Cynefin framework

The Cynefin framework (/ˈkʌnᵻvɪn/kun-EV-in) is a conceptual framework used to help managers, policy-makers and others reach decisions. Developed in the early 2000s within IBM, it has been described as a "sense-making device".Cynefin is a Welsh word for habitat.

Cynefin offers five decision-making contexts or "domains"—simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder—that enable managers to identify how they perceive situations, and to make sense of their own and other people's behaviour. The framework draws on research into systems theory, complexity theory, network theory and learning theories.

Cynefin is a Welsh word meaning haunt, habitat, acquainted, accustomed, familiar. It carries with it a sense of rootedness—temporal, physical, cultural or spiritual. The word is similar in meaning to Heimat in German and has been compared to the Maori word turangawaewae, a place to stand. The idea of the Cynefin framework is that it offers decision-makers a "sense of place" from which to view their perceptions.

Dave Snowden, then of IBM Global Services, began work on a Cynefin model in 1999 to help manage intellectual capital within the company. He continued developing it as European director of IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management, and later as founder and director of the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity, established in 2002. Snowden and Cynthia Kurtz, an IBM researcher, described the framework in detail the following year in a paper, "The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world", published in IBM Systems Journal.

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