The letter carrier was late today, but when she arrived she delivered a long-awaited Harvard Business Review. It’s the issue with Dave Snowden & Mary Boone‘s article on the Cynefin, titled “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making.” (The current issue, November 2007 isn’t online yet. I’ll post a link when it is.)

I have seen the framework in various forms since early 2001/2002 and participated in accreditation workshops, and have shared it widely (most recently in my own book Net Work). Recognition from HBR now puts the work into the mainstream, which means that the language of the domain contexts of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic may now be spoken more widely.

The Cynefin framework* is there in a stylized HBR style image, along with a great “cheat sheet” that attempts to make the complex simple in describing for each of the contexts its characteristics, how leaders should behave in that context, danger signals when it may be time to shift the context, and how to respond to those danger signals.

(*For a quick and simple explanation of the Cynefin framework, see Shawn Callahan’s guest blog entry on the Cognitive Edge site.)

Congrats, Dave and Mary. What an accomplishment!