I’ve never been a big fan of the phrase “best practice.” It’s too transactional—like there is one right answer waiting on a shelf. Our social sector work is rarely that simple. It’s rooted in people, place, and ever-shifting conditions. What works beautifully in one organization or community might fall flat in another.
This past winter, we launched a new nonprofit curriculum for Whitworth University. As we designed the curriculum, I kept asking: What exactly are we preparing nonprofit leaders for? Participants are navigating shifting policies, staffing challenges, and crises that don’t fit neat templates. The context of our times needed to drive the content we would explore.
A touchstone throughout the creation of this new program was the Cynefin (kuh-NEV-in) Framework developed by Dave Snowden. Cynefin is a sense-making model that reminds us that not all challenges are created equal. While some are clear-cut, most of what our organizations face is shaped by timing, politics, relationships, and context. The right response depends not on a universal answer, but on an interpretation of cause and effect and how a response might play out.
Our job as educators is to prepare people for real-world challenges. It is not to hand over a fixed playbook but to help people build the skills needed to act wisely when the path may be unclear. Consider these four ideas:
1. Teach frameworks, not formulas.
Different people in different contexts make sense of challenges in different ways. I commonly offer multiple lenses for understanding a problem—not just a single path to solving it. I then invite participants to choose the lens that fits their work, their context, their moment. I enjoy seeing the range of perspectives that emerge when people focus on what they need to be thinking about right now.
2. Build the skill of discernment.
One of the most powerful tools we can give social sector leaders is the ability to pause and ask: What kind of challenge am I facing? Cynefin offers four categories to help make that call:
- Clear: Is this a straightforward situation with an obvious solution? Apply best practices and follow established procedures.
- Complicated: Is expert input or analysis needed to uncover the right path? Bring in data or outside perspective to guide decisions.
- Complex: Are cause and effect unclear, and outcomes unpredictable? Try small experiments, observe what happens, and adapt based on what you learn.
- Chaotic: Is the situation unstable or rapidly unfolding, where action must be immediate? Act quickly to contain the crisis—then make sense of it afterward.
We can create space in which others (learners, board members, colleagues) engage in this discernment. We can build their capacity for sense-making, pattern recognition, decision-making, and change management. Too often, workshops involve an expert delivering information. Sense-making and skill building is what will stick over time.
3. Encourage learning loops
We are living in a time shaped by disruption. COVID exposed how fragile many systems already were. Now, with shifting federal priorities, funding uncertainties, and evolving community needs, nonprofit leaders are navigating challenges that are complex or even chaotic.
When we get it right, we make learning possible in motion—not fixed in place, but responsive and evolving. Instead of fixed answers we lower barriers to experimentation. We can:
- Name small, safe-to-try actions so learners don’t have to invent them from scratch.
- Provide discussion guides that turn those actions into team conversations.
- Equip leaders with questions that help them see patterns, reactions, or insights within the system in which they operate.
In Cynefin terms, we’re helping learners probe or act, then sense and respond. That sequence—where understanding follows action—is a new muscle we can help them exercise.
4. Connect with systems
When I sat down to create a lesson on volunteer management for our Whitworth course, I first thought about the usual lessons about the HR cycle: recruitment, engagement, support, etc. But what do we teach people to do in a time when national trends show a decline in volunteering? We must get more creative and design lessons about motivation, life stage recruitment, and work expectations. Read the room and respond appropriately.
Effective learning responds to the broader systems that shape nonprofit work—workforce changes, civic engagement patterns, policy shifts, economic forces. It also points to solutions beyond any one organization: networks, coalitions, and associations that create shared infrastructure. When we teach with systems in view, leaders begin to see not just what’s working for them—but how they might respond in coordination with others.
Design for the world we live in
The Cynefin Framework helps us design for the world in which we live—not by offering one solution, but by building our collective capacity to recognize the nature of a challenge and how to respond wisely.
Join us for The Trainer Academy in August
If you are interested in learning more about how we design and deliver effective workshops and webinars, join us on in August 2025 for The Trainer Academy: How to Teach In-Person and Online
In partnership with North Carolina Center for Nonprofits and Interim Executive Academy.