Vector Theory of Change

The Cynefin framework, created in 1999, divides the world into complex, complicated, obvious, and chaotic relationships .

Cynefin framework

My RSS reader recently handed me The Vector Theory of Change, an expansion on the way to interact with complex systems, probe-sense-respond.

I really like the way this model is different, it skews the traditional thinking about how we interact with the world. Instead of some unachievable goal to be controlled into existence, we have a directional unfolding of possibility.

Our mental image of how we interact with the world is not wrong. It’s a case of Yes and. We need to tell stories about all the ways of interacting. Since most of the stories we have are ones of direct control, what would a new story of directionality look like?