Sort the situation by its domain before you decide
Before you choose a response, decide whether the situation is simple, complicated, complex or chaotic.
Why it works
The Integral Leadership Review reports that the authors draw on David Snowden’s Cynefin framework (a way of sorting situations into domains), which sorts unpredictable and predictable elements into the complex, the complicated, the chaotic and the simple. This page’s inference, not the review’s: sorting first matters because a response chosen before the kind of situation is known can be aimed at the wrong kind of problem. The review summaries do not map responses to domains, so this page does not either.
How to do it
- Name the situation in one sentence.
- Ask whether the link between cause and effect is known in advance, can be worked out with analysis, or only becomes visible afterwards.
- Write which of the four domains the situation sits in, and one reason you chose it.
- Choose the response, then check it against the domain you named.
Evidence
The Cynefin attribution and its four domain names are reported in the Integral Leadership Review summary of Garvey Berger and Johnston (2015). Snowden and Boone (2007) is an HBR article titled “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making”; its text was not read, so it is cited for existence only. (anecdotal)
The sorting step is only as good as the honesty of the first guess. Leaders often sort by how urgent a situation feels rather than by whether its cause and effect can be known.
Sources
- Integral Leadership Review (2015). Book review of Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston, Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders.
- Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007, November). A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review.
Common mistake
Sorting by urgency or familiarity, rather than by whether the cause-and-effect link can be known, and then applying the response that worked last time.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Jennifer Garvey Berger’s Simple Habits for Complex Times
- Ask what can we learn here
Before you give an answer, ask what can be learned from the situation in front of you.
- Hold feedback as one partial view
Treat each piece of feedback as one partial view of the situation, not the final verdict on it.
- Take a view you disagree with seriously
State a position that clashes with yours in terms its holder would accept, and find what it shows that yours does not.
- Map the system around a problem, not its single cause
Trace the people, rules and feedback loops (chains in which an effect feeds back into its own cause) around a recurring problem, and where its boundary seems to sit, before you settle on its cause.
- Act on what the present shows and let the next step appear
Take the next small action you can see, observe what it does, and let that observation decide the step after it.
- Notice when you reach for a simple story
Catch the moment you explain a messy event with one tidy cause and a confident prediction, and write the story down as a story.
- Test the sense that you are right
Treat a strong feeling of being right as a claim to check, and name in advance what would show you were wrong.
Related concepts
- Vertical Development Practices: How Adults Grow, Not Just Add Skills
Heat, colliding perspectives, and sense-making — and what the research can and cannot promise
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
- Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
Distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical problems — and leading accordingly
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- The Immunity to Change Process, Step by Step
Why a change you truly want keeps not happening, and the step-by-step way Kegan and Lahey take it apart
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
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