Wrangling the unknown.
Making sense of the unknown.
Struggling to know where to start with a project? Try this framework to help you sort the stuff you know, from the bits you don’t to help you make your next move.
What is it?
The Cynefin Framework is a ‘sense making framework’. The theory is, once you’ve sorted your knowns from your unknowns, everything should seem a little bit easier to wrangle.
Who is it for?
Anyone who wants to sense check they’ve got all the answers before getting stuck in.
People who need to sort their thoughts.
How does it work?
Back in 2002, the Former U.S. Secretary of Defence said, “…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Essentially:
The stuff we know seems clear.
There’s some more complicated stuff we need more of a handle on.
It’s the complex stuff we’ve not even imagined yet that might throw a spanner in the works.
What he didn’t say was that there’s a fourth state of knowledge. It’s chaos - everything’s a mess and you don’t know which way is up.
The guys from IBM agreed with him, and caught it in a ‘sense making framework’ called the Cynefin Framework. It looks a bit like this:
So once you’ve sorted your knowns from your unknowns, how do you make the unknown known? It’s easier than you think - People, Process and Questions.
People with more experience usually know more than people with less. So they can help identify the stuff you don’t know you don’t know and point you in the right direction.
Problem is, people with more experience are often busier than people with less. So asking for help on everything is challenging both sides. That’s why we have process.
Process, like regular one-on-one sessions, is one way to recognise dodgy assumptions and bring clarity to stuff we didn’t know. That’s why these collaboration moments are so valuable.
Once we know what we don’t know, it’s easy to find out. We can make guesses based on the stuff we do know and evolve these into more accurate estimates by asking great questions.
From there, it should be way easier to wrangle and make your unknowns known.
Learn more.
Cynefin framework – MindTools
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