A leader's framework for decision making. A leader's framework for decision making.

Many executives are surprised when previously successful leadership approaches fail in new situations, but different contexts call for different kinds of responses. Before addressing a situation, leaders need to recognize which context governs it -and tailor their actions accordingly. Snowden and Boone have formed a new perspective on leadership and decision making that's based on complexity science. The result is the Cynefin framework, which helps executives sort issues into five contexts: Simple contexts are characterized by stability and cause-and-effect relationships that are clear to everyone. Often, the right answer is self-evident. In this realm of "known knowns," leaders must first assess the facts of a situation -that is, "sense" it -then categorize and respond to it. Complicated contexts may contain multiple right answers, and though there is a clear relationship between cause and effect, not everyone can see it. This is the realm of "known unknowns." Here, leaders must sense, analyze, and respond. In a complex context, right answers can't be ferreted out at all; rather, instructive patterns emerge if the leader conducts experiments that can safely fail. This is the realm of "unknown unknowns," where much of contemporary business operates. Leaders in this context need to probe first, then sense, and then respond. In a chaotic context, searching for right answers is pointless. The relationships between cause and effect are impossible to determine because they shift constantly and no manageable patterns exist. This is the realm of unknowables (the events of September 11, 2001, fall into this category). In this domain, a leader must first act to establish order, sense where stability is present, and then work to transform the situation from chaos to complexity. The fifth context, disorder, applies when it is unclear which of the other four contexts is predominant. The way out is to break the situation into its constituent parts and assign each to one of the other four realms. Leaders can then make decisions and intervene in contextually appropriate ways.

Multi-ontology sense making: a new simplicity in decision making.

Imagine organising a birthday party for a group of young children. Would you agree a set of learning objectives with their parents in advance of the party? Would those objectives be aligned with the mission statement for education in the society to which you belong? Would you create a project plan for the party with clear milestones associated with empirical measures of achievement? Would you start the party with a motivational video so that the children did not waste time in play not aligned with the learning objectives? Would you use PowerPoint to demonstrate to the children that their pocket money is linked to achievement of the empirical measures at each milestone? Would you conduct an after-action review at the end of the party, update your best practice database and revise standard operating procedures for party management? No! Instead, like most parents, you would create barriers to prevent certain types of behaviour, you would use attractors (party games, a football, a videotape) to encourage the formation of beneficial largely self-organising identities; you would disrupt negative patterns early, to prevent the party becoming chaotic, or necessitating the draconian imposition of authority. At the end of the party you would know whether it had been a success, but you could not have defined (in other than the most general terms) what that success would look like in advance.

Intramolecular carbolithiation reactions of chiral alpha-amino-organolithium species.

Enantiomerically enriched alpha-amino-organolithium species, in which the lithium atom is attached to a stereogenic carbon centre, have been found to be chemically stable at room temperature in a solvent of very low polarity and undergo intramolecular carbolithiation onto an unactivated alkene. The configurational stability of the chiral organolithium species, bearing a variety of N-alkenyl substituents, was probed by studying the enantiomeric purity of the cyclization products. With N-but-3-enyl-2-lithiopyrrolidine, cyclization to the five-membered ring is more rapid than racemization and a high yield of the pyrrolizidine alkaloid (+)-pseudoheliotridane was obtained with no loss of optical purity. In contrast, with N-pent-4-enyl-2-lithiopyrrolidine, cyclization to the six-membered ring was found to occur with significant loss of optical purity. The cyclization to the six-membered ring was determined to occur with a half-life, t(1/2) approximately 90 min at 23 degrees C. The epimerization of this organolithium species in hexane/Et2O 4:1 was calculated to have a half-life, t(1/2) approximately 30 min at 23 degrees C. Enhanced levels of enantioselectivity for the formation of the indolizidine ring system were obtained using an alkene bearing a terminal phenylthio substituent. With N-[(3-phenylthio)-prop-2-enyl]-2-lithiopyrrolidine, cyclization to the four-membered ring occurs with poor enantioselectivity at low temperature in THF but is highly enantioselective at room temperature in a solvent of very low polarity.