Cynefin

Overview

Cynefin (pronounced "kuh-NEV-in"; Welsh for "habitat") is a sense-making framework by Dave Snowden (IBM, 1999). Its claim: the right decision approach depends on which of five domains the situation falls into — Clear (obvious cause-effect, use SOP), Complicated (knowable with expertise, use analysis), Complex (emergent, probe first), Chaotic (absent cause-effect, act first), Confused (unknown domain, decompose first). The most common and costly error: treating Complex problems as Complicated.

Composes with ooda-loop, feedback-loops, antifragile, first-principles.

When to Use

• A familiar approach has stopped working and you can't articulate why
• Experts disagree on the right answer — a crisis unfolding where the previous playbook doesn't apply
• "Best practices from X" imported without checking if the domain matches
• A team is over-planning something emergent, or "let's get more data" when data won't come without action
• Allocating AI capex or racing AI-native competition: deciding which AI bets are engineering (Complicated), emergent agent/adoption experiments (Complex), or live incidents (Chaotic)

Not when: domain is unambiguously Clear (execution only); small-stakes one-shot; specialized framework already fits.

Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)