I don’t know.

In the world of leadership and management, these three words are the most feared – by leaders, by shareholders, and by employees. This fear of “I don’t know” has come to the surface consistently in my discussions with leaders throughout the post-pandemic world, where the common, underlying question has been, “Can someone predict for me what’s going to happen so I can put a strategy together to deal with it?” Because we as leaders are wired to do exactly that. Define the problem and then figure out a way to deal with it. We just don’t like uncertainty. We don’t know what to do with “I don’t know.”

Of course, we’ve all been talking about uncertainty for years now. Since the late 1980’s, dealing with uncertainty has been recognized as one of our most significant leadership challenges. But the pandemic, AI, political uncertainty – you name it – has forced us to admit to something that has been nagging us for a while; something that we’ve known but have chosen to push off.  And that is, that our organizations are built around the concept of certainty. Our annual budgeting process, our planning models, our problem solving approaches – If we just spend enough time in the code, or hire the right consultants to build out our strategy, or maybe just burn some more midnight oil, we can actually predict the future. 

I don’t chalk this up to hubris. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The way we make sense of the world around us is built on the premise that we can control our environment. Once we choose to take off the blinders, though, and accept that the uncertainty and complexity is real and living among us, a whole new world of possibilities emerge. But once you throw out the old map, with what do you replace it?

A better map.

In his 2020 book, David Snowden showed us just such a map – the Cynefin Framework, which Snowden describes as a framework for “sense-making” – a way of viewing situations accurately so you can take action. The Cynefin (pronounced kuh-NEV-in) Framework has been gaining popularity recently because of its practical, straightforward approach for categorizing situations and identifying strategies to address them, especially in the context of complexity and uncertainty.

The Cynefin Framework sorts situations into four key categories:

• Clear:Situations that can be addressed with good instructions, checklists, or best practices.  Assembling a piece of furniture from a kit is an example.
• Complicated:Situations in which cause and effect can be known up front but may require significant effort and/or domain expertise to address. Things like putting a rocket into space, or even diagnosing that chronic engine problem in my aging Nissan Pathfinder, would fit in the Complicated category. Up until recently, most business challenges fell into this category, so the mindset and tools we typically use for problem analysis and decision-making best fit Complicated situations.
• Complex:Here’s where it gets interesting. These are situations in which outcomes cannot be accurately predicted – where the relationship between cause and effect cannot be known until after the fact – regardless of the level of expertise or effort invested in the solution. Politics, your favorite sporting event and raising children all fall into this category. These situations require a completely different approach and toolkit from Complicated situations.
• Chaotic:These are situations in which the relationship between cause and effect is unclear, even after the fact. In military terms, Chaotic conditions are sometimes described as “the fog of war.”  Battlefield settings and natural disasters can fall into this category.

A more complete description of the Cynefin Framework is well beyond the scope of this blog post, but what is so powerful about the Cynefin Framework is it shows us that complex challenges are not harder, crunchier versions of complicated situations. You don’t just put in more hours or assign more consultants to brute-force your way through them. You navigate them differently because they are different territory.

Because complex situations or challenges require a different approach to address them – an approach that requires experimentation and the capacity to allow a path forward to emerge over time – the common cause-and-effect thinking and tools that leaders use to fix problems don’t create the results they expect. Like a map that takes to the right street address, but in the wrong city.

The post-pandemic world has forced us all to reckon with the fact that we have built our model for business to address a Complicated world. But in reality, much of what we deal with as leaders is Complex, and that is growing. And to live in the complex, you have to get comfortable with things that are unpredictable and emerge as you go. You have to experiment, fail fast and move on. You have to assume a lot of “I don’t know,” and we have to be able to learn on a continual basis.

In future posts, we will explore some of the tools used to navigate complexity and uncertainty. But it all starts with knowing where you are, and that is the biggest change for leaders. With a better map, leaders can begin to explore the new territory before them.