and analyze data and then make rational decisions based on the 'logic'. When the environment is dynamic and constantly changing, it is easier to think of lack of order but not to assume order. This is what leads us to the concept of Cynefin. (The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world)