St David’s 2024: 1/5 Frameworks

So, it is time for my annual update on frameworks and methods.  Last year, I switched from the Cynefin Framework to Estuarine mapping.  In part because most of the tensions in the Cynefin Framework had been resolved, and it was time to move on.  Cynefin is a decision support framework that recognises complexity theory, while Estuarine is a full-on complexity framework.  The 2022 post started with multiple links to past posts to help people navigate the development of Cynefin and related work.  It also referenced my spending the day in the Black Mountains, which I repeated this year.   It was a challenging walk, often walking into driving snow and plunging up the knee and beyond in snow drifts, not knowing if rock, bog or a pothole awaited.  Chris Bolton took the banner picture and showed me making progress to the base of Twmpa, from which we would turn right and struggle down; what in summer is a delightful river path, but today was anything but.

The walk itself was poignant as it was the 20th Anniversary of my mother’s death, ten days after my father died and the point at which life in IBM was getting unsustainable, although they did give me two months off on compassionate leave.  When I came back, I hit fifty, so we managed a compromise on early retirement, and I moved on to set up Cognitive Edge about a year later.   I’m approaching the grand old age of seventy in a month. I will celebrate the build-up in the Lake District, hoping my knees and ankle hold up to my continuing my second Wainwright challenge (45 days this time, not 40 as reported when I completed the first just after my 68th).  Then, on the evening of my birthday, the Helsinki-Berlin trip, one day at home,  then to Washington.  I will be in Panama and Brazil in a week, so not much has changed except the development of my colleagues and network members to the point where frameworks, methods, and software are no longer dependent on me.

Getting to the point

So this time last year, I planned to utilise the St David’s Day  2024 and 2025 posts to stabilise Estuarine. But its development has done a lot faster than I thought it would.  In addition, many things (theory and practice)  have come together this year. I’ve managed to get the language in common and show how various frameworks and methods fit together.  I’ve gone public a couple of times with the anthro-complexity on one slide theme, and the recent posting of that by the team on social media got more attention than anything else in our history.  So, given all of that, I decided this year was the time to work that through in more detail and play around with different representations.  This isn’t an end, by the way, but a convergence.  Even with Cynefin, there is more to come.  I plan to bring the domain frameworks back into play soon.

So, in this opening post, I want to summarise what is included, with some references to past material that you might want to read in advance.  I will then update that and, at the end, try to put it all together in one picture.  It may take a week or so, and  I may interpret it with other posts, but I’m not sure how long and how many, hence the temporary use of n in the title.  I may have to amend this opening post if I have missed anything.

I’ve previously written about the differences between frameworks,  models, manifestos, etc.  I would add that any framework in use can create models, and those models may be coherent or incoherent.  I do not buy into the common misinterpretation of Box on the rightness or wrongness of models.  His use is OK but not widespread enough to avoid scrutiny.

So, frameworks for me come in two forms: pictures that can be drawn on the back of a tablecloth from memory or come in mnemonic form.  The goal is to break the dependency on over-complicated consultancy or academic-driven frameworks and create things that can be used with minimal training.

So here is the list of frameworks I intend to cover:

1. The Cynefin Framework, last updated in March 2022, and the field book, which expands on its use and covers other material in this list, is now about 70% complete and should be published this year. I still have to create the domain frameworks, three-by-three matrices arranged as adjacent diamonds. They were created before the liminal version of Cynefin and the creation of the liminal domain, hence the need for some rework.
2. Estuarine Framework and Estuarine Mapping—the former is a part of the latter. Various updates and lists have been published since 1 March last year, and there have been many changes. So, this will be a substantial set of updates.
3. Flexeous Curves, which may return to their original Apex Predator name, have a whole series of posts; you can navigate them from my Flexuous flight post. They have a role in Estuarine, such as initiating an action type.
4. The Uncertainty matrices are one of the oldest frameworks. I updated and fully mapped them onto Cynefin earlier this year. They emphasise various levels of knowability.
5. The Three As, agency, affordance, and assemblage, were initially created as alternatives to mindsets and mental models but are now more substantial. An alternative name for an Estuarine Map is an Affordance Landscape, which can be used for those unfamiliar with an Estuary.
6. ASHEN is one of the oldest, initially designed for knowledge management but then adopted for leadership and a better understanding of organisations.  Again, there are a series of posts updating its use from four years ago, and you can navigate to them from here.    It stands for artefacts, skills, habits (formerly heuristics), experience and natural talent.  It is now also one input to the Estuarine Map.
7. AIMS is fundamentally what you can manage in a complex system and covers actants, interactions, monitors, and scaffolding.  I’ve mentioned it a few times and promised to write it up,  but I think I have missed doing that. So, that will be the next post in this series.  AIMS  first emerged in a Rewilding Leadership event last July.

Other posts summarise many of these: the Sense-making in Strategy series, which starts here, for example, and one on the Three Frameworks, which has a link to my keynote at KM World last November. Of course, I will need a post on heuristics and one on principles. So, there is a lot to get through, but at least I have made a start.

On a trivial level, I’m pleased there are seven frameworks, three of which are diagrams.; three and seven are magical numbers

On what is a framework (as this seems controversial to some in the Agile community)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a framework as follows:

1. framework, n. A structure made of parts joined to form a frame; esp. one designed to enclose or support; a frame or skeleton. 

2. theoretical framework, n. A basic conceptual structure underlying a system, study, etc. 

The  American Heritage Dictionary:

1. A structure for supporting or enclosing something else, especially a skeletal support used as the basis for something being constructed.

2. An external work platform; a scaffold.

3. A fundamental structure, as for a written work.

4. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.

Merriam-Webster

1. a basic conceptional structure (as of ideas)

the framework of the U.S. Constitution

These influences threaten the very framework of our society.

b. a skeletal, openwork, or structural frame

An iron framework surrounds the sculpture.

2. : FRAME OF REFERENCE

3. : the larger branches of a tree that determine its shape

My use is Oxford (2),  American Heritage (4), Merriam-Webster (1)

Afternote

Tthe publication of Estuarine last year was also an experiment in open-source development, which I don’t regret but I have learned from.  I somewhat naïvely thought that everyone would recognise the contingent nature of the process and refrain from compromise (even if things were not fully clear) oversimplification and premature mutation.  The big one coming, a mixture of distributed decision making and resource allocation, coupled with non directive optimisation, will be open. However, participation will be subject to basic agreements about use and modifications before formal launch.  Again to be clear, I’m not complaining but I have learnt!   Announcements about that and other research programmes will be made in the CynefinCo Haunt.