1-Complexity: Revolutionizing Decision-Making & Strategy with David Snowden Workshop,

Step into a new era of strategic thinking with Professor David Snowden's groundbreaking insights into Complexity Theory, recorded live during his intensive workshop at Alfaisal University from June 16-18, 2025. This session fundamentally challenges traditional, linear approaches to decision-making and organizational strategy, asserting that in complex adaptive systems, unintended consequences are guaranteed with any intervention, and true understanding of all connections is often impossible.
Professor Snowden, drawing on his diverse background in physics, philosophy, and extensive work with entities like the CIA, IBM, and the Singapore government, unveils a robust, natural science-based framework for navigating uncertainty. He dissects the critical flaws of conventional rational decision-making, revealing how inattentional blindness and rapid, first-fit pattern matching based on partial data often lead to missed critical information, even by experts.
Discover how to effectively inform decision-making and organizational strategies by:
• Embracing Obliquity and Context-Specific Solutions: Learning to solve complex human problems indirectly, as seen in addressing childhood obesity by making children journalists, and tailoring interventions to unique local contexts, recognizing that what works in one environment will not work in another.
• Leveraging Distributed Intelligence: Utilizing an organization's own employees as a real-time sensor network for mass consultation, asking "what's happening here?" and "what do you think will happen next?" to gain multiple perspectives and spot anomalies. This approach recognizes the far greater importance of informal networks built on trust, especially in crises.
• Managing Emergent Patterns: Observing and, if beneficial, amplifying patterns that naturally arise from interactions within the system. Strategic interventions should align with the dispositional state of the system, waiting for narratives to indicate readiness for change rather than forcing it.
• Fostering Alignment through Negative Stories and Simple Heuristics: Cultivating organizational coherence by agreeing on what not to be—a more effective strategy than striving for often platitudinous, utopian goals. Simple "rule switches" or heuristics can produce radical changes in behavior, akin to how antelopes protect their herd.
• Applying the AIMS Framework: Understanding the only manageable elements in a complex system – Actants (human and non-human agents), Interactions (local and rich connections), Monitors (continuous observation systems), and Scaffolding (stable structures like rules or rituals) – to focus interventions effectively and spot novelty. Rituals, as constructors, are highlighted as powerful tools that transform perception and identity, influencing what information people scan.
This workshop offers invaluable insights for leaders, strategists, and practitioners across all sectors, from counterterrorism and weak signal detection in day-to-day narratives to transforming healthcare systems and enhancing international development. Learn to move beyond simplistic recipes to become a 'chef' of strategy, equipped with both theoretical and practical wisdom to navigate our increasingly complex world.