This weekend, we unveiled the first Cynefin book formally published by Cognitive Edge. It is a beautiful publication that chronicles the origin story and historical evolution of the framework, personal vignettes where network members share how it has impacted their lives, and reflections by practitioners on how they have applied it across many diverse contexts. More than anything though, it is a testament to the passion and goodwill that exists in the global Cynefin network.
The journey started in June 2020 when we realised that Cynefin would be coming of age in October. Sonja Blignaut came up with this hare-brained scheme, and pinged Zhen Goh on a Zoom call. Let's crowdsource a book as a surprise for Dave. Over the next four months, we were humbled by the generosity of the people in our network. With one or two exceptions, all the people we invited to be part of this adventure agreed. Marion Kiely for the co-ordination with 46 authors, Boudewijn Bertch and Riva Greenberg for the editing, and Sue Borchardt for the illustrations. All of them volunteered their time, as did every author.
This book is a labour of love. The story of the book, where a global village of complexity practitioners came together to pull off a seemingly impossible task, each contributing diverse but coherent perspectives, is also such a poetic parallel to the way Cynefin grew up. Of course, we could not have a book on Cynefin without including Dave, and in the end he worked with us to produce a wonderful narrative retelling of the origin story of Cynefin without fully knowing what he was ultimately contributing to.
If you are interested, you can download an excerpt from the book here.
I have just ordered the book myself from Amazon Cynefin – Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World and I'm hugely looking forward to reading it.
If you are not familiar with the Cynefin Framework, you will find an introduction in my blook on Conversational Leadership. It is an immensly powerful tool to help you make better decisions by understanding the situation/context you are in and using an appropriate decision-making method.
