Making sense of complexity
VUCA, Cynefin, wicked problems and sensemaking.
A half day on making sense of complexity: VUCA, BANI and Cynefin used precisely, wicked problems, and sensemaking with safe-to-fail experiments when analysis runs out.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- Where
- VUCA, Uncertainty and Complexity
- Price
- £129
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 facing problems with no clear or agreed answer
Overview
Leading well in complexity starts with seeing clearly. This programme builds a shared diagnostic vocabulary: VUCA and BANI used with precision, Snowden and Boone's Cynefin framework, including Avanti's mapping of member and officer relationships from Dr Huish's Cranfield research, Grint's tame, critical and wicked problems, and the distinction between risk, uncertainty and ambiguity. It then moves from diagnosis to action, with Karl Weick's sensemaking, the properties of complex adaptive systems and Snowden's probe, sense, respond, including safe-to-fail experiments and the honestly mixed lessons of the NHS vanguard sites.
Aims
The aim is to help leaders diagnose the kind of challenge they face and act sensibly within it: naming complexity accurately, choosing between management, command and leadership, and using sensemaking and safe-to-fail experiments to make progress where analysis alone cannot provide the answer.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Distinguish VUCA conditions, Cynefin domains and tame, critical and wicked problems, and explain the response each calls for.
- Diagnose a real challenge using the language of risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, avoiding the error of treating complex problems as merely complicated ones.
- Design a portfolio of safe-to-fail probes and use sensemaking to amplify or dampen emerging patterns in your own service.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Distinguish volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and identify which of the four mainly responds to more information.
- Describe the five Cynefin domains and the response pattern each one calls for, from sense, categorise, respond to act, sense, respond.
- Explain the defining properties of a wicked problem, including no definitive formulation, no stopping rule and the one-shot nature of each attempt.
- Distinguish risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, and explain what a risk register can and cannot cover in relation to unknown unknowns.
- Explain how Weick's sensemaking reverses the conventional analyse, decide, act sequence, and identify when careful analysis still fits better.
- 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.
Built from 3 parts.
4 hours of learning.
- 01Naming the world we lead inCynefin framework and complexity for leadersBitesize2 modules
- 02Wicked, not just difficultWicked problems, uncertainty and riskBitesize2 modules
- 03Probe, sense, respondSensemaking in complex systems with CynefinBitesize2 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 hereExplore, 4 hours, £129
- The whole topicImmerse, Clear heads in a complex world, 8 hours, £249. Already own the Explore? You pay £120.
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