SW Development Archetypes

Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond has published a report on Software Development Archetypes. In it, he describes 3 archetypes: Solid Utility, Trusted Supplier, Partner Player. Based on his description, these seem to map to the Simple, Complicated, and Complex domains of Cynefin (using Cynefin as a taxonomy).

Since the report is behind a paywall, see slide 16 of this recent presentation by Hammond on open source software and lean development for a summary of the archetypes.

Smart Machine, Smart Human

At the risk of being simplistic, I'm starting to wonder whether the evolution of information tools might not be something like the following:

1. Dumb machine, dumb human - hammers, shovels, etc. (caveat: I'm not dissing the craftsmanship of a Michelangelo...I'm talking about information)

2. Smart machine, dumb human - monolithic systems (e.g., mainframes) with a priesthood of operators that tend to them. "human on the loop"

3. Dumb machine, smart human - distributed systems (e.g. networked PCs, pre-mobile Internet) with humans using the machine as a "speed of need" information tool in a fixed location. "human in the loop"

4. Smart machine, smart human - adaptive agent-like chunks of IT that we weave into our everyday sensemaking activities everywhere we go. "machine on the loop"

The last stage is just emerging...Apple's amazing market cap is evidence of the potential value of such a combination. However, it is a complete paradigm shift (in the strong Kuhnian sense of the word) from machine-centric to human-centric

It raises a fundamental issue: how do you enable humans to easily create, monitor, and manage automated micro-models/narratives? And, do all this within the daily flow of sensemaking?

I mentioned one possible approach a couple of years ago...it seems awfully crude in retrospect and it does not begin to address the create/monitor/manage challenge (which is the real "magic" in the ecosystems that Apple has created).

The only widely used general user IT *modeling* tool I can think of is a spreadsheet (Project is a specialist tool IMO). However, spreadsheet modeling is not done "on-the-fly", so it provides no insight into how to weave micro-modeling into sensemaking flow.

The challenge posed by a smart human, smart machine capability is daunting; the potential is incredible. The good news is that the necessary pre-conditions are largely in place, the needed tools are emerging, and we have some good frameworks for thinking about how to go about architecting this kind of IT (e.g., Klein's Data-Frame, Cynefin).

Meshing Exploration and Exploitation

Earlier this year I posted a couple of items discussing how information technology seems to cycle through complex-complicated-simple-chaotic as a new capability moves from (a) a one-of-a-kind monolithic structure to (b) a partially decoupled structure to (c) a commoditized fully decoupled structure which then (d) provides a chaotic swirl of standardized components that are then used to create a brand new capability with a monolithic structure (Techno-Apocalypse and Business Models, IT, Architecture, Cynefin). I also alluded to the possibility that the time it takes IT to traverse this cycle is rapidly dropping...which may be one reason the whole Explore-Exploit contrast is getting more attention.

Anyway, I just ran across an OSCON (July 2010) presentation by Simon Wardley entitled "Situation Normal, Everything Must Change") that covers much of the same ground...though in a far more entertaining fashion. Highly recommended (even though I'm not a big fan of the "flashing/slashing graphics" style of presentation).

Explore and Exploit - some background

Although it's been several years since this compare-contrast first hit me, I suppose I should make a note of a few of the resources that helped me see that this view/pattern is probably widespread.

1. This first came from my thinking about the Cynefin framework (as a taxonomy, in this case) in conjunction with business processes and innovation...I first saw this as Discovery and Execution. This morphed into Exploration and Execution.

When I went searching for literature with these terms, I came across a number of items, including the following:

2. John Hagel and John Seely Brown's disucussion of Push Programs and Pull Platforms.

3. "When Learning and Performance are at Odds: Confronting the Tension", Singer and Edmondson, Harvard Business School Working Paper. See especially Figure 3.

4. Various HBS working papers by Tushman, et. al. Two that I found useful were:
"Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams"
"Ambidexterity as a Dynamic Capability"

5. "Strategy and Your Stronger Hand" by Geoffrey Moore (Harvard Business Review, December 2005.

6. "Organizing for Innovation in the 21st Century" by Deborah Dougherty (Rutgers Business School September 2004) - this has a nice summary of various approaches to innovation

7. "Planning: Complex Endeavors" by Alberts and Hayes - one in a series of publications about complexity and NCW that was published by the DoD's CCRP. This publication is the follow-on to Alberts and Hayes' "Understanding Command and Control", also recommended. If you're completely unfamiliar with how complexity science relates to organizations, Czerwinski's "Coping with the Bounds" is not a bad intro.

I'm sure there are lots of other (and much earlier) writers who've discussed this...these just happen to be some of the folks that helped me see what seems to be a basic pattern. Now that I think about it, Klein's Data Frame model covers this space well (i.e., "elaborate" is Exploit, "question" and "reframe" are Explore).

"Simple" IT

One possible indication of the end of the Dark Age of IT will be that "complex" has a negative connotation and "simple" has a positive one when used in conjunction with IT products/services.

Seems like the labels we currently use to describe IT capabilities tend to be more ontological than epistemological....I suppose there are lots of potential reasons why...one might be that there's no end in sight to the ontological task of creating IT models of "the world."

NCW Update

Recently the Defense Business Board recommended that the Assistant SecDef's Networking and Information Integration (NII) office be eliminated. With that recommendation has come a new round of "death of NCW" commentaries (e.g., Lexington Institute, Wired).

I hesitate to comment on these since I've done so before...but, I feel obliged to make two observations:

• These critiques continue to either misunderstand or mischaracterize the nature of NCW. They create a techno-centric strawman, one that makes war deterministic and neat. This is wrong...NCW is more about cognitive and social factors than technology. The core of NCW is improving sensemaking and decision making, with technology only a tool. Large technology-rich armies and small technology-poor groups of insurgents can both operate in a net-centric fashion. See, as previously mentioned, "The Implementation of Network Centric Warfare", especially Figures 5 and 11.
• The US has a bias towards technology and formal processes. So, it's not surprising that the US implementation of NCW theory has largely ignored its social and cognitive aspects. And, it's not surprising that, as net-centric technologies and concepts became pervasive, a central office (NII) for their promulgation became largely irrelevant.

Leaders Aren't Hoop-Jumpers

The American Scholar has published a speech that William Deresiewicz gave last year at West Point. Entitled "Solitude and Leadership", it has some observations about leadership that are similar to those made by the Hopper brothers in "The Puritan Gift."

I especially liked the following:

• An observation about kids at Yale...seems like this is the implicit goal of all large Western organizations these days...the creation of "excellent sheep."
  
  So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.”
• A comparison of Marlow's description of the Central Station manager in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" with the stereotypical hoop-jumping bureaucrat:
  About the 10th time I read that passage, I realized it was a perfect description of the kind of person who tends to prosper in the bureaucratic environment. ..... it was a perfect description of the head of the bureaucracy that I was part of, the chairman of my academic department—who had that exact same smile, like a shark, and that exact same ability to make you uneasy, like you were doing something wrong, only she wasn’t ever going to tell you what. Like the manager ...... the head of my department had no genius for organizing or initiative or even order, no particular learning or intelligence, no distinguishing characteristics at all. Just the ability to keep the routine going ...
• On leadership:
  ...... for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of exper­tise. What we don’t have are leaders. What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.
• On multitasking:
  Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.

I'm a little uneasy about some of the fuzziness in the author's description of solitude...nothing in, nothing out. But, I completely agree that we need time for things to soak in and we need to periodically take some serious time out to consider ideas that have been percolating.

Bill Gates' annual retreat is a bit too structured for me, but anyone who's serious about ideas has to occasionally spend a significant amount of time slowly chewing on core aspects of fundamentals (e.g., assumptions, constraints, coupling, connections, etc) of what matters most.

Nick Carr's upcoming book "The Shallows" looks to be an interesting look at how IT is "making us dumber."

Web OS Speculations

A couple of "must read" takes on the companies, architectures, and business models that will dominate the next wave of IT:

• Charlie Stross on "Why Steve Jobs Hates Flash". I thoroughly enjoyed Stross's "Halting State", so I'm always intrigued by his take on IT
• Tim O'Reilly on the "State of the Internet Operating System" (Part 1, Part 2) - O'Reilly's always worth reading, but these two (long) posts are "must read".

I haven't seen stuff this intriguing since the early Web 2.0 days....

"Thinking Traps" Trap

A couple of recent posts on "Thinking Traps" (Part 1, Part 2) are typical examples of discussions of how cognitive limitations can result in poor decision making.

While an awareness of this sort of thing is good, these discussions almost always focus on (a) specific biases, or (b) processes/heuristics that help compensate for or avoid these biases.

Those of us who design IT-intensive capabilities for expert use need something more substantive: models of how experts make decisions in the real world. Which is why I'm a big fan of Gary Klein's writing (e.g., Data-Frame, Sources of Power).

Techno-Apocalypse

Clay Shirky sparked a fair amount of dialogue about the dangers of what he called "Complex Business Models" in a recent post. This is an important topic that is not discussed enough, so I was happy to see him take a shot at it.

My snap reaction was that he was describing a dynamic that is (a) becoming commonplace, and (b) accelerating. This dynamic consists of the following:

• A concept/technology emerges.
• An almost "one-of-a-kind" capability is built (e.g., IBM's Stretch computer). This capability is tightly coupled internally, and certain aspects of it are not well understood.
• If the capability becomes more available (e.g., cheaper), fault lines in the internally coupling begin to emerge (e.g., plug-compatible peripherals). At this point, variations of the capability are created and adapted to different specific needs/uses (e.g., IBM 360).
• If the capability moves toward a mass market, key coupling fault lines will be institutionalized via de facto or de jure standards, and the capability will be built of interoperable components (e.g., IBM PC).
• Finally, these interoperable components and standards will provide much of the raw material for the creation of a new concept/technology (e.g., what has become the Web), starting the process all over.

The risk Clay discusses is real during the tightly-coupled phase of this dynamic. And, his concerns are becoming increasingly valid as (a) these loops are being traversed faster and faster for IT-intensive capabilities, (b) the interoperable components/standards ecosystem grows at an exponential rate, and (c) the transparency of a capability's structure (which allows critical dependencies to be seen clearly) decreases exponentially, at least during the tightly-coupled phase.

Complicating the Complex

Almost every week I see confusion caused by the lack of a vocabulary that distinguishes between Cynefin's Complicated domain and its Complex domain.

The latest incident was an article entitled "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint" in the 27 April New York Times. I was walking through the airport that Tuesday morning and was amused to see a familiar diagram above the fold on Page 1.

The article was the latest in a long line of critiques of the use and abuse of PowerPoint, including a dash of McLuhanesque "media is the message" thrown in for good measure. There's not much to add here...though I do find it slightly puzzling that the focus is almost totally on how the tool can/is abused, versus how the tool can/should be used to be effective.

Regardless, the graphic shown is the real story...it's a classic Systems Dynamics concept map that provides a good example of the limitations of trying to create a Complicated map of a Complex context. In defense of those who created it, I suspect that the conversations that went into creating it were valuable. And, as a focal point for an ongoing series of conversations about the social/cultural landscape, it probably has some use.

However, this diagram has inevitably left out key entities and linkages that are (a) rarely active, and (b) extremely important....i.e., it left out linkages that may provide the most leverage in achieving a specific contextually activated goal. If you're familiar with the Cognitive Edge tools and methods, you understand that there's a more effective way to address this kind of need. Unfortunately, most folks still lack the vocabulary to distinguish between the Complicated from the Complex and fail to realize that this "unknown unknown" would significantly increase their ability to effectively characterize a Complex context.

Cultural Perceptions

I ran across an interesting monograph by Christine MacNulty that discusses (among other things) how culture influences perception. A few snap reactions:

• p. 11 - a nice table contrasting how Eastern and Western thinking differs. Dave Snowden often points this out in his talks.
• p. 22 - alludes to a move "away from authoritarian epistemology of medieval religious doctrine"....while this monograph only touches on the emergence of modern science, this seems slightly simplistic. See, for example, Frances Yates' "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition", Carl Becker's "The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophyers", or Pierre Duhem's "The System of the World."
• p. 26 - places epistemology on a spectrum from authority-based to empirical - seems like a triad with the emotive at a third corner might be a bit more realistic (inspired by Cognitive Edge's patent-pending triadic scale)....I understand the reason for the over-simplification, but it still makes me cringe slightly... :-)

Anyway, it's an intriguing take on cultural analysis. Check it out if you have an interest in this sort of thing.

Business Models, IT, Architecture, Cynefin

Dave Snowden continues to hone his description of business life cycles in a recent presentation and podcast from the Henley KM Forum Conference.

His discussion coheres with thoughts I've be considering recently...how People, Processes, Organizations, and Technology intersect with Cynefin. Here's a few observations:

• It seems that IT-intensive businesses move roughly from Complex to Complicated to Simple in the following sense: an amorphous vision emerges in Complex space where existing knowledge and interoperable resources are "mashed-up" in unexpected ways to explore potential new capabilities. A one-of-a-kind capability is created, which, if it is valuable enough, creates a rough pattern for creating new versions of the capability in Complicated space. If the new capability can find a relatively large market, then a vertically integrated architecture will emerge where the capability begins to segment into interoperable layers. Finally, if the interfaces among the layers become standardized, the overall capability may move into Simple space where each of the layers becomes a submarket with vendors competing to provide components, assembly line integrators allowing end users to "build their own" capability, and the few vendors with critical intellectual property controlling the ecosystem of the new mass market version of the capability.
• An example from the area of computers: IBM's Stretch (Complex, moving into Complicated), IBM System/360 family (Complicated, moving into Simple), and the IBM PC (built from interchangeable parts; quickly became dominated by Intel and Microsoft, and a volatile, competitive, low margin market for almost everything else, including integration of the parts).
• Such a cycle might be seen in physically-intensive industries (e.g., automobiles, guns), but the lack of malleability of a product that is mostly physical (vs. a product that is dominated by information) constrains the evolutionary potential.
• Businesses in Complex space tend toward small high-margin consultancies, innovation groups, and startups. They are exploratory groups that focus on vision, probing, and prototyping.
• Businesses in Complicated space tend toward large medium-margin analytically-oriented organizations that work to bridge the gap between a new capability and the existing ecosystems of People, Processes, Organizations, and Technology. They are exploitative groups that focus on architecting and systems engineering to provide the new capability to users who can afford it. As the vertically integrated capability finds a larger market, it begins to segment horizontally, and the businesses tend to shift toward processes that are less "skunk works" and more "Six Sigma."
• Businesses in Simple space tend to be large low-margin rules-oriented organizations that work to provide a generic capability at the cheapest price possible. They are exploitative groups that focus on predictable process execution. As the capability moves into a mass market, standard interfaces result in submarkets of interoperable components.
• The interoperable components and associated standards eventually float into a Chaotic space where they can be recombined to start a new cycle of Complex-Complicated-Simple.
• The cycle time through C-C-S decreases dramatically wherever a wide range of interoperable components and associated standards appears. At some point, the cycle may be largely Complex-Simple, with little, if any, movement through Complicated.

As I was putting these thoughts together, I reviewed a HBS Working Paper ("The Architecture of Platforms") by Carliss Baldwin and Jason Woodard I had read a year or so ago. My notes in the paper prompted me to look for other presentations by Baldwin. She has a number of them that discuss IT architecture's shift from vertically integrated capabilities to horizontal layers of modules...her "Design Theory and Methods" presentation at L'Ecole de Mines (Oct 2007) has a series of slides on the computer industry from 1979 to 2005 that nicely illustrates the point.

And, Clayton Christensen's latest book, "The Innovator's Prescription", covers similar ground. See this presentation from the Health Information Technology (HIT) Symposium. The voice track helps but is not free (unless your company subscribes to a service which provides this sort of thing).

Finally, it's not just the good guys who understand this dynamic...the agility and adaptability of the bad guys in asymmetric warfare indicates the importance of being able to quickly cycle through Complex to Complicated to Simple...or maybe just cycle quickly between Complex and Simple as communications, command and control, processing, and sensor capabilities are increasingly interoperable, cheap, and pervasive.

Accountability - Control = Catalyst

[Just to be clear up front...the title of this post means "the gap between span of accountability and span of control (where accountability exceeds control) catalyzes exploration"...that may not pop out from a cursory reading of what follows.]

[Note: assumes familiarity with Cynefin]

Ever since the explore-exploit tension came to my attention in O'Reilly and Tushman's 2004 HBR article on the "ambidextrous organization", any discussion of it has been of interest...primarily because of its resonance with Cynefin ("Exploit" is an Ordered domain tactic, and "Explore" a Complex domain tactic).

The most recent discussion I've seen is an HBS working paper ("Accountability and Control as Catalysts for Strategic Exploration and Exploitation: Field Study Results", Simmons).

As Simmons observes, there's no clear agreement on how organizations should balance the tension between Exploit and Explore. At one extreme, both can be integrated at the lowest organizational level. At the other extreme, Exploration can be assigned to a dedicated group at the enterprise level. Regardless, managing the tradeoffs between the two seems to be a Complex (probing/exploratory) job.

In this working paper, Simmons uses data from 102 field studies to study two related organizational variables, span of control and span of authority, and how they can be varied to explore one aspect of the tension between Exploitation and Exploration.

My initial reaction was that a traditional approach to control systems and delegation of authority would probably look more like analyzing Complicated domains (e.g., balanced scorecards, Six Sigma, etc) than probing Complex ones. Although Simmons acknowledges the need for the former, his earlier research focused on interactive control systems that are designed for the latter.

In this paper, he investigates violations of the "controllability principle", which states that a manager's span of control and span of accountability should be the same. He comes to the conclusion that innovation (Exploration) may actually require that the span of accountability be significantly larger than the span of control.

Span of control (C) and span of accountability (A) differ depending on job type (a CEO has a wide range of both; a front-line supervisor has a narrow range of both), and can be combined in various ways:

• C = A As discussed above, this is considered to be the desired norm at all levels for Exploitation activities. My reaction was that it maps to Cynefin's Simple (for lower organizational levels) and Complicated (for upper organizational levels) domains.
• C > A At all levels, this is a recipe for inefficiency...the inefficiency gap may be Chaotic (i.e., agents may be relatively unconstrained in those areas where they exercise control without accountability)
• A > C This creates what Simmons calls the "Entrepreneurial Gap", where managers must explore areas outside of their control to close the gap between accountability and control. This seems to map to Cynefin's Complex domain. This is consistent with the oft-made observation that constraining resources seems to spark innovation. Influence, not control, must be used to span the gap between C and A. The use of persuasion, not coercion, requires the manager to use attractors and boundaries that can exert influence to achieve a goal (rather than the blunt imposition of Ordered controls). This forces the organization to orient itself toward key uncontrollable entities related to accountability (customers, partners, etc). Where A exceeds C across the enterprise in a coherent way, a coherent external orientation may also emerge across the enterprise, providing a framework for coherent Exploration across organizational stovepipes...an activity that is not, by definition, subject to detailed planning and control.

Sometimes, A is increased or C is decreased (or both) deliberately to encourage Exploration...but an entrepreneurial gap can also be unexpectedly imposed by shifts in external factors (e.g., technological shifts, financial crisis, etc). In these situations, adequate organizational resources, including such "soft" resources as identity and experience in exploring, can determine whether the organization flounders or thrives. And, the opposite can occur...external changes cause A to decrease, C to increase (or both), resulting in increased sloppiness & inefficiencies (e.g., the American auto industry after WWII).

See the paper for more details....the primary concept I took away was that C & A are organizational variables that can be changed to better match the organization's activities (explore/exploit) to its context (simple, complicated, complex).

Entertain or Empower?

Ok, maybe it's a false dichotomy, but I think it's at least a contrast worth mentioning.

Neil Postman's classic "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" has been one of my favorite books since I read it in the late 80's. In it, he asserts that an image-centric age (TV, etc.) is inherently unable to engage in deep rational discourse.

He may overstate the case, but I think he has a point. His focus was political discourse and education, but the same observation has been applied to televangelists, popular scientists, and in this satirical video, to television news.

So, what does this have to do with enterprise KM? If you're trying to convey concepts of any complexity, you face a real challenge: how to convey the knowledge to an audience whose frames and micro-narratives lean toward entertainment. This is not just a challenge of a short attention span...it's also a challenge of a lack of practice in thinking about complicated cause-effect structures.

Sophisticated tools and visually sophisticated audiences often equals flashy pablum. I suppose that's ok for Madison Avenue, but I'm not sure how effective it is for in-depth education, especially where training budgets are tight.

We've all had talented teachers who had a knack for engaging, challenging, educating, and empowering students without wasting their time with superficial entertainment, so we know it's possible...but that's a topic for another post.

I generally don't like making a negative statement without pointing out some possible solutions, but in the interest of space, I'll limit this post to highlighting the challenge of corporate communication and education in a culture that is visually hyper-literate.

Core Prerequisites for Effective KM?

Hagel & Seely Brown's Big Shift blog is usually worth reading...the latest post is a nice description of what seems to be an emerging agreement that catalyzing informal collaboration is the "sweet spot" of organizational KM.

This sentence caught my eye: "We've found in our research ... that new knowledge comes into being when people who share passions for a given endeavor interact and collaborate around difficult performance challenges." Though I'm sure they don't intend this statement to comprise a list of core prerequisites, it does seem like a plausible jumping-off point for discussion:

• Passion - it takes hard work to create distinctive new knowledge that clearly adds new business value. Sometimes it's difficult to find folks who are truly passionate about their work/customers/market.
• Specific Endeavor - serves to focus individual and group attention.
• Collaboration - even individuals working alone "collaborate" with themselves via an internal conversation.
• Difficult Challenge - forces folks to get outside of their normal thinking patterns
• Performance Challenge - provides constraints, resulting in more innovation within the remaining degrees of freedom?

Seems like traditional KM captures the past, while & Hagel & Seely Brown's "creation spaces" catalyze the creation of the future.

Knowledge and the Chief's Mess

There's way too many threads to chase (and far too little time to chase them) in a fascinating discussion of how the Chief's Mess has evolved in the U.S Navy. Here's at least a few of the issues that came to mind when I read this:

• The perhaps hidden risks associated with "rationalizing" work (roles, training, rotation frequency, etc.)
• How much in-depth knowledge needs to be available to deal with capabilities that are large tightly-coupled chunks of knowledge (often requiring deep technical knowledge to perform more than routine maintenance).
• The challenge of providing leadership that requires both robust people skills and robust technical expertise...one common solution being splitting the job between two people since individuals who have both types of skills are rare.
• Whether the mechanical (vs. IT) "tinkering" culture that was common a couple of generations ago has faded (again, see "The Puritan Gift"), and if so, why?, what are the implications?, etc.
• The risks associated with the loss of transparency that comes with building capabilities up from layers of interoperable components (e.g., cloud computing, multi-layered derivatives, etc.)

The author also explicitly addresses related issues (e.g., generalist vs. specialist).

Anyway, if organizational behavior/knowledge is something you're interested in, you might find this worth reading.

Panarchy

I debated saying anything on this topic...it just doesn't seem significant enough.

About the time Noah Raford's video discussing panarchy and Cynefin came to my attention, I had an e-mail exchange with a professor who has a long-time interest in panarchy (per Gunderson & Holling), but had never heard of Cynefin (he was, BTW, quite excited by Cynefin when I suggested he take a look at it).

Regardless, I must say that I'm a bit underwhelmed by panarchy, at least what I've seen in Raford's videos & slideshares. At the risk of oversimplifying, my initial reaction is that it seems like a synthesis of 3 concepts: (a) S-shaped growth curves, (b) the dis-integration of a system that occurs when the context to which it is adapted changes enough that the system ceases to be self-sustaining., and (c) fractals.

• S-shaped growth curves - these are well known, at least in systems circles (I feel obliged to offer that caveat since it seems like someone is always kicking up a fuss by using an exponential growth curve to forecast either utopia or doom....like the concept of infinity, exponential growth curves that never flatten are found only in metaphysics).
• Systems that fail to adapt and dis-integrate (not disintegrate) - this sort of thing always triggers TRIZ (the innovation framework) for me; a well-known business example is the Silicon Valley churn of resources and knowledge...most companies that become successful go through a classic S-shaped growth curve with an initially successful configuration, then fast growth, then stagnation, consolidation, and dis-integration...with the dis-integrated knowledge and resources made available for a new configuration. This cycle is shown in panarchy as a figure "8" on its side (or an infinity sign...a perhaps not-so-subtle hint (or perhaps ironic wink) that panarchy might very well be the sort of secret knowledge that appears in Dan Brown novels).
• Fractals - panarchic infinity symbols can be nested and as a context traverses the curve of the infinity symbol, it can both be part of a larger & slower curve traversal (at a different scale), and it can contain smaller & faster curve traversals within it.

I hope that my initial reaction reflects ignorance, but panarchy seems a bit too linear/wooden to encompass contexts that are truly complex. I like each of the pieces (discussed above), but the combination as seen in panarchy seems like a case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Sensemaking - Cynefin

I first became aware of Cynefin in a 2003 IBM Systems Journal article entitled "The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world." It is largely associated with Dave Snowden, although Snowden has a co-author in both of the primary articles describing it (the other is in the Nov 2007 Harvard Business Review).

It is one of the few truly new things I've seen, and has become a part of my everyday vocabulary and thinking.

Cynefin is in many ways a deep framework. Although the basics are straightforward, its foundations/origins are fundamental and therefore have a wide range of potential implications and application.

Since it's documented in wikipedia and there are some good videos on YouTube describing it, I'll focus on areas that are perhaps less discussed. I should state that most of what follows is an attempt to honestly summarize what I've read/heard of Snowden's writing/podcasts. I may have not fully grasped some of what was conveyed; any mis-statements are unintended and my own.

• Cynefin seems to have sprung in part from a consideration of how ontology (study of the nature of being) interacts with epistemology (how we know) when it comes to making sense of a situation and translating that sense into action. See, for example, Snowden's 2005 article entitled "Multi-ontology sense making" at cognitive-edge.com
• Cynefin describes the combination of the world and our ways of knowing it via 3 basic categories: Order, Unorder, and Disorder. Disorder is an area of epistemological and ontological uncertainty. Order is an area where cause-effect relationships are stable and knowable. Unorder is an area where cause-effect relationships are unstable and our ability to know them is limited or non-existent. You can quibble about where the line is between ontology and epistemology in Unorder, but I think most folks would agree that our current state of knowledge requires that we acknowledge real epistemological limits in current theory (e.g., it's unclear whether it will ever be possible to describe what goes on "inside the quantum box", Godel's Incompleteness Theorem with regard to formal systems, etc.) and in current practice (e.g., the tangled loops of cause and effect that characterize Complex Adaptive Systems).
• Order consists of two subdomains: Simple and Complicated. This is where the traditional scientific method reigns...observe, hypothesize, experiment, repeat. In these subdomains, a reductionistic approach to understanding and creating systems is adequate.
• Unorder consists of two subdomains: Chaotic and Complex. The Chaotic subdomain is an area where cause and effect are unintelligible. And, the Complex domain is an area where cause and effect are tangled, with only pattern recognition possible.

One way that Snowden summarizes the domains is as follows:

• Order - the system constrains the agents
• Complex - the systems and agents constrain each other
• Chaos - the agents are unconstrained

Although I like that description, as someone who used to teach Statistics, I tend to want to add that the agents in the Ordered and Complex domains are probably much more heterogeneous (at least with regard to the qualities we're interested in) than the agents in a Chaotic domain. Whether Snowden would agree is unclear.

Finally, Snowden seems to enjoy the interplay between theory and practice, which is reflected in an ongoing and evolving synthesis of various concepts from the social, cognitive, and complexity sciences. Some folks find this a bit difficult to parse; personally, I enjoy the journey. See the Resources section of cognitive-edge.com if you're interested in learning more. Until Snowden's long-promised book arrives, you'll have to create your own synthesis of the ideas he's put forth over the past few years.

A caveat: as with any framework that (a) has evolved, (b) is non-trivial, and (c) has become popular in certain circles, some folks will distort it (inadvertently or deliberately)....the more sophisticated of these distortions evoke a response I first had 4-5 years ago when I ran across an astonishingly bad (yet sophisticated) misinterpretation of NCW theory (where the author tried to recast NCW into something he had created a decade earlier): "The best use of this would be as a final exam in a course on the topic, with the only instruction being 'List, explain, and correct the primary misconceptions in the following paper.'"

Work Design & Task Identity

Harvard Business Review just published their list of "Breakthrough Ideas for 2010." Since the new social-mobile information technologies hold the potential to restructure much of the work we do, I found the first "breakthrough idea" especially interesting: the single most important factor in great workday was a feeling that the worker had made progress.

One implication is that work should be structured so that everyone perceives clear progress each day. Among other things, this has a tie to Klein's Data-Frame model...work that is perceived as rewarding may be as much or more about how it's framed as it is about what is actually accomplished. Naturally, there are limits...a pig with lipstick is still a pig.

Anyway, this reminded me of one of the texts from my master's program...Hackman & Oldham's "Work Redesign" (kind of strange coincidence..tonight I was watching "This Emotional Life" on PBS and Hackman was one of the people interviewed). In this book, they propose a model of the properties that make a job rewarding. This model consists of 5 Core Job Characteristics that lead to 3 Psychological States necessary for high internal motivation. If you've not seen such a model before, you might find the 5 characteristics interesting:

• Skill variety - degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities, involving different skills and talents
• Task identity - degree to which a job requires completion of a "whole" and identifiable piece of work
• Task significance - degree to which a job has a substantial impact on the lives of other people (e.g., a fireman)
• Autonomy - degree to which a job provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual in scheduling and carrying out the work
• Job feedback - degree to which the work activities provide direct and clear information about the worker's performance

Task identity is basically the "progress" component of a job.

I don't do this sort of work, nor have I ever used this model in any kind of analysis. And, the book dates from an era that was focused on enriching jobs (with some justification...though the enrichment in the West seems to have been much cruder and more superficial (at least in manufacturing), than in Eastern companies like Toyota), and was characterized by "expert" consultants who would come in and "fix" things.

Bottom line: even though much of Hackman & Oldham's analysis seems grounded in the older control of function & control of information paradigms, the factors they identify seem as relevant as ever...especially since we seem to be moving toward an era where knowledge workers will have an increasing amount of say in how work is organized and framed.

Sensemaking - Klein

Gary Klein is perhaps the leading researcher on how individuals actually make sense of a context. His Data-Frame model is an essential tool for anyone trying to improve decision making, especially on the edge.

In this model, Klein focuses on two sensemaking objects: (a) the data that is constantly streaming by a decision maker, and (b) the frames the decision maker uses to organize that data. As data streams by, frames are selected, elaborated, questioned, abandoned, and created. Although this may seem simple, it is not simplistic. Klein sees it as useful in catalyzing exploration; as with Weick's Enact-Select-Retain, it provides no simple answers.

A similar approach is seen in Zhang & Soergel's Sensemaking Model, which has a structure that seems slightly more linear than Klein's.

Klein is perhaps best known for his book, Sources of Power. Although it's only 10 years old, it's already a classic on how individuals make decisions...and, another "must-read" for students of sensemaking.

Sensemaking - Weick

Karl Weick has been researching sensemaking for almost 40 years. His "Social Psychology of Organizing" (2nd edition, 1979) remains the most thought-provoking book on the topic I've read, and is the first place I'd send someone who is primarily interested in an academic discussion of how organizations know what they know, and how they turn that knowledge into action.

It's unfortunate that many people associate Weick only with his recent research into high reliability organizations. This research is narrower in scope and applicability than his earlier work, and can leave the misleading impression that Weick is primarily grounded in an analytical approach.

And, since Weick's a social psychologist, his focus is on group (vs. individual) behavior and needs to be augmented by an individual/cognitive model (e.g., Klein's Data-Frame).

Weick's basic framework focuses on how individuals and organizations use knowledge to Enact, Select, and Retain meaning. Weick's writing is provocative and challenging...he provides no simple answers.

Despite the limitations of his approach and the challenge of navigating his writing, any serious student of sensemaking should make Weick's "Social Psychology of Organizing" and "Making Sense of the Organization" (collection of papers, 2001) required reading.

Bottom line: Weick's "Social Psychology" remains for me the single richest source of provocative insights into organizational sensemaking. Even though equally rich sources may eventually emerge, I can't imagine them completely displacing it from a central place in the field of organizational sensemaking. Buy it & read it...now.

Why Sensemaking?

Looking back over 10+ years of learning, synthesizing, and applying sensemaking concepts, it seems clear that their value remains largely untapped.

Possible reasons for this include:

• It's an edge tool - sensemaking focuses on fast-changing, complex, ambiguous decision making contexts where domain expertise dominates. These situations are usually seen as "wicked", dominated by tacit knowledge that is so contextual that it cannot be formally captured...more art than science.
• The "artists" who dominate edge decision making are, for good reasons, suspicious of any framework that claims to bring structure to a context that they know is inherently unordered.
• Traditional tools (processes, organizations, IT, etc.) have been very successful in non-edge contexts. There's no pressing need to move the edge beyond art.
• "Either-or" thinking that resists seeing tools as being useful in some contexts and and dangerous in others; instead it wants a "magic formula" that can be mindlessly applied, measured, and monitored...regardless of context.

I think we're seeing these barriers start to fall. Possible reasons for this include:

• A growing recognition that some aspects of edge decision making can be captured in frameworks like Snowden's Cynefin framework and Klein's Data-Frame model.


• Information, communications, and transportation technologies, along with commoditized capital markets, are shifting the business landscape from "80-20 core" to "80-20 edge", at least on those areas related to competitive advantage & innovation.


• Technology is shifting from instantiating structured repeatable models of well-defined decision making contexts, to exposing composable chunks of business logic that a decision maker can easily integrate in an ad hoc fashion.

Dave Snowden characterizes this as a shift in emphasis from Scientific Management (control of function) to Systems Thinking (control of information) to Sensemaking (ability to situate a network).

As with all such shifts, they're subject to a Gartner-style hype cycle...with lots of either-or and magical formula swirling as expectations inflate. Perhaps the whole social-mobile web-enterprise 2.0 flurry is the leading edge of a sensemaking hype cycle...or, perhaps not.

Regardless, we seem to be moving from a "that's the way it is" era characterized by a mindless edge and centralized "control" centers, to a "collaboration" era with mindful decision makers inventing the future on the edge.