Timo: I do not have one particular thing I want to advance, and I am guided more by my interests. I have been guided by team coaching and a general desire to help people work together, and perhaps even tolerate each other, better. I also find learning new things and meeting interesting people fascinating.
Joonas: I am still looking for my own place on the path of professional life. At the moment I am interested in learning to understand prevailing situations from the perspective of "what can I do myself". I am also interested in the sustainable development goals, which I try to advance in my own everyday life as well.
How did you end up working with Cynefin?Timo: I have been interested in systems thinking and wholes, and my particular passion has been building systems, promoting entrepreneurship and generally helping to get things off the ground.
Through team coaching I entered the world of systems thinking, and the book Complex Adaptive Leadership took me into complexity thinking, where I was particularly interested in its intersection with the natural sciences. What has struck me about complexity is that it is grounded in physics; Newtonian physics is this normal life of ours, and quantum physics is the complex world where there are no causal relationships. At some point I found Snowden's article, and Cynefin resonated like hell even though I barely understood it at the time.
The most significant thing with Cynefin was when I ran into Heikki Turkka and Julia Saarholm from Aseman Lapset, and I presented to them the Cynefin framework I had just discovered, whereupon Heikki said "You just explained my work! My last 20 years!".
After this encounter I started team coaching them, and at some point we went to London to the Foundations course to learn what this really means. This also included an online course, which we worked through admirably thanks to Joonas, and because of this we set off on a shared Cynefin journey, which of course is still in its early stages.
Joonas: For me this happened largely through the online course Timo mentioned, when we started exploring the subject more closely in a space important to us, The Study, where we lined the walls with flip charts, watched videos and had dialogue. We have now started the course three times, and every time new things and perspectives emerge from it. You always learn something new, and that is why I find Cynefin really interesting.
Why was the Topaasia deck Sense-making made and what is it intended for?
Timo: The idea was largely to make terms related to complex systems and Cynefin familiar. In my view, the deck is an interesting way to make things related to complexity visible and available to savour together, which I think can lead to things starting to show up differently in people's practices.
Joonas: Exactly. For enabling the handling of things related to sense-making. The wordings on the cards are the kind that dig into things a little deeper.
Timo: Also for making visible the not-so-certain, contradictory and messy-feeling things.
Why are the deck's four suits specifically Crisis Management, Contradictions between beliefs and reality, Innovation, and Order?Joonas: These come largely from Cynefin. Causality is order, innovation is complexity, crisis management is the chaotic domain, and contradictions between beliefs and reality is the centre of Cynefin, where we are in the world of confusion and aporia.
Joonas: Now that I have had the chance to play with the deck, my own favourite theme has become the contradictions between beliefs and reality, and I have noticed that the statements in that theme are particularly arresting for me.
Where can you hear more about Sense-making?
- WATCH THE RECORDING OF THE LIVE STREAM HELD ON 25 MARCH HERE
- Try the new Sense-Making deck free of charge in Topaasia for 14 days.