Cynefin Framework - Free Template

Inside you'll find the full Cynefin landscape on one page: the four domains you can act in - Clear, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic - laid out as terrain, with height standing for how ordered and knowable each situation is. Each domain carries its guiding question and its way of acting, from "sense, categorise, respond" in the Clear domain to "act, sense, respond" in the Chaotic one. The fog of Disorder sits in the middle, where you don't yet know which domain you're in. The cliff between Clear and Chaotic is marked - the catastrophic edge where complacency tips a settled situation into crisis. A quick-reference summary card distils when to use each domain and the traps to avoid.

Start by writing down one real decision, then ask the single sorting question: do we genuinely understand cause and effect here, or are we guessing? That answer alone tells you whether you're on ordered or unordered ground. Resist the pull to treat everything as Complicated and reach for a plan - many of the hardest problems are Complex and need small experiments instead. Use it with the group rather than alone; the arguments about where a problem belongs are where the real understanding happens. Keep an eye on anything you've filed under Clear and stopped thinking about - that's where the cliff is. And remember the framework sorts the situation; the decision is still yours to make.