Working with Complexity: A Deeper Dive into Cynefin Model

The Cynefin framework, developed by Dave Snowden, is one of the most useful thinking tools available for navigating complexity, yet it's often introduced only at a surface level.

This session goes deeper.

We'll move beyond the classic five-domain overview to explore how Cynefin can inform real decisions about facilitation, strategy, and organizational change, and sit with some of the framework's more challenging and generative edges.

Marc Delesclefs works at the intersection of complexity science, sensemaking, and organizational change. He is the founder of Les clefs de la complexité conseil, a Montréal-based practice grounded in the belief that the most important thing a consultant or facilitator can do is distribute sensemaking agency, rather than be the one who understands the system on everyone else's behalf.

Marc teaches Systems Thinking and Modelling at McGill's School of Continuing Studies and is currently completing his MA in Human Systems Intervention at Concordia. His career has taken him from billion-pound cycling infrastructure at Transport for London to bike-share equity strategy in North America to digital learning leadership at McGill, and to a practitioner's relationship with Cynefin built through years of applying it in genuinely messy contexts.

The Brown Bag Lunch Research Series is offered by the Department of Applied Human Sciences in collaboration with the Centre for Human Flourishing. These sessions are opportunities for faculty researchers to discuss an issue, topic or area on which they are working. At each session, there will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

Bring your own lunch. Light refreshments will be served. Support environmental sustainability and bring your own mug.