Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World Paperback – October 27, 2020

I am writing this review using my wife’s account. I have been reading about the Cynefin framework for the last four years. I even use it with my students in my book Swarm Learning. However, I wish I would have had this a year ago as this book filled in gaps for me. This book is a must have for anyone seeking to understand Dave’s framework. Fantastic job to all involved! I will be requiring my students to read this book. Here are a handful of takeaways from the book (that I personally enjoyed):In that context, another quote from Dylan Thomas comes to mind: “When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.” I’ve never been afraid to burn the odd bridge, or for that matter, a boat or two.That proved significant in directing my own thinking, and the idea that we take the meaning of meaning for granted, and this directed much of the development of Cynefin.namely, that the boundary between order and chaos is materially different from the others.For me, teaching is a vital part of research; it is where ideas come together.I’ve always used frameworks to force insight.Learning from the future, or information regarding how things can potentially evolve or shift in the future. (Contrast with feedback which learns from the past). “Feedforwards” are useful for on-going adjustments ahead of time.Jamie Schwandt

It's here at last! This book has been written by members of the Cynefin community and the Cognitive Edge team to celebrate Cynefin on its 21st birthday, and it provides an excellent up-to-date perspective on this important tool for leaders, managers and organizations of all types. We learn about how Cynefin has evolved as a framework over the years, becoming ever more useful as a way of making sense of the conditions and contexts in which we find ourselves. And we read reflections and applications from practitioners around the world explaining how they use it in their work.The book has more than forty contributors, and many of the chapters are short essays, easy to read, making it possible to dip in and out, following threads that catch your curiosity.This is a book that will remain at my side, with its useful perspectives that allow me to support my clients as they make sense of where they find themselves, and guiding examples that give us courage to try out some safe-to-fail experiments as we navigate through this complex, and at times, confusing world.

I first learned of Cynefin in 2007 through the article in HBR. I immediately saw its potential for enhancing strategic thinking and began to share it in my strategic thinking workshops and coaching.Cynefin provides strategic thinkers an excellent tool for sensing reality and making sense of it. Rather than the too-often idealized and oversimplified notion of strategy as vision, mission, etc., it helps strategists recognize the role emergence, and from that the importance of experimenting with safe-to-fail probes. In complex systems, it is better to think of strategy as something starts with sensing weak signals followed by crafting of better – sometimes novel – logics and resources. The core task for strategic thinkers is to find “the evolutionary potential in the present.” Strategy continues to emphasize the leadership of setting direction but also accepts the discomfort of ambiguity.This book has greatly enriched my practice of facilitation, coaching, and thought leadership. Long awaited and highly recommended!

Inspired, nuanced, and comprehensive inquiry into the principal concern of our times: Complexity that dips in and out of chaos and confusion.

You must read every paragraph multiple times to understand Cynefin. But you’ll feel even more peaceful and love every word and phrase completely when you do. They’re nectar for intellectual hunger. Extraordinary.

Cynefin, weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world is a book that should be on every CEO’s bookshelf. What makes this book so valuable is that is written by so many practitioners, giving the reader insight from multiple perspectives. As an agile coach it gives me more than the mechanics of a delivery method to use.

A collection of articles and stories - none particularly interesting or deep. No new insights into Cynefin to be made here. Word bloat. If you're a newbie and want to learn Cynefin, don't start here.

Dave Snowden's work has re-defined our understanding of the modern world and crafted the tools required to navigate the seas of complex adaptive systems that define the 21st Century. These are stories of how his work -and that of other courageous members of the Cynefin community- offer hope in the midst of our global sensemaking crisis.

Having personally Coached 100's of leaders throughout my career, I have recognized that one thing is very constant in the work place. That one thing is change. Change happens around us, to us and through us every moment of the day. When we add to this the different responses each person has to change and the entanglement between individuals experiencing change, things get complex.Something as small as a shift in one's perspective can have significant change on the whole team, initiative or organization. It may not be seen at first but it is quite often felt.This forces us to engage in change with our limbic brain (our feeling brain). Some of us will lean in, others will fight, flight or freeze. Make no mistake though - each of these is a response.The question is, are they the right responses?Do they serve us? Do they serve our organization? Will they help us move forward in alignment with our goals? Or are the changes and our responses so "different" that now our goals need revisiting?In the world of many complexities (and unknown unknowns) we need better tools to make sense of what is happening in the moment, we need a better way to invite & embrace diversity of thought and we need to execute with new / novel ideas.As a Cynefin Foundations and Advanced Practitioner I can tell you that without any hesitation that this book (and the practices that follow) will provide great insights and inspiration to those who have battled the ongoing pains of knowing that what has worked in the past is not going to work in the domain of rich complexity. There is another alternative. In fact there are many - and we need a everyone with a different perspective to help us see all that is or could be - beyond what we are already familiar with. This book shows us that!This is a fantastic primer for anyone seeking a better way to think different, act different and innovate from the emergent future (as it unfolds).

This is a great book. Its a kind of coming of age publication; a collection of tales about experiences of / with and about the usefulness of the Cynefin Framework, celebrating it's 21st birthday and paying homage to its creator Dave Snowden.At times it's difficult to comprehend, yet hard to put down (stop reading) - it's unusually compelling. And well worth staying the course as there is real gold in there in terms of making sense of your world and how to act in it.I have gone on to buy the Cynefin 101 course which is excellent - I see this as a whole new learning journey stretching out ahead of me. And I expect to reread this book at times along the way and no doubt understand the passages more and more each time.

A estrutura Cynefin® é uma estrutura de sense-making (dar sentido e compreensão) que apoia planejamento, tomada de decisões e gerenciamento de incertezas. Ela é adotada tanto no setor público quanto privado pelo mundo afora e proporciona alto nível de orientação para aqueles que procuram suporte prático na ampliação da percepção do estado atual da realidade. Leitura imperdível para gestores, pensadores e todos que querem "fazer diferente"!

Si vous refusez les analyses simplistes, ce livre est fait pour vous.Excellent point de départ pour comprendre Cynefin [Ken'vin] et avoir plusieurs cas d'usage dans des contextes très différents.

Last 30 years , I have many successes and failures. I went through the vignettes I was getting clarification why I failed or succeeded. Canafin framework truely provides platform to address VUCA world issues