Theory U / Cynefin / OODA / Polymath Manuals (Simmons & Pagan)
24 terms across 7 themes — every definition in the Atlas sourced from this manual, with executive examples and counter-moves.
A problem whose solution requires people to change their values, beliefs, or habits — not just apply expertise.
What an environment offers an actor for action — handles to grip, surfaces to sit on, paths to follow.
Start from the desired future and work backward to the steps that make it inevitable.
A conversational discipline where participants suspend assumptions and inquire collectively into meaning.
Map reinforcing (R) and balancing (B) feedback loops between variables to see system behavior.
Sort situations into Clear, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, or Confused — each needs a different response.
Single-loop fixes the action. Double-loop questions the goal or model that produced it.
Forcing yourself to explain a concept reveals exactly where your understanding is hollow.
Tools, notebooks, and trusted others are literally part of your cognitive system — not just aids to it.
A solution works in the short run and creates a worse version of the original problem in the long run.
Downloading → factual → empathic → generative. Most conversations stop at level one.
The deepest level of listening — where new possibility emerges that neither party brought into the room.
Below visible events sit patterns, structures, and mental models — each layer more leveraged than the last.
Behaviors you can't change are usually protecting a hidden, competing commitment.
We climb from raw data to action through selection, meaning-making, and assumption — usually invisibly.
Stacking two or three rare-but-learnable skills until the combination becomes uniquely valuable.
Sensing the highest future possibility and acting from it — the bottom of Scharmer's U.
A quick fix relieves the symptom but atrophies the system's capacity to address the real cause.
A combination of complementary skills that produces compounding advantage greater than the sum of parts.
Otto Scharmer's U-shaped process for moving from habitual response to sensing what wants to emerge.
Earned authority from publishing original frameworks that other operators adopt as their own.
H1 (managing the present) + H2 (transition mechanisms) + H3 (transformative futures) held simultaneously.
Old systems decline as new ones emerge in parallel; leaders steward both, not just kill the old or chase the new.
Plot value chain components against their evolution from genesis to commodity — strategy becomes visible.