Cognitive Edge is focused on rejuvenating management practices to better equip organisations when addressing intractable problems or seizing new opportunities in uncertain and complex situations. Where traditional approaches have failed to deliver success, Cognitive Edge techniques enable the emergence of fresh and insightful solutions seen from multiple perspectives.

Cognitive Edge solutions, comprised of open source methods, original research and the Cognitive Edge SenseMaker® Software Suite, are delivered through the Cognitive Edge Network. The Cognitive Edge Network is a widely dispersed, cohesive Network of experienced professionals in private and public sector organisations from diverse disciplines with deep-rooted experience in both business and science. It includes academics and practitioners, in house and commercial consultants. Membership of the Network is attained through participation in an Accreditation programme.

The Cognitive Edge SenseMaker® Software Suite provides a set of tools designed to enable informed decision making in organisations using both structured and unstructured data in a common environment. The Suite is fully integrated with a coherent body of formal methods is the outcome of several years of research into human based organizational complexity, sensemaking, decision making, knowledge sharing and narrative.

 Leading through Complexity: A new simplicity

Theme

The challenge of doing more with less is ever present in both the public and private sectors.  In the 1980s the big idea was process management and re-engineering, replacing the functionally orientated structures of the preceding decades.  Over the years those ideas have achieved significant results, but they no longer offer the opportunity for radical and progressive change and are in danger of becoming over extended and over complicated.

Complexity theory, dealing with systems that are inherently uncertain and unpredictable, is emerging as a radical new way to:

  • focus on sustainability, using the natural capabilities of customers, citizens and staff;
  • shift from fail-safe design to a more flexible and adaptive process of safe-fail experiments leading to more resilient outcomes;
  • use the distributed intelligence of workforces and markets to transform decision making and achieve long term effectiveness.
  • see strategy as a constantly evolving articulation of emergent possibilities, shorting decision cycles, increasing robustness;
  • understand the new simplicity inherent in an ecological approach to management

Who should attend

  • Executives in the public and private sector who need to understand the theory and the application of new approaches to strategy;
  • Academics interesting in complexity theory and its application. In particular approaches not dependent on modeling but on insights from the cognitive sciences; and
  • Participants in Cognitive Edge accreditation programmes wanting to understand (or refresh their understanding) of the core theory and also to understand and learn to apply advanced methods.

 Programme 

  • An outline of complexity theory, its nature, key features and history
  • Complexity in human systems, questions of intentionality and intent, limitations of models
  • A framework for decision making and its application to strategy and problem resolution 
  • What can be managed in a complex system?  How can its evolution be influenced?
  • Stimulating innovation and managing disruptive change in organisations
  • Using networks to handle intractable problems and create novel solutions and approaches

Outcomes

By the end of the seminar delegates will:

  • Achieve an understanding of complexity theory to the point where they can explain its implications within their own organisations;
  • Acquire a set of methods (supported by documentation from Cognitive Edge) to apply that learning in practice;
  • Attain the ability to determine the boundaries between the application of process management and complexity techniques.

Tutor

Dave Snowden is the founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge. His work covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy and organisational decision making.  He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complexity.

Well known for his work on the role of narrative and sense making, he is an entertaining speaker and a formidable realist, and one of the few thought leaders who can bring together the academic and practitioner perspectives into a single, comprehensible purview.

His Harvard Business Review cover article with Mary Boone A Leader's Framework for Decision-making, was selected as the 2007 Best Practitioner Paper by the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management. 

Upcoming dates and details for this course:

 http://cognitive-edge.com/calendar-seminars.php