No idea what to do!

We had a liberating discussion this week. Friends were sharing a common feeling that we often can’t work out what to do in a situation. Despite bringing all our intellectual ability to try to determine causes and then seek for ways to overturn bad situations or promote good ones, we often feel incapable in charting a way forward, resulting in us feeling like failures for our inability to get it right.

Then helpfully we discussed the Cynefin framework. This framework recognizes that everyone has a complex past history, made up of many influences from many different sources. This means that sometimes finding the best way forward is impossible.

Without going into details, the Cynefin framework breaks systems that exist into domains. The categories of domains are determined by how easy it is to understand what makes them work. If they are easy to understand then you can work out how to best function in them. If it is impossible to determine how they work, then all you can do is guess what might be the best way forward, notice the impact of your actions and then re-assess if that action is appropriate to continue. Read more