I mentioned Dave Snowden in conversation in the bar last night and someone responded:
“You’re a big fan of his, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
And I realise it’s quite important to say that, because I keep referring to our “ongoing dialogue” in various posts here at Psybertron or on LinkedIn, which might make it look like I’m obsessed by some disagreement with him, but nothing could be further from the truth. Less damned by faint praise than praised by faint damnation, I sincerely hope. So let me put that right.
I’ve been mentioning / following Dave and the progress of his Cynefin “Sense-Making” approach & consulting business since 2002/3.
In later years of my own systems architecting career, when so many management teams have thought they needed to get to grips with “agile transformation” or whatever latest idea / fashion in practice, the question of getting in an independent / external consultant to help has often come up. My record would show my only recommendations in that time have been Dave Snowden (and sometimes Johnnie Moore) – not that anyone has ever taken my advice on that 🙂 Sadly, management consulting choices have become ever more orthodox and formulaic – becoming #PartOfTheProblem in my terms – “no-one ever got fired” for hiring something recognisably big, blue and square (which is ironic given the origins of Dave’s Cynefin business and his variation on the ubiquitous 2×2 grid).
We have no conflict of interest. He’s “doing” nothing wrong IMHO and indeed our agendas are quite independent. Whilst also being a prolific and thoughtful writer Dave’s focus is a business – Cynefin is bigger than a one man show – a business that delivers and gets stuff done. I have massive overlapping areas of interest in terms of real-world content and processes, but my focus is firmly in the direction of more abstract / philosophical understanding of that same scope.
Explicitly, as per our latest LinkedIn exchange yesterday and today, I’m curious and Dave, being busy with his valuable consulting time, has no obligation to humour my curiosity. We’re both imperfect humans with good appreciation of our individual strengths and weaknesses (and objectives). I’m simply curious why, given very little to disagree about in approach to our complex systems space, Dave hangs on so tightly to the word “science”?
It takes two to obsess 🙂
=====