All Life Is Problem Solving

Decision and Learning Cycles There are a number of examples in the organizational learning field of frameworks that conjecture a cyclic agent behavioral process of decision, action, experiential feedback, and then adjustment followed by new action. Such frameworks are not new. Russell Ackoff and Kolb and Fry in the 1970s, Kolb in the 1980s, and […]

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  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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  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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Turner’s Evening of the Deluge (1843) In a recent blog entry, Dave Snowden, commented on a statement I made in an exchange in the actkm.org list serv group. Here’s the quotation from my post: “I do believe that there is a “correct” interpretation of Hamlet, and also that we can select among interpretations and find […]

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I’ve named this blog after a statement from a lecture of Karl Popper’s, delivered in 1991 near the end of his long life. “All Life is Problem Solving” also became the title of a book of his essays published posthumously in 1999 by Routledge. I love the phrase because it sums up his wonderful work […]

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