A month ago, I wrote that systems thinking is having a hot-topic moment in the job market. I also posted a note quoting the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Netflix, who said that “systems thinking is now the single most important trait she screens for”.
This got me thinking about the language in job postings and how we can interpret them. Hiring managers write postings around observable behavior and not frameworks.
So how does an applicant know what to look for when no one screens for a model they've never heard of?
They screen for what the model produces: judgment calls, risk anticipation, and handling ambiguity.
Lately, since my focus has been learning systems thinking and Cynefin, I’ll focus on these two.
Here are phrasings from current job postings that connect directly to systems thinking and Cynefin.
Frameworks are internal models for making better decisions. Resumes and postings are external interfaces for getting hired. If you only speak in framework language, you're filtering yourself out of roles that actually want exactly what you have.
The pattern across all these postings is that none of them name the framework. They describe what the framework produces. The employer wants the output of systems thinking, without knowing or caring what the internal model is called. How do you connect the dots across systems, anticipate downstream effects, and interdependencies? How do you tackle open-ended challenges and experimentation? That is Cynefin. Your resume should speak in outcomes, not framework names.
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