Scratching the surface: A photograph of my green fluorite crystal from the William Wise Mine in Westmoreland, NH

Sometimes, it's only at the end that we realize we're just scratching the surface. Here's why some meetings end in disappointment—or do they?

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#meetings #MeetingDesign #ComplexProblems #Cynefin #eventprofs #assnchat

A great day celebrating, watching and taking part in the E-Steddfod 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 we competed in a number of competitions against 5 other schools from around wales! Da iawn pawb! #cymraeg #cynefin

Proud to be featuring in @cpckc Clybiau Plant Cymru Kids’ Clubs latest edition of Y Bont. Yn falch o fod yn y rhifyn diweddaraf.

#antiracist @Cwlwm @PlayWales @cardiffchildcareoffer @cardiffflyingstart #uncrc #darpl @mudiadmeithrin @earlyyearswales #Inclusivity #cynefin

Despite the varying weather we enjoyed some snatches of sunshine on the beach this afternoon, with some litter picking and rock building competitions #TakingAction #Cynefin #Stewardship #BeachClean

We have had a brilliant morning #takingaction with Beach Academy Wales. Rockpool restoration #cynefin #beachclean #stewardship

We’ve had a brilliant morning on the beach with Beach Academy Wales taking part in rockpool restoration #BeachClean #TakingAction #Cynefin #Stewardship

4-box chart with a fancy central domain. Central area: Humans are not just important they are FOUNDATIONAL Top-left box: Complex (Probe-Sense-Respond) Enabling constraints HUMANS ARE ESSENTIAL Machines can't create meaning Top-right box: COMPLICATED (Sense-Analyse-Respond) Governing constraints HUMANS LEAD . MACHINES SUPPORT . Human expertise . Judgement & trade-offs . Context matters . Multiple "good practices" Machines assist analysis Lower left box: CHAOTIC (Act-Sense-Respond) No effective constraint HUMANS MUST ACT FIRST . Immediate action . Authority & responsibility . Moral judgement . Stabilise before analysis > Machines come later Lower-right box: Clear (Sense-Categorise-Respond) Fixed constraints BEST FOR MACHINES (Human oversight and input needed) . Automation . Rules & checklists . Repetition . Speed at scale > Machines dominate here Caption below: Machines excel in the Clear domain. Humans are indispensable everywhere else.

This helps me to frame my unease with the current AI hype, using the Cynefin framework.

"Humans are not just important they are FOUNDATIONAL"

"Machines excel in the Clear domain. Humans are indispensable everywhere else."

#Complexity
#Cynefin

#Dwynwen #Teilo enjoyed a wonderful workshop from BigFootWales this afternoon. We learnt drama techniques before freeze framing the story of Culhwch and Olwen from the Mabinogion 📖
@churchinwales.bsky.social #WorldBookDay #Cynefin #Cymraeg #ExpressiveArts #LLC

#Dwynwen #Teilo enjoyed a wonderful workshop from BigFootWales this afternoon. We learnt drama techniques before freeze framing the story of Culhwch and Olwen from the Mabinogion 📖
@churchinwales.bsky.social #WorldBookDay #Cynefin #Cymraeg #ExpressiveArts #LLC

#Dwynwen #Teilo enjoyed a wonderful workshop from BigFootWales this afternoon. We learnt drama techniques before freeze framing the story of Culhwch and Olwen from the Mabinogion 📖
@churchinwales.bsky.social #WorldBookDay #Cynefin #Cymraeg #ExpressiveArts #LLC

More action from our workshop with BigFootWales based on the Welsh medieval Mabinogion story of Branwen.
@churchinwales.bsky.social #WorldBookDay #Cynefin #Cymraeg #ExpressiveArts #LLC

More action from our workshop with BigFootWales based on the Welsh medieval Mabinogion story of Branwen.
@churchinwales.bsky.social #WorldBookDay #Cynefin #Cymraeg #ExpressiveArts #LLC

A wonderful morning with BigFootWales for #canna #dyfrig and #illtud. An action packed workshop full of energy and dramatic performances based on the Welsh medieval Mabinogion story of Branwen.
@churchinwales.bsky.social #WorldBookDay #Cynefin #Cymraeg #ExpressiveArts #LLC

Dydd Gwyl Dewi 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Happy St David’s Day to all in our community and beyond #cynefin #togetherness

Nursery- celebrating with a Welsh tea party, making flags and dragon hats and Welsh folk dancing. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #cynefin

Nursery Daffodils 🌼 celebrating Dydd Gwyl Dewi 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #cynefin

Chairing of the Bard this afternoon- Year 6 fantastic, talented, writers of poetry #soproud #cynefin

Children taking pride in singing our National Anthem….Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #cynefin #togetherness #cymryambyth

Our Eisteddfod programme this morning… 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #cynefin

Dydd Gwyl Dewi- wonderful handwriting, poetry and art work on display… celebrating our special day #cynefin #hiraeth

#Canna have been retelling the first branch of the Mabinogion: Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed.

We wrote our own scripts to interview the main character, Pwyll and performed our retelling live on the school radio.

#TheMabinogion #Cynefin #DyddGŵylDewi

#Canna have been retelling the first branch of the Mabinogion: Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed.

We wrote our own scripts to interview the main character, Pwyll and performed our retelling live on the school radio.

#TheMabinogion #Cynefin #DyddGŵylDewi

Chris discusses socio-technical systems, complexity in computing, the future of #DevOps practices, how ecological thinking influences technology, & how mapping tools like #Cynefin and a #WardleyMap can help navigate complex environments.

Looking forward to a packed day tomorrow of Dydd Gwyl Dewi- St David’s Day activities- Our Eisteddfod and Chairing of the Bard 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #cynefin #lovewales #cymruambyth

The judges had a difficult job this evening deciding on winners in out St David’s Day competitions - results at our Eisteddfod on Friday #creativity #lovewales #cynefin

M&A: A 12-part series on mergers, acquisitions, and change by Dave Snowden @snowded.bsky.social www.linkedin.com/posts/stanga...
#KM #KnowledgeManagement #Cynefin #mergers #acqusitions #change

A very informative University led Welsh course for our support staff today. #welshskills #cynefin #clustercollaboration

Diolch i Mr Lewis for teaching us all about Miwsig Cymraeg- Welsh Music. Celebrating Dydd Miwsig Cymraeg heddiw-today #cynefin #cymraeg #togetherness

Complexity. It’s not complicated … I’m part of the digital first project, the team that’s looking into new ways of working that will help Scottish Enterprise improve its projects’ performance. One of the things the team is doing is a 12-week training course on Value, Flow, Quality. That probably doesn’t mean much to most people, but basically it’s a methodology we can use to organise ourselves and our work to deliver value to our customers, quickly and flexibly. One of the things we looked at in our first session was why IT and software projects regularly fail (by some measures, only one project in three is successful). This alarming statistic tells us something is very wrong with the way businesses approach these projects. But what? Riding a bike is a complex business Well, it seems the ‘rules of thumb’ we use to make decisions emerged from a manufacturing background. The problem is that, while manufacturing is a _complicated_ business, software development takes place in a _complex_ environment. We use the words complicated and complex almost interchangably, so what do I mean by drawing this distinction? Well, here’s an analogy. ## Making a bike is complicated … To manufacture a bike, you need hundreds of different parts, each engineered to very fine tolerances, which you then assemble in a particular order. So it’s tricky, and you have to get it exactly right every time. But if you stick to the design specification exactly, and follow the correct process you will eventually have built a bike. What’s more, if you repeat the process you will have an absolutely identical bike, every time. ## … but riding a bike is complex As soon as you get on the bike and start pedalling though, things change. Sure, some things are straightforward; you push down on the pedals, the force turns the back wheel and you’re propelled forward. If that were all you were doing it’d be simple. But it’s not. As you ride along you are constantly taking in information about your environment. Is that car going to pull out? Does that energetic-looking dog have a thing about cyclists? I need to turn right ahead. Is there anything behind me? Does that puddle up ahead conceal a wheel-wrecking pothole? As a result of all this information you are constantly adjusting – adjusting your riding position, pulling your brakes, changing direction, anticipating. And the adjustments you make in turn affect other road users – if you swerve to avoid an opening car door, the driver of the bus behind you will also have to take evasive action. The Cynefin model It is from this feedback loop that complexity arises, and which makes complex systems inherently unpredictable. There is no ‘right answer’ you can pin down in advance. Instead, you have to set out on your journey, be vigilant and react quickly to events around you. And accept that things will change. Software development takes place in a similarly complex, almost chaotic environment. New technologies emerge daily, and these technologies can be hugely disruptive, even to established industries. You only have to think about what has happened to booksellers in the last 10 years to see that if companies don’t adapt quickly enough they very quickly get left behind. To compound this, our software projects take place in the context of economic development. Few systems are more complex than an economy. And as events of 2008 showed, complexity in economic systems can very quickly turn chaotic. So we have complexity squared. How can Scottish Enterprise adapt to this and deliver projects that add value for our customers, quickly and responsively, and still achieve value for money? That’s what we’re here to find out. * * * Images from Wikipedia, reused under a Creative Commons licence. * Bicycle courier * Cynefin framework David O'Brien Website | + postsBio I'm a service designer in Scottish Enterprise's unsurprisingly-named service design team. I've been a content designer, editor, UX designer and giant haystacks developer on the web for (gulp) over 25 years. * David O'Brien __Standard accessibility acceptance criteria * David O'Brien __The point of the doing is the doing, not what gets done * David O'Brien __No more cookies for you * David O'Brien __I cycled to work * David O'Brien __The disability myth * David O'Brien __Who are we willing to exclude? * David O'Brien __What do service designers do? * David O'Brien __Good Services Scale: an interactive assessment * David O'Brien __Making our account managers appy * David O'Brien __Show your stripes * David O'Brien __Telling a story * David O'Brien __How to create inclusive personas, without creating inclusive personas * David O'Brien __Go with the flow * David O'Brien __On colours * David O'Brien __Joining the dots from intent to outcome * David O'Brien __On calculating carbon * David O'Brien __Operating in the open * David O'Brien __WCAG 2.2 * David O'Brien __On twitter * David O'Brien __Joining the Federation * David O'Brien __Providing text alternatives for non-text content * David O'Brien __Running an asynchronous retrospective * David O'Brien __Service landscape maps: seeing the bigger picture * David O'Brien __Measuring our carbon output * David O'Brien __On alternatives * David O'Brien __The exporting experience: one year on * David O'Brien __How to create accessible Word documents * David O'Brien __Make the service standard work for you * David O'Brien __How to deliver agile projects to a deadline * David O'Brien __Measuring performance * David O'Brien __What I learned at Service Design in Government 2019 * David O'Brien __A story is the promise of a conversation * David O'Brien __Preparing for Brexit * David O'Brien __You can do things, or you can get things done * David O'Brien __Talk first. Ask for detail later * David O'Brien __Fidelity increases as uncertainty decreases * David O'Brien __A form of conversation * David O'Brien __We need feedback * David O'Brien __What digital transformation really means * David O'Brien __Why users do what they do, when, where, how, and what they do it with * David O'Brien __Towards agile UX * David O'Brien __Designing for mobile first * David O'Brien __Embrace uncertainty * David O'Brien __It’s your first date. Behave … * David O'Brien __Open up * David O'Brien __Making it up * David O'Brien __Love’s the needle, not the North* * David O'Brien __Stop starting. Start finishing * David O'Brien __It’s unexpected. But it’s also unexpectable * David O'Brien __Go on then. Motivate me * David O'Brien __When is a team not a team? * David O'Brien __Faking it * David O'Brien __Why Big Design fails * David O'Brien __Our first live event: the facts and figures * David O'Brien __Personas: fact or fiction? Answer: neither, and both * David O'Brien __Design content first … who would have thought of that? * David O'Brien __Digital first is … what? * David O'Brien __Why accessibility matters * David O'Brien __The problem with pixels … ## Possibly related * Accessibility - Sharing knowledge between organisations * A new life in the unknown * Volunteering * How many people does it take to design and build a service? * How we provided evidence for the Digital First Assessment * Invisible Disabilities

From the archives:

Complexity: it's not complicated

#agile #complexity #cynefin

design.scotentblog.co.uk/complexity-its-not-compl...

solving participants problems: Cynefin illustration by Edwin Stoop (User:Marillion!!62) - [1], CC BY-SA 4.0

What makes attending conferences worthwhile? Some of the most useful conferences are those designed to solve participants' problems.

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#meetings #EventDesign #cynefin #ProblemSolving #eventprofs