WRAS (Weaving Risk & Strategy Framework)

WRAS Development

• First version was the Risk Matrix which uses granularity of intervention and management of emergence as its primary axis
• New risk/strategy framework
  • Cynefin Complex/Ordered boundary (red curve)
  • Strategy in each space (orange diagonals)
  • Aporia surrounds strategic choices
    • If strategy is at the extreme end, may need to go to the Aporetic domain to revisit situation and assess risk

• Behaviour is an emergent property of interactions over time
  • It only has causality when it becomes habituated (and social habituation is key)
• The future is complex and inherently uncertain, but it does have regularities that create predictability in part
• Advocacy is not the same thing as action
• It's never about individual decision making, other than in narcissistic situations
• Risk in strategy is personal risk, not corporate risk
  • Personal context is usually the first filter used to evaluate change
    • WIIFM–What’s In It For Me?
  • Executives reduce their risk by doing what everybody else has done or buy what big consultants tell them to do
  • Pathways which are lowest risk to the executives become the lowest risk to the company as well
• Time and energy are primary in everything

Directed** strategy

• Labelled “Traditional” in earlier Risk Matrix
• Strategy is high level (coarse grained) and based on C Suite belief “It’s the right thing to do”
  • Example: Ford overhauls assembly lines to build EVs
• Cynefin Complicated strategy planned by experts predicting the emergence of set objectives, goals, targets
• Strategy process normally takes about one or two years to plan, sell, implement (lots of consultations, meetings, etc.)
• Top-down approach focuses on controlling deviations that surface in the Clear domain
  • Minimal desire to shift to Aporia to visit assumptions
  • “Get the derailed train back on track”
• Preferably use MassSense for continuous feedback rather than biased weekly project status meetings

Opportunistic** strategy

• Key here is seizing the opportunity that natural emergence affords
• Still at a high level (coarse grained) but more deliberate focus on a specific trend or idea taking shape in the environment (ie. substrate)
  • Example: Coffee trends emerging in 2025
• Strategy execution is the Cynefin Dynamics Explore-Exploit Blue Loop to deal with uncertainties that may emerge
  • Note how the Complex/Complicated boundary in red cuts across
• Operational Human sensor network used to mitigate risk
  • Employees, customers, suppliers
  • External experts (Pulitzer Institute journalists, University doctoral student)
  • Build paid libraries of sensor networks to test and monitor for emergence
  • Trigger alerts when an idea has been taken too far (i.e., unintended negative consequences)
    • Exit to Aporia to assess the strategy and associated risks
• Develop AI training set prior to WRAS workshop
  • Research projects in the past which have product/strategy successes or failures
  • Don't actually look at the problem as a whole but break up into key incidences
  • Present the data to people who don't know the outcome (naive agents)
  • In Sensemaker, index to generate a training data set
• Use AI as anticipatory trigger
  • Use that with an algorithm to monitor incoming data from people's daily reports
  • Trigger an alert when a pattern of micro reports matches a pattern of micro reports on a previous success to spot emerging opportunities
  • Good use of AI
    • Build anticipation into the system
    • Know what the training data sets were constructed around
• Fractal strategy
  • Might be grand strategy from a country
  • Might be organizational change for a department
  • It doesn't really make much difference since problems are very similar

Hypotheses strategy

• Classic Probe-Sense-Respond method to make sense of unknown unknowns, discover hidden patterns
• Identify all coherent hypothesis and launch safe-to-fail experiments in parallel
  • Also resolve conflict between hunches by learning what happens
• Liminal zone near Complex/Complicated boundary tests novel solutions before implementing in the Order system
• Aporia visited if Cynefin Dynamics Purple Loop path is more coherent for the substrate

Distributed strategy

• Continually detecting weak signals of pending danger and serendipity which naturally and unexpectedly emerge out of the unknown
• Not trying to guess what's the right thing to do but seeing what actually worked at scale
  • Hypothesize what substrate conditions to change
  • Amplify the good and dampen the bad things
• Creates a dynamic environment in which strategy itself will emerge from that substrate
• So instead of launching a Directed strategy built on C-suite beliefs, start small in Distributed and then go to Directed with an emergent strategy
  • Note the Complex/Complicated boundary cutting across
    • Don't know in advance what is the right thing to do in Complex
    • Once unknown unknown is discovered, have the knowledge to execute in the Complicated
  • Cheaper, easier, faster, and more reliable than Directed

• A “waiting for it to happen” strategy is to activate distributed cognition offered by humans either in a high state of awareness or triggered by machine sensors
  • In aviation safety, this is the space where sensors detect pending danger
  • Click here for explanation of coral zone on the Clear side of the Clear/Chaotic boundary
• Aporia visited to make sense of information gathered by diverse and welcomed contradictory perspectives
• Small teams (eg. entangled trios,), maybe 5-7) assembled with enabling constraints
  • Determine what combination of roles based on historical cases is the most effective at making decisions without reference to higher authority
  • Reduce bureaucratic inefficiency
    • Introduce self-regulated ethics and accountability with anonymous participation/unseen observer (Panopticon Effect)
    • Trust team to spend small amounts of money without actually asking for approval to find out what works and doesn't work
  • Apply abductive reasoning to probe specific bets on anomalies close in time and distance (proximity)