Enable Descriptive Self-Awareness and Self-Discovery

Principle 2: Enable descriptive self-awareness and self-discovery

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” – Blaise Pascal

Cynefin is about proactive meaning-making and sense-making. We seek to understand the evolutionary potential in the present and discover how to enable novel connections and act appropriately. The aim is to use that understanding to decide how to act. Attaining a state of descriptive self-awareness, where individuals or systems ‘see’ themselves and their context differently, often leads immediately to actionable insight. A Cynefin-informed approach, therefore, entails creating the conditions that enable such awareness. Giving an interpretation too early can interrupt that discovery. (Read more about this in the chapter by Riva Greenberg and Boudewijn Bertsch.)

If, like me, you are a consultant, you likely resist the urge to analyze or prescribe. Instead, you focus on creating the conditions where the client becomes able to see and describe their current state differently and potentially know how to act. This principle also addresses power: whose account is heard, and who gets to interpret it? Participants interpret their own data rather than leaving that authority to facilitators, consultants, or experts. The aim is to let people see patterns in their collective experience. (For more on this, read the chapters by Viv Read and Chris Corrigan).

There is a broad range of Cynefin methods that facilitate this ‘holding of the mirror.’ For example, we use the same narrative material to create contrasting archetypes: how customers see themselves and how product developers see them. Comparing the accounts can expose assumptions or disagreements that either group has overlooked. Participants can examine the interpretations against material they helped produce. This direct involvement in interpretation is central to our methods and to the SenseMaker software tool.

While easy to accept in theory, this can be problematic in practice, especially for experts, consultants, or those in leadership roles. It is hard not to intervene, advise, or apply expertise when that is what you have valued in other contexts. It is also difficult not to ‘rescue,’ which is a normal empathetic response when we see others struggle. When you find yourself tempted in these ways, consider a time in your own life when you discovered something, about yourself for yourself, compared to when someone gave you advice: What do you remember best, and which changed your mind the most? Which of those effects will be most useful and sustainable for the other person?

“It sometimes takes patience and confidence to communicate to clients the value of emergent methods; this gets much easier as one sees the methods working in practice and can compare the efficiency and effectiveness of these fine tools with the blunt edges of recipes.” – Dave Snowden