Focus on sense making
An essential, poorly understood, but increasingly vital capability
“Sensemaking is about plausibility, coherence, and reasonableness. Sensemaking is about accounts that are socially acceptable and credible.” — Karl Weick 1
The future-fitness of an organisation fundamentally depends on four things:
How and how well it does sense making
How and how well it does decision making
How and how well it does action taking
How and how well it creates conditions in which sense making, decision making, and action taking are well joined-up, actively iterated, deeply embedded, and widely distributed throughout the organisation.
For most people, decision making and action taking are easy enough to understand.
And most of us have a clear understanding of where decision making takes place in an organisation, and where the action taking happens.
Unfortunately, in our increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world, these clear understandings have become deeply problematic.
To see why — and what to do about it — we need to focus on the traditionally underestimated, often overlooked, and vitally important role of sense making.
This 10 minute Future-Fit Culture Frequently Asked Questions video explains…
The above video makes reference to this previous article:
Questions for reflection
How much do people in the body of your organisation encounter the Double Disconnect between i) sense making and decision making; and ii) decision making and action taking?
Do senior executives in your organisation recognise the Double Disconnect?
What actions could you take to help bridge the disconnects?
Karl Weick (born 1936) is an American organisational theorist who introduced the term sensemaking into organizational studies. The quote above is from his book Sensemaking in Organizations (1995) p61.