Finding a way through the fog
Sensemaking, foresight and scenario planning.
A focused two and a half hours on acting your way to clarity: sensemaking, probe, sense, respond, safe-to-fail experiments, scenario planning and adaptive leadership.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- VUCA, Uncertainty and Complexity
- 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
Leaders moving forward when the way ahead is unclear
Overview
In complex conditions, leaders often act their way to clarity rather than analysing their way there. This programme introduces Karl Weick's sensemaking and the basics of complex adaptive systems, then turns Snowden's probe, sense, respond into practice through safe-to-fail experiments and the amplifying and dampening of emerging patterns, with the NHS vanguard sites as a case. It sets out scenario planning from Pierre Wack at Shell to Peter Schwartz, applied to the 2026 Devolution Act, and closes with Heifetz's adaptive leadership, the balcony, the holding environment and Toyota's response to the 2011 earthquake.
Aims
The aim is to help leaders move forward with confidence when the way ahead is unclear, using sensemaking, safe-to-fail experiments and scenarios to act and adjust, and developing the calm, curious and committed presence that adaptive leadership asks for in place of the instinct to look decisive.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain sensemaking and the properties of complex adaptive systems, and why searching for a single root cause can mislead in complex conditions.
- Design safe-to-fail probes and a four-step scenario matrix to explore options and rehearse plausible futures for a real strategic question.
- Lead adaptive work by getting on the balcony, holding productive disequilibrium and offering a calm, curious and committed presence under pressure.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Explain how Weick's sensemaking reverses the conventional analyse, decide, act sequence, and identify when careful analysis still fits better.
- Describe the four basic properties of a complex adaptive system and use them to explain why hunting for a single root cause can fail.
- Explain why best practice and good practice fail in the Complex domain, and distinguish probe, sense, respond from the act, sense, respond needed in chaos.
- Design a safe-to-fail experiment that is small, reversible, instrumented and run in parallel, with an exit point agreed in advance.
- Distinguish forecasting from scenario planning and identify a single forecast that is being presented as a scenario exercise.
- Distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges by asking whose behaviour, attitude or priority has to change.
Built from 2 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Probe, sense, respondSensemaking in complex systems with CynefinBitesize2 modules
- 02Seeing round cornersScenario planning and strategic foresightBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the VUCA, Uncertainty and Complexity topic, also sold whole as Clear heads in a complex world.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 2 hours 30 minutes, £69
- The whole topicImmerse, Clear heads in a complex world, 8 hours, £249. Already own the Focus? You pay £180.
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. Prices per person. Read the full terms