Two days ago (apologies for skipping a day) I said that I would pick up on the role of archetypes in narrative work. I wrote a two-part article for ECO on the subject, featuring the work of Sonja and others in South Africa (where the technique was developed). The article hasn’t moved over to our […]
As I promised yesterday I want to pick up on the use of narrative in lessons learned, or more properly lessons learning processes. The idea here is that looking backward is all well and good but what really matters is what learning is happening in the here and now. The whole point of learning lessons […]
The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling were a key part of my formative years and I still refer to them on a regular basis. The name comes from the fact that they had to be told just so by Kipling to his daughter. They remain a delight to this day and there are whole […]
Problems of diversity, inclusion and associated conflict pervade modern society. To be honest they always did but we are more aware of them. Also, those excluded from power, subjected to epistemic injustice, prejudice, and often violence are standing up, challenging orthodoxies, and asking difficult questions. At the same time previous dominant groups can no longer […]
In the past 2 weeks, I have been called into a few urgent conference calls with partners and clients. As a response to the Corona virus, and it’s spread, many of them (and ourselves) included have had their projects impacted. In-person meetings, workshops and executive interviews have had to be cancelled, postponed and rethought. The […]
Many years ago now I worked with anthropologist Beth Meriam to design an approach to cultural mapping using SenseMaker®. The underlying paper can be read here. It has been the basis of many a project since then with several variations. In effect it has become the underlying Cynefin theory of culture in organisations and society. […]
The location of the Cynefin Retreat about Narrative in Organisations (Ireland, 18-21 March 2019) is specially chosen for its unique landscape and naturally rugged beauty. This is so as to facilitate learning, sense-making, the blending of art and science, and also to loosen constraints on the imagination with a view to releasing artistic creativity and ‘joining […]
Narrative has been an ever-present aspect my work over many decades now. I was lucky in that I initially entered the field in the pursuit of knowledge. Firstly when young through reading, listening and speaking; but then in the early days of IBM when I was trying to find ways to map knowledge in organisations. […]
I left the question of the role of the leader in story telling open in yesterday’s post. My contention remains that in anything involving change, actions generally speak louder than words. But there is a time and a place for story telling. However I want to make a distinction here before anecdotal enhancement and story […]
The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. We are the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
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