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Sensemaking with Snowden

Published on May 19, 2008

Dave Snowden, a leading reference in the sensemaking field, recently held a six-hour seminar for the MSc Strategic Management students. This module came as part of the "contextual dynamics" module, which deals with the conditions of the environment or surrounding conditions that an organisation is operating in.

Dave Snowden is a major figure in the movement towards integration of humanistic approaches to knowledge management and sensemaking. He is generally considered one of the leading practitioners and thinkers in the field of a naturalising (science-based) approach to decision theory and sensemaking. Particularly well-known for his work on the role of narrative and complexity theory in sense-making, he is an entertaining speaker and was much appreciated in the classroom.


Dave Snowden was a Director in the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management and founder of the Cynefin Centre for organisational complexity. He pioneered the use of narrative as a means of knowledge disclosure and cross-cultural understanding. He is a leading keynote speaker at major conferences around the world and always finds entertaining ways to convey otherwise difficult concepts.


Dave Snowden's lecture presented his 'cynefin' framework, a sense-making framework as he refers to it. This framework proposes a method for making sense of "how" a system behaves. It is not about making accurate predictions, but about making sense of how the environment behaves and reacts to different actions that can affect the strategic situation of a company.


Anoosh Merat, MSc Strategic Management, gave his impression of Professor Snowden's seminar:

For me it was a very useful lecture. I found the part about 'complex systems' most interesting and it helped me reach a deeper understanding of the dynamics of business and how a company can increase its chances of success in different environments. It was also helpful for me because I could relate it to other sections of our course which talked about when to choose an 'adapting' policy and when to choose 'shaping' policy. 'Adapting' policy is when a company decides to comply with conditions of the environment and 'shaping' is when it decides to play an active role in changing and defining the conditions of the environment. Each policy has its own pros and cons and must be chosen depending on the parameters of the situation. I think 'cynefin' framework helps in identifying the situations where you should be a 'shaper' and in such a situation it also helps you decide what actions are most probable to lead to the desired outcomes for you in a given environment.


 

Dave Snowdon is one of the many guest lecturers invited on campus throughout the year. Other lecturers come from partner institutions from around the world, from EDHEC's permanent faculty or are invited from companies after being considered experts in their field.


Written by NIKKI HARLE
Date of update June 25, 2008

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