Confusion (Cynefin) to Awareness
Cynefin's Confusion state can be a swamp of reactive habits or a watchtower of awareness, where one pauses to discern the appropriate approach. Moving from confusion to awareness involves stepping back from anxiety-driven control to create conditions for good outcomes.
THE IDEA
It begins in Confusion
Cynefin offers us, as leaders in this organization who work with participants in leadership programs, a chance to pull back from our habits and intentionally look at our system and ourselves to create thoughtful approaches. We have long taught that Confusion can be two different states. One is being swamped by the events and paying the consequences for a mismatch between what your habits drive you to do and what the context requires. Another state is being highly aware, like being on a viewing platform with a puzzled curiosity that allows us to see more clearly and discern our way into a new future.
The first time we can remember a move from Confusion to Awareness was in 2014. We had a crisis. Our flagship leadership program for our biggest client, designed by two of us and taught by at least one of the founders through the first cohorts, was now being taught by two associates. As our colleagues taught it, they swapped out some of the original designs for pieces they liked better. Each small change was a minor adjustment, but together, those changes created dissonance in the program’s arc that frustrated the participants and led to escalating complaints. The client clamped down on this sort of experimentation – and this sort of associate-led teaching. We four, gripped by fear and anxious to set things right, gathered together in an emergency meeting.
Our anxieties took hold of us. We got caught up in wanting to control, to bring things back to center, to lock things down. We began to discuss ensuring consistency, quality monitoring, and standard operating procedures so that this problem would never happen again. We were hip-deep in the swamp of Confusion, and we were grasping for pre-crafted Complicated solutions to get our Complex challenge back under control.
Then, a cup of tea, a breath, and a climb up the Confusion ladder into the watchtower of Awareness opened our eyes. We saw that we could never actually prevent clients from getting anxious, cohorts from complaining, experimentation from failing. We came back to our compass as leaders in complexity: How do we create the conditions for good things to happen rather than putting standards and structures in place to prevent bad things from happening? We found our feet on solid ground again and began to innovate.
When to use it
When a project team experiences unexpected friction and members propose rigid processes to prevent future issues.
During organizational change when leaders feel overwhelmed and default to command-and-control responses.
When a collaborative initiative loses coherence and stakeholders demand strict compliance rather than adaptive learning.
In personal decision-making when anxiety pushes you toward premature closure instead of exploratory sensemaking.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Leadership program crisis (2014)
A flagship leadership program faced escalating complaints after associates made incremental changes that broke the program's coherence. The leadership team initially reacted with control measures (standardization, monitoring) but then shifted to awareness, asking how to create conditions for good outcomes rather than prevent bad ones. This move from confusion to awareness led to innovation.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
When facing a crisis, do you notice yourself reacting with habitual control measures (rules, procedures) or pausing to observe the system's dynamics?
Think of a recent situation where you felt confused. Were you in the 'swamp' (grasping for solutions) or the 'watchtower' (curious observation)?
How might you create conditions for good outcomes in a complex situation instead of trying to prevent all bad outcomes?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World ED02 (Dave Snowden Sonja Blignaut Zhen Goh)