Decision-Making Contexts

In 2020, Red Hat produced an eBook entitled Transformation takes practice.4 This was written in response to a question asked time and again by business leaders: Why are so many digital transformation efforts failing? In the eBook, Mike Walker, Global Director of Red Hat Open Innovation Labs explains: "In complex sociotechnical systems, it is a group of people, not individuals or managers, who can create innovative change. These groups must tune the system through a perpetual cycle of probing, sensing, and responding to outcomes."

To explore that cycle of probing, sensing, and responding to outcomes, let's introduce a very helpful framework that compares this approach to alternative approaches used in different systems.

The Cynefin Framework

The Cynefin framework was created in 1999 by Dave Snowden when he worked for IBM Global Services. Cynefin is the Welsh word for habitat, and the framework offers five decision-making contexts...