Beyond Cynefin: How CIRCA Helps Leaders Make Sense of Today’s Complexity

In 2007, David Snowden and Mary Boone published a groundbreaking article in Harvard Business Review titled “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making.” It introduced the Cynefin framework to a wider audience—offering a way to categorise different types of problems and match them with the right decision-making approach.

It was a timely gift. The world was already showing signs of deepening complexity. The financial crisis was just beginning to unfold. Digital transformation was on the rise. Organizations were wrestling with the limits of traditional, linear thinking. I was attempting to make sense of complex programs and strategic initiatives.

But here we are, nearly two decades later. And the ground has shifted again.

We’re not just facing a more complex world—we’re living in it.

AI is redefining how we work. Supply chains are globally entangled. Trust—both inside and outside our organisations—is fragile. The tempo of change has gone from unsettling to relentless. And the emotional and cultural undercurrents in organisations are no longer ignorable.

That’s why I developed CIRCA.

If Cynefin maps the terrain, CIRCA senses the turbulence.

Cynefin remains a vital tool. It helps us understand what kind of system we’re operating in:

Obvious – clear cause/effect, follow best practices
Complicated – expert diagnosis required
Complex – emergent outcomes, probe–sense–respond
Chaotic – act to stabilise, then sense and respond
Confused/Disorder – when you don’t know which domain you’re in

But while Cynefin tells you what kind of problem you’re facing, it doesn’t tell you how the system is feeling—or why certain interventions stall, backfire, or never take off.

That’s where CIRCA comes in.

CIRCA: A Lens on Why It Feels So Hard

CIRCA stands for five interconnected system dynamics I see time and again in organisations struggling with change:

Complex – messy, interdependent, emergent
Insecure – uncertain, ambiguous, fragile
Rapid – volatile, high-velocity
Contradictory – full of competing signals and demands
Anxious – emotionally charged, culturally strained

While Cynefin helps classify the type of challenge, CIRCA helps diagnose the conditions and climate surrounding it.

So yes—your product strategy might sit in the Complex domain. But if your teams are also Insecure (due to layoffs, unclear vision, shifting leadership), and your culture is Anxious, then no amount of probing will yield value—unless you also address what’s in the water, not just what’s on the map.

This is the gap CIRCA-CLEAR fills.

To lead in complexity, you don’t just need the right decision posture—you need the right leadership behaviour.

That’s where CIRCA-CLEAR comes in: it’s the human-centred response layer to CIRCA’s diagnostic lens. Each CLEAR capability maps to one of the CIRCA conditions:

Clarity – for navigating Complexity
Learning – to reduce Insecurity
Empathy – to stay grounded during Rapid change
Agility – to embrace Contradiction
Resilience – to support people through Anxiety

These are not soft skills. They’re survival skills for systems under stress.

They allow leaders to go beyond process and posture, to create the conditions where Cynefin-informed decisions can actually take root.

Why this matters now

Back in 2007, the HBR article warned leaders not to apply ordered thinking to unordered problems. It encouraged experimentation in complexity, decisive action in chaos, and pattern recognition over prediction.

Today, the stakes are even higher. The volume, velocity, and emotional load of change has grown exponentially.

What CIRCA + CLEAR offers is a complementary upgrade:

CIRCA deepens your diagnosis—emotionally, relationally, culturally.
CLEAR strengthens your response—adaptively, humanely, systemically.

Together with Cynefin, they help leaders not just survive uncertainty, but lead through it in ways that build trust, capability, and long-term adaptability.

Final thought

If Cynefin helps you ask “What kind of system am I in?”,
CIRCA encourages you to ask “Why does it feel like this?”
And CLEAR helps you answer “What kind of leader do I need to be?”

In 2007, understanding complexity was an edge. In 2025, it’s a baseline.
How you lead through it? That’s your differentiator.

Let’s stop designing for what used to work, and start building leadership fit for what is.

I am currently developing my book, Ingenious Agility, which delves into twelve core themes of organizational agility. Each theme is explored through incisive questions that probe the cultural, operational, and strategic dimensions of agility. Central to this exploration is the evolving CIRCA model, which offers a framework for understanding and advancing organizational adaptability.

The book is designed to equip leaders with the insights needed to architect organizations that not only withstand chaos but also foster ingenuity and sustained innovation. To bridge theory and practice, I ground these insights in real-world case studies—such as Microsoft’s DevOps transformation, which highlights the power of cultural change and cross-team collaboration, and Haier’s pioneering microenterprise model, which demonstrates how structural innovation can unleash entrepreneurial energy at scale. Through these examples, Ingenious Agility provides actionable guidance for leaders seeking to create organizations that thrive amid uncertainty and drive meaningful, lasting change.

NEIL WALKER