Strategic doing and agile sensemaking are essential tools for navigating complex, networked environments. Strategic doing, a discipline developed at Purdue University, enables people to form action-oriented collaborations quickly and move them towards measurable outcomes. Agile sensemaking, on the other hand, is a continuous process of seeking, sensemaking, and sharing to understand and adapt to changing circumstances.
The Cynefin framework, developed by Dave Snowden, is a decision-making tool that helps leaders navigate complexity by categorising problems into five domains: simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder. This framework is particularly useful in agile sensemaking, as it allows for a more nuanced understanding of the problem at hand and the best way to address it.
In the complex domain, where cause and effect relationships are only perceivable in retrospect, it’s crucial to probe, sense, and respond. This involves trying safe-to-fail experiments, observing the results, and adjusting accordingly. In contrast, in the chaotic domain, where there is no relationship between cause and effect, the best approach is to act, sense, and respond.
Combining strategic doing with agile sensemaking can help organisations navigate complexity and uncertainty. It allows them to experiment, learn from their mistakes, and adapt their strategies in real-time, leading to more effective and resilient operations.
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