Leadership emergence: the application of the Cynefin framework during a bio-social HIV/AIDS risk-reduction pilot.

This article focuses on the utility of a knowledge management heuristic called the Cynefin framework, which was applied during an ongoing pilot intervention in the Limpopo province, South Africa. The intervention aimed to identify and then consolidate low-cost, innovative bio-social responses to reinforce the biomedical opportunities that now have the potential to "end AIDS by 2030″. The Cynefin framework is designed to enable leaders to identify specific decision-making domain typologies as a mechanism to maximise the effectiveness of leadership responses to both opportunities and challenges that emerge during interventions. In this instance the Cynefin framework was used to: (1) provide an indication to the project managers whether the early stages of the intervention had been effective; (2) provide the participants an opportunity to identify emergent knowledge action spaces (opportunities and challenges); and (3) categorise them into appropriate decision-making domains in preparation for the next phases of the intervention. A qualitative methodology was applied to collect and analyse the findings. The findings indicate that applying the Cynefin framework enabled the participants to situate knowledge action spaces into appropriate decision-making domains. From this participatory evaluation a targeted management strategy was developed for the next phases of the initiative. The article concludes by arguing that the Cynefin framework was an effective mechanism for situating emergent knowledge action spaces into appropriate decision-making domains, which enabled them to prepare for the next phases of the intervention. This process of responsive decision making could have utility in other development related interventions.

Complex adaptive HIV/AIDS risk reduction: Plausible implications from findings in Limpopo Province, South Africa.

This article emphasises that when working with complex adaptive systems it is possible to stimulate new social practices and/or cognitive perspectives that contribute to risk reduction, associated with reducing aggregate community viral loads. The process of achieving this is highly participatory and is methodologically possible because evidence of 'attractors' that influence the social practices can be identified using qualitative research techniques. Using findings from Limpopo Province, South Africa, we argue that working with 'wellness attractors' and increasing their presence within the HIV/AIDS landscape could influence aggregate community viral loads. While the analysis that is presented is unconventional, it is plausible that this perspective may hold potential to develop a biosocial response - which the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) has called for - that reinforces the biomedical opportunities that are now available to achieve the ambition of ending AIDS by 2030.