Sense-Making Through Uncertainty: Stories, Signals, and Swarms with Dave Snowden

What if the way you lead your family holds the secret to leading organizations through uncertainty? In this episode of Humanity at Scale, host Bruce Temkin speaks with Dave Snowden about complexity leadership and leading under uncertainty. Drawing on complexity science and the Cynefin framework, Dave explains why traditional planning fails in complex adaptive systems and how sense-making in organizations enables better organizational decision-making. From swarm intelligence to narrative at scale, he shares practical approaches to navigating ambiguity, detecting weak signals, and shaping resilient cultures through adaptive systems management rather than rigid transformation. Here are some of the topics that Bruce and Dave explore: How to recognize when your organization is a complex adaptive system The "Do the Next Right Thing" strategy for replacing long-term vision statements Why sense-making is more valuable than perfect information How to leverage informal networks and "rhizomic" organizational structures The critical difference between human abductive thinking and AI inductive thinking How to shape environments where virtue becomes easier and vice becomes harder David Snowden is a leadership strategist and complexity scientist renowned for creating the Cynefin Framework, a decision-making model that helps leaders recognize when problems can be analyzed versus explored in real time. With a background spanning NGOs, technology implementation, and global institutions, Dave has spent decades studying how people and organizations make decisions under uncertainty. Episode Highlights: 00:00 Intro 02:34 From NGOs to Complexity Science: A Career of Variety 04:12 How IBM's Bureaucracy Taught Me to Work Around Systems 11:56 Sense-Making as a Verb: Making Decisions with Sufficiency 12:53 Why Traditional Leadership Training Creates the Wrong Leaders 20:37 Managing Family Like a Complex System: The KPI Myth 27:15 Rhizomic Networks and Entangled Trios: Building Organizational Health 28:04 Well-Placed Interventions Beat Large-Scale Transformations 30:49 AI Accelerates Sense-Making, But Destroys Apprenticeship Paths 34:28 Building Empathy at Scale: Stories, Not Social Media 37:53 Final Wisdom: Leadership Skills, Crew-Based Models, and Going Home 44:18 Key Takeaways & Closing Thoughts Guest Resources: Dave Snowden on LinkedIn:   / dave-snowden-2a93b   Cynefin Company Website: https://thecynefin.co/?srsltid=AfmBOo... Links: Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3NkG3Wi Spotify: https://bit.ly/4rbA0RK YouTube:    • Sense-Making Through Uncertainty: Stories,...