Simple stories, complicated systems
Most bad decisions aren't caused by bad thinking — they're caused by using the right thinking for the wrong kind of problem. The Cynefin framework sorts problems into a handful of domains, each calling for a genuinely different way of acting. Below are three of them, each as something you can play with rather than read about, followed by a fourth: a small playground where the lesson gets applied to a decision a mayor might actually face.
Sense → Categorise → Respond.
Cause and effect are self-evident. Do A, get B. Every single time.
Sense → Analyse → Respond.
Cause and effect are separated by layers of mechanics. You cannot guess it intuitively, but an expert — or an algorithm — can solve it with total predictability.
Probe → Sense → Respond.
No single agent has a master plan. Cause and effect can only be understood in hindsight. You cannot control the outcome; you can only alter the environment and observe how the system adapts.
Click the canvas (or tab to it and press Enter) with a tool selected — set a predator loose (up to two at once), drop a food source, or draw a short obstacle. Nothing here is centrally controlled: the choreography is entirely a side effect of each boid reacting to its nearest neighbours.
High investment and rigid solutions often lock in failure, even when they provide some successful outcoimes. When dealing with living & complex systems, "fail-safe" solutions can deleiver greater benefits overall. Small or localised and diverse solutions allow experimentatiion and refinement. It requires we test and listen and accept feedback, and in doing can take opporutnities to amplify what works, and dampen what doesn't.
Grey lines are roads Yellow blocks are vehicles Grey dots are pedestrians
High cost. Solves congestion outright by adding a permanent bypass lane that draws traffic off the local grid — but locks the system into this state permanently. Only a full city reset undoes it.
Each probe runs a visible 20-second trial with real variability, then you choose whether to scale it up or dismantle it.
Notice how the order of interventions and types of interventions sit alongside one another.
- Can you get high Foot Traffic & Vibrancy and Local Business Revenue, without driving Congestion up too high?
- How do your personal values reflect how you feel about these options?
- What other interventions might you try?
Domain vocabulary (Clear, Complicated, Complex) adapted from the Cynefin framework: Snowden, David J., and Mary E. Boone. "A Leader's Framework for Decision Making."Harvard Business Review 85, no. 11 (2007): 68–76. Flocking behaviour follows Reynolds' classic boid rules (cohesion, separation, alignment): Reynolds, Craig W. "Flocks, Herds and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model." Computer Graphics 21, no. 4 (1987): 25–34.