Sensemaking in Organizations (Foundations for Organizational Science)

1. Sensemaking is a continuous process of creating meaning from experiences

"To talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves and their creations."

Definition and process. Sensemaking is the cognitive process by which people give meaning to their experiences. It involves:

• Noticing and bracketing information from the environment
• Labeling and categorizing to stabilize the streaming of experience
• Retrospectively developing plausible explanations for what they notice
• Enacting the environment to test their interpretations

Key characteristics. Sensemaking is:

• Ongoing and never-ending
• Grounded in identity construction
• Social and relational
• Focused on extracted cues
• Driven by plausibility rather than accuracy

Importance in organizations. Sensemaking is crucial for:

• Decision-making in ambiguous situations
• Organizational learning and adaptation
• Crisis management and response
• Strategic planning and execution

2. Organizations are dynamic systems of shared understanding and interpretation

"Organizations are networks of intersubjectively shared meanings that are sustained through the development and use of a common language and everyday social interaction."

Intersubjectivity in organizations. Organizations exist as:

• Collective minds formed through shared experiences and interpretations
• Systems of coordinated actions based on mutual understanding
• Environments where individual sensemaking processes converge and diverge

Organizational culture. Shared meanings manifest as:

• Common language and jargon
• Shared stories and narratives
• Collective rituals and practices
• Tacit assumptions and beliefs

Dynamics of organizational sensemaking. Organizations continuously evolve through:

• Negotiation of meaning between members
• Adaptation to external changes and internal shifts
• Resolution of conflicts between different interpretations
• Integration of new members and ideas into existing frameworks

3. Identity construction is central to how individuals and organizations make sense

"The recipe 'How can I know what I think until I see what I say?' has four pronouns, all four of which point to the person doing the sensemaking."

Individual identity in sensemaking. People make sense of situations based on:

• Their self-concept and how they want to be perceived
• Past experiences and future aspirations
• Multiple, sometimes conflicting, identities they hold

Organizational identity. Organizations develop a sense of self through:

• Collective understanding of "who we are" as an entity
• Shared beliefs about core values and mission
• Distinctive competencies and characteristics

Identity and action. Identity influences sensemaking by:

• Shaping what people notice and how they interpret it
• Motivating certain actions and discouraging others
• Providing a framework for understanding successes and failures

4. Retrospection shapes our understanding of current events and future actions

"The important point is that retrospective sensemaking is an activity in which many possible meanings may need to be synthesized, because many different projects are under way at the time reflection takes place."

The role of hindsight. Retrospection in sensemaking involves:

• Looking back at past events to explain current situations
• Reinterpreting past experiences in light of new information
• Constructing coherent narratives that link past, present, and future

Limitations of retrospection. Challenges include:

• Hindsight bias and oversimplification of complex events
• Selective memory and rationalization of past actions
• Difficulty in accurately recalling emotional states and motivations

Leveraging retrospection. Organizations can use retrospection to:

• Learn from past experiences and improve decision-making
• Develop organizational memory and knowledge management systems
• Create shared narratives that guide future actions and strategies

5. Enactment theory: We create the environments we face through our actions

"Organizations play an active role in shaping their environments, partly because they seek environments that are sparsely inhabited by competitors, they define their products and outputs in ways that emphasize distinctions between themselves and their competitors, they rely on their own experience to infer environmental possibilities, and they need to impose simplicity on complex relationships."

The concept of enactment. Enactment in sensemaking means:

• Actions create the conditions that require further sensemaking
• People actively construct the reality they face, rather than passively perceiving it
• The environment is not separate from the organization, but partly created by it

Organizational implications. Enactment theory suggests that:

• Strategic choices shape the competitive landscape
• Organizational structures and processes create their own problems and solutions
• Innovation can create new markets and opportunities

Practical applications. Organizations can leverage enactment by:

• Proactively shaping their industry through bold actions
• Experimenting with new practices to discover opportunities
• Reframing challenges as opportunities for creative problem-solving

6. Social context profoundly influences individual and collective sensemaking

"Sensemaking is never solitary because what a person does internally is contingent on others."

Social nature of sensemaking. Sensemaking is inherently social because:

• Meanings are negotiated and shared through interaction
• Individual interpretations are influenced by social norms and expectations
• Collective action requires some level of shared understanding

Organizational implications. Social context affects sensemaking through:

• Organizational culture and shared mental models
• Power dynamics and political processes
• Communication networks and information flow

Enhancing social sensemaking. Organizations can improve collective sensemaking by:

• Encouraging open dialogue and diverse perspectives
• Creating spaces for informal interaction and knowledge sharing
• Developing shared language and frameworks for understanding

7. Ongoing nature of sensemaking: It never starts or stops, but is constantly evolving

"Sensemaking never starts. The reason it never starts is that pure duration never stops."

Continuous process. Sensemaking is ongoing because:

• Experience is a constant flow of events and information
• New situations constantly arise that require interpretation
• Previous interpretations are continuously revised and updated

Organizational implications. The ongoing nature of sensemaking means:

• Organizations must be adaptable and responsive to change
• Learning is a continuous process, not a discrete event
• Stability is an accomplishment, not a natural state

Managing ongoing sensemaking. Organizations can work with this ongoing process by:

• Developing systems for continuous environmental scanning
• Encouraging regular reflection and reassessment of assumptions
• Creating flexible structures that can adapt to new interpretations

8. Extracted cues serve as focal points for developing broader interpretations

"Extracted cues are simple, familiar structures that are seeds from which people develop a larger sense of what may be occurring."

Role of cues in sensemaking. Extracted cues:

• Provide starting points for interpretation
• Help simplify complex situations
• Guide attention and frame subsequent observations

Types of cues. People extract various cues, including:

• Anomalies or unexpected events
• Familiar patterns or schemas
• Salient or emotionally charged information

Organizational implications. Managing cues involves:

• Identifying and highlighting important signals in the environment
• Creating shared reference points for collective sensemaking
• Balancing focus on specific cues with broader situational awareness

9. Plausibility, not accuracy, is the primary driver of sensemaking in organizations

"Accuracy is nice, but not necessary for sensemaking."

Plausibility over accuracy. Sensemaking prioritizes plausibility because:

• Complete accuracy is often impossible in complex, ambiguous situations
• Plausible accounts enable action and decision-making
• Social agreement often matters more than objective truth

Implications for organizations. This focus on plausibility means:

• Quick, "good enough" solutions may be preferable to perfect but slow ones
• Shared narratives can be powerful tools for coordinating action
• Challenging accepted interpretations can be difficult

Balancing plausibility and accuracy. Organizations should:

• Encourage critical thinking and questioning of assumptions
• Develop processes for testing and refining interpretations
• Recognize the value of both intuitive and analytical approaches

10. Language and communication are fundamental tools for organizational sensemaking

"Words induce stable connections, establish stable entities to which people can orient (e.g., "gender gap"), bind people's time to projects ("Al, I'd like you to spend some time on this one"), and signify important information."

Language as a sensemaking tool. Communication shapes sensemaking by:

• Providing labels and categories for organizing experience
• Creating shared meanings and interpretations
• Enabling coordination and collective action

Organizational discourse. Key aspects include:

• Formal and informal communication channels
• Storytelling and narrative construction
• Metaphors and analogies used to understand complex situations

Enhancing communication for sensemaking. Organizations can:

• Develop rich, nuanced vocabularies for describing experiences
• Encourage open dialogue and diverse perspectives
• Use multiple modes of communication to convey complex ideas

11. Emotion and arousal play significant roles in the sensemaking process

"Emotion is what happens between the time that an organized sequence is interrupted and the time at which the interruption is removed, or a substitute response is found that allows the sequence to be completed."

Emotion in sensemaking. Emotions influence sensemaking by:

• Directing attention to certain cues and interpretations
• Motivating action and decision-making
• Shaping memory and retrospective accounts

Arousal and interruption. Key concepts include:

• Interruptions to expected sequences trigger emotional arousal
• Arousal focuses attention and mobilizes resources for sensemaking
• High arousal can both enhance and impair sensemaking processes

Managing emotion in organizations. Strategies include:

• Recognizing and acknowledging the role of emotions in decision-making
• Developing emotional intelligence and regulation skills
• Creating supportive environments for processing emotional experiences

12. Practical implications: Enhancing sensemaking for better organizational outcomes

"To understand sensemaking is to be sensitive to the ways in which people chop moments out of continuous flows and extract cues from those moments."

Improving organizational sensemaking. Key strategies include:

• Encouraging diverse perspectives and cross-functional collaboration
• Developing robust systems for environmental scanning and information sharing
• Creating opportunities for reflection and collective meaning-making

Leadership and sensemaking. Leaders can enhance sensemaking by:

• Articulating compelling visions and narratives
• Modeling openness to new interpretations and ideas
• Facilitating dialogue and negotiation of meaning

Sensemaking in practice. Applications include:

• Crisis management and high-reliability organizing
• Strategic planning and change management
• Innovation and organizational learning

Last updated: September 27, 2024