Lately, I have been working on using the Cynefin framework to help a client with supply chain risk management. I’m not going to dig into the specifics here, but I wanted to share a quick workflow that we used during this process that has been very useful for us.

Risk Matrix

First, we built a risk matrix for supply chain risk. Basically, there are a number of these available via the various search engines. We took some of the most common ones and tore them down to commonalities, then built them into our matrix. We turned this into a simple spreadsheet.

Heat Mapping

Next, once we had our risk matrix, we did an exercise where we heat mapped the various risks, scoring them high/medium/low subjectively. This gave us an excellent tool to monitor our situation and communicate it with our stakeholders.

Applying Cynefin

Next, we mapped all of the high risks into the cynefin framework by researching the present state of each, whether best practices were available and relevant, being developed, or still in the experimental stage. This gave us a good idea of which problems we could simply focus on using known techniques and skills against, which ones we needed to take existing decent practices and optimize them, and which problems we needed to experiment with solutions for.

Sharing and Feedback

Overall, the exercise took around an hour to complete once we compiled the basic templates and completed the risk matrix research. For those of you facing complex risk management problems, this workflow might assist. Let me know on social media (@lbhuston) if it provides any help or if you have suggestions and feedback. Thanks for reading!