No. 10, Parliament, BREXIT and the Chaotic Domain!

No-one who has been watching parliamentary events play out this week can be in doubt that we are “living in interesting times” – or to put it more bluntly in a state of chaos!

In this state, there is no “play-book”, there is no linear “if this then that” or reliable “Cause & Effect”, strategies and tactics that worked before won’t work now – the world is truly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). There are very few approaches that can work – one of which is to Act – Sense – Respond in quick-time.

Anyone who has been following these blogs will recall that we introduced a framework for understanding which Domain any Real-world System and its surrounding Environment inhabits  – namely the CYNEFIN framework. See: https://blogs.cranfield.ac.uk/leadership-management/cbp/why-mrs-mays-tactics-are-as-likely-as-any-to-work-in-the-current-brexit-chaos-and-the-cynefin-framework

We can see the Act – Sense – Respond loops being played out before our very eyes in real time on our mobile phones. The one thing we can be certain of is that the UK and British politics will be changed forever one we get out of this Chaotic State!

So in your organisation, in which States are your Business Systems/Business Processes and associated Environments – Simple? Complicated? Complex? Chaotic? You better know otherwise you’ll be employing strategies and tactics that may work in one Domain, but don’t work (or even make things worse) in the Domain you are actually in!

And right now, it’s not at all clear, despite the brainpower in the shape of Dominic Cummins et al in No. 10, that the Government knows it is in the Chaotic State! But then, how would we know?