Sooner Safer Happier: Antipatterns and Patterns for Business Agility

by Jonathan Smart

In the Clear domain, workers follow the rules and apply best practices. This is the domain of explicit knowledge, where learnings can be shared through simple instructions, scripts, and guidelines—such as building a Lego model. The Complicated domain requires experts who analyze and respond. This is not child’s play. Work in this domain has been done many times before. There are known-unknowns. This is a domain of explicit knowledge where learnings can be documented and handed over even when they require plenty of detail. The Complex domain is where people probe and respond. Work in this domain is unique, or the context is unique. It is emergent and there are unknown-unknowns. Workers need to apply a probabilistic approach and test hypotheses in order to learn. This is a domain of tacit knowledge. As we saw in Antipattern 8.1, tacit knowledge cannot travel by handoffs without significant loss of information, of learnings. In this emergent domain, skill-based silos present a strong antipattern. Instead, optimized learning takes place with a bias to action, by doing and co-creating in order to avoid a single person dependency. The Chaotic domain has a blurry line between cause and effect. The rule here is to act first and hope something good happens. Any learnings generate tacit knowledge. Confusion is when you are not sure what domain you are in. In this case, attempt to create a smaller domain of work. The application of Cynefin in the context of information and knowledge ...