Planning the future based on a Sense Making Framework

This paper introduces a sense making framework to facilitate examination and analysis of the issues in strategic thinking. We propose new mind set according to Complex Adaptive Systems (CASs) that does not negate the importance of the traditional approaches to planning for the future, but invites a reexamination of issues that organizations will face in near or far future. With the Cynefin framework we can locate strategic issues in five kinds of phenomenological space. Known and knowable issues are in the realm of the ordered that have observable cause and effect relationships. Complex and chaotic issues are in the unordered domain which is a kind of order that differs from disorder that is in the fifth space of the framework. We have found that Cynefin framework gives strategic thinkers powerful new constructs which can be used to make sense of a wide range of issues that organizations will see in the future. It also helps people to break out of old ways of thinking and consider intractable issues in new ways. According to this framework, we suggest decision models and techniques that are applicable in each of framework spaces.

Keywords:

Strategic thinking , strategic planning , complex adaptive system , Sense Making , chaos , Un-order