All Life Is Problem Solving

  This post is about “safe-fail experiments.” The essential idea in safe-fail experiments was expressed well by Dave Snowden in this way: “I can afford them to fail and critically, I plan them so that through that failure I learn more about the terrain through which I wish to travel.” And again, in another place, […]

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  There are three interesting questions we’d like to take up in this part. — First, assuming that the approach taken by Cynefin, requiring sensemaking through first selecting the context type one is dealing with is appropriate, is the Cynefin framework complete enough as it stands or does it fail to identify important types of […]

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  It’s now time to review Dave’s characterizations of the three remaining contexts and to comment on them. Again using the HBR article as the primary source for my discussion, the “complicated” domain is characterized as follows. Complicated — Expert diagnosis required — Cause-and-effect relationships discoverable but not immediately apparent to everyone; — More than […]

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  In earlier posts, I discussed Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework from the viewpoint of systems classification, offered an alternative to it, and then offered some critical comments. I did this because (a) Dave sometimes used the term “system” in describing one or another Cynefin “domain” and (b) a lot of the recent discussion on Cynefin […]

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Types of Systems The very circumscribed and also very partial and incomplete take on the history of General Systems Theory I provided in my last post, leaves us in the following position with respect to the problem of classifying systems. There are three very important dichotomies which have emerged out of the history of General […]

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Introduction   One of the aspects of Dave Snowden’s Cynefin approach is the identification of three physical and five human “domains,” or “systems.” The physical systems are called “order,” “chaos,” and “complexity.” In the area of human systems Dave breaks “order” down into known (simple) and knowable (complicated) systems, and also adds a fifth “domain” […]

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This is my second blog entry commenting on Dave Snowden’s “Wave-particle duality” piece. My first reply addressed the strawman, knowledge as thing and flow, and paradox issues. This one will address the other six issues he raised. Once again, they are: 1. “If you think in categories, then the world is presented in categories or […]

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This week Dave Snowden discussed my views in two of his blog entries. My last blog entry, “Is There A Correct Interpretation of Hamlet?” answered his first entry. This blog installment and at least one, perhaps two, following it will begin to answer his second entitled: “Wave-particle duality.” I must admit I had a funny […]

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