Old maps, new ground
Complexity, uncertainty and the Cynefin framework.
Two and a half hours on leading when the old map no longer fits: the habits that hold managers back, leading through complexity and uncertainty, and making sense of problems with the Cynefin framework.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Serving the public
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Officers and managers leading teams through organisational change, when the destination is not yet fixed
Overview
Public services are changing faster than plans can be written. Sharing its material with the half day When the map runs out, this course opens with Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There, Satya Nadella's culture shift at Microsoft and the four disciplines of excellent managers. It then turns to leading through volatility and ambiguity, with Rittel and Webber's tame and wicked problems, the Stacey Matrix, Heifetz's adaptive challenges, Weick's sensemaking and the pre-mortem, alongside Marquet, Edmondson and Taleb. It ends with Snowden and Boone's Cynefin framework, Avanti's mapping of member and officer relationships from Dr. Jonathan Huish's Cranfield research, and the Palatine case.
Aims
Everything here is designed to help leaders work differently rather than harder when certainty is not coming: noticing the habits that once served them, diagnosing what kind of problem they face before choosing a response, and avoiding the costly error of treating the complex as merely complicated.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Assess whether you are working harder or working differently, and identify the habits behind your promotion that may now limit you.
- Distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges, and use sensemaking and the pre-mortem to decide and act under uncertainty.
- Diagnose which Cynefin domain a live situation sits in, and judge whether relationship building or protocol should come first between members and officers.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Explain why habits that earned your promotion, such as winning too much and adding too much value, can limit you once your impact depends on others.
- Diagnose whether a situation is clear, complicated, complex or chaotic using VUCA, Cynefin, the Stacey Matrix and the distinction between tame and wicked problems.
- Describe the five Cynefin domains and the response pattern each one calls for, from sense, categorise, respond to act, sense, respond.
- Distinguish a good manager from an excellent one using the four disciplines of self awareness, personal effectiveness, managing upward and across, and developing others.
- Distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges and use sensemaking, the OODA loop and the pre-mortem to decide and act under uncertainty.
- Use four locating questions to place a live situation in a domain, and distinguish a Complicated problem from a Complex one.
- Assess whether you are working harder or working differently, using the three signs set out in the module.
- Plan how to lead a team through uncertainty by moving information and authority, protecting psychological safety and building antifragile habits.
Built from 3 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01What got you hereSelf-awareness and learning for senior managersBitesize · High Performing Managers · module 11 module
- 02When the way ahead is unclearLeading through complexity and uncertaintyBitesize · Leadership1 module
- 03Naming the world we lead inCynefin framework and complexity for leadersBitesize · VUCA, Uncertainty and Complexity · module 21 module