Another sensemaking exercise

Imagine that you are inside your home one afternoon and just happen to peer out of a window.  The fast-moving clouds are churning and just keep getting blacker, the rain is heavier than you have ever seen, and the howling winds start to sound like a passing freight train.  Big, tall trees are being knocked back and forth, and nothing outside is staying put. The sky looks odd somehow, and you think you might see funnel-shaped clouds in the near distance.

What do you sense?

Upon what, specifically, do you base your sense of the situation?

What will you do based upon the sense you made of this situation?

The Substance of Sensemaking

SUBSTANCE OF SENSEMAKING

            The following "vocabularies" form the "frames" and "cues" of sensemaking:

           

1.    Ideology:  Vocabularies of Society.  "Ideologies are defined as a 'shared, relatively interrelated set of emotionally charged beliefs, values, and norms that bind some people together and help them to make sense of their worlds' (p. 33)" (Weick, 1995, p. 111).  "Thus ideologies combine beliefs about cause-effect relations, preferences for certain outcomes, and expectations of appropriate behaviors" (Weick, 1995, p. 111). "Typically, these sources 'serve to make social situations comprehensible and meaningful. People naturally tend to simplify what they perceive; ideologies act to structure that simplification' (Trice & Beyer, 1993, p. 45)" (Weick, 1995, pp. 111-112).  The content of ideologies originates in such extraorganizational sources as transnational cultures, national cultures, regional and community cultures, industry ideologies, organization sets, and occupational ideologies (Weick, 1995, p. 112).

2.    Third-order Controls:  Vocabularies of Organization. 

Citing Perrow (1986), Weick (1995, p. 113), explains that “organizations operate with three forms of control: first-order control by direct supervision, second-order control by programs and routines, and third-order control consisting of assumptions and definitions that are taken as given.” “Third-order controls are called ‘premise controls,’ because they influence the premises people use when they diagnose situations and make decisions” (Weick, 1995, p. 113). “A premise is a supposition made so that people can get on with the process of decision making” (Weick, 1995, p. 115). “And it is this early influence, capable of coloring all subsequent steps, that affords much of the reason why premise control is so powerful” (Weick, 1995, p. 115).

3.    Paradigms: Vocabularies of Work.

“[P]aradigms can be defined as sets of current and quasi-standard illustrations that show how theories of action are applied conceptually, observationally, and instrumentally to representative organizational problems” (Weick, 1995, p. 120). Paradigms, in an organizational context, can include “standard operating procedures, shared definitions of the environment, and the agreed-upon system of power and authority [internal citations omitted]” (Weick, 1995, p. 118).“Collections of illustrations or stories, held together by a theory of action, provide a frame within which cues are noticed and interpreted” (Weick, 1995, p. 121). “There may be less agreement on the ‘theories of action’ than on the exemplars themselves” (Weick, 1995, p. 121).

4.    Theories of Action:  Vocabularies of Coping.

Weick (1995, p. 121), citing Hedberg (1981), states:

Theories of action ‘are for organizations what cognitive structures are for individuals.  They filter and interpret signals from the environment and the stimuli to responses. They are metalevel systems that supervise the identification of stimuli and the assembling of responses’[.]

Further, “‘[t]o identify stimuli properly and to select adequate responses, organizations map their environments and infer what causal relationships operate in their environments.  These maps constitute theories of action which organizations elaborate and refine as new situations are encountered’ (Hedburg, 1981, p. 7)” (Weick, 1995, p. 121).

5.    Tradition:  Vocabularies of Predecessors.

Weick (1995, p. 124), citing Shils (1981, pp. 12-13), understands tradition to mean “something that was created, was performed or believed in the past, or believed to have existed or to have been performed or believed in the past, and that has been or is being handed down or transmitted from one generation to the next.” “All kinds of images, objects, and beliefs can be transmitted as traditions” (Weick, 1995, p. 125).

6.    Stories:  Vocabularies of Sequence and Experience.

Stories, or narratives, provide a plausible frame for sensemaking (Weick, 1995, p. 128). Stories “gather strands of experience into a plot that produces [an] outcome” (Weick, 1995, p. 128). “The plot follows either the sequence beginning-middle-end or the sequence situation-transformation-situation” (Weick, 1995, p. 128).  Stories may be crucial for sensemaking because they facilitate diagnosis and reduce the disruption produced when projects are interrupted (Weick, 1995, p. 129). 

Situations where sensemaking is useful

CHARACTERISTICS OF SITUATIONS THAT NECESSITATE SENSEMAKING

            McCaskey's (1982) 12 characteristics of ambiguous situations, as cited in Weick (1995, pp. 92-93), demonstrate "[t]he many ways in which ambiguity may crop up in organizational life and trigger sensemaking."

1.    Nature of the problem is itself in question.  Exactly "what the problem is" is unclear.

2.    Information amount and reliability is problematic. Defining the problem is difficult, the amount of information may be overwhelming or insufficient, and the data may be incomplete and unreliable.

3.    Multiple, conflicting interpretations.  Individuals develop multiple and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the data.

4.    Different value orientations, political/emotional clashes. Without objective criteria, individuals rely on personal and/or professional values to make sense of a situation and a clash of personal and emotional values can occur.

5.    Goals are unclear or multiple and conflicting. Managers are not guided by "clearly defined, coherent goals."

6.    Time, money, or attention is lacking. A shortage of one or more of these elements makes a difficult situation worse.

7.    Contradictions and paradoxes appear. The situation appears to have inconsistent features, relationships, or demands.

8.    Roles are vague and responsibilities are unclear.  Individuals do not have clearly defined sets of activities to perform.

9.    Success measures are lacking. Individuals are unsure what "success" in resolving the situation means and/or are unable to assess the degree of their success.

10. Poor understanding of cause-effect relationships. Individuals do not understand "what causes what" in the situation and may be uncertain how to obtain the effects they desire.

11. Symbols and metaphors used. Individuals use symbols or metaphors to express points of view rather than precise definitions or logical arguments.

12. Participation in decision-making is fluid.  The key decision makers and influence holders change when individuals "enter and leave the decision arena." 

Plausibility over Accuracy

Weick (1995, p. 57) states, "Even if accuracy were important, executives seldom produce it." "From the standpoint of sensemaking, that is no big problem" (Weick, 1995, p. 57). "The strength of sensemaking as a perspective derives from the fact that it does not rely on accuracy and its model is not object perception" (Weick, 1995, p. 57). "Instead, sensemaking is about plausibility, pragmatics, coherence, reasonableness, creation, invention, and instrumentality" (Weick, 1995, p. 57).  "Sensemaking, to borrow Fiske's (1992) imagery, 'takes a relative approach to truth, predicting that people will believe what can account for sensory experience, but what is also interesting, attractive, emotionally appealing, and goal relevant' (p. 879)" (Weick, 1995, p. 57). Accuracy is secondary in any analysis of sensemaking because, among other things, people distort and filter information differently; extracted cues (or "points of references") may have multiple meanings; and most organizational action is time sensitive and a "speed/accuracy trade-off" exists (Weick, 1995, pp. 57-58). 

Cues

This is an important step in understanding sensemaking.

"Extracted cues are simple, familiar structures that are seeds from which people develop a larger sense of what may be occurring" (Weick, 1995, p. 50). "The importance of these cues in organizational analysis was recognized by Smircich and Morgan (1982) when they said that 'leadership lies in large part in generating a point of reference, against which a feeling of organization and direction can emerge' (p. 258)" (Weick, 1995, p. 50).

Ongoing

Sensemaking is an ongoing process. According to Weick (1995, p. 43):

Sensemaking never starts.  The reason it never starts is that pure duration never stops.  People are always in the middle of things, which become things, only when those same people focus on the past from some point beyond it. Flows are the constants of sensemaking, something that open systems theorists such as Katz and Kahn (1966) taught us, but which we have since forgotten (Ashmos & Huber, 1987).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. There is widespread recognition that people are always in the middle of things.  What is less well developed are the implications of that insight for sensemaking. 

Social

Sensemaking is a social process (Weick, 1995, p. 39). "When discussing sensemaking, it is easy to forget that 'human thinking and social functioning . . .  [are] essential aspects of one another' (Resnick, Levine, & Teasley, 1991, p. 3)" (Weick, 1995, p. 38).  "Many scholars of organizations are mindful of the intertwining of the cognitive and the social as in this informative definition proposed by Walsh and Ungson (1991): An organization is 'a network of intersubjectively shared meanings that are sustained through the development and use of a common language and everyday social interaction' (p. 60)" (Weick, 1995, p. 39). A person's "[c]onduct is contingent on the conduct of others, whether those others are imagined or physically present" (Weick, 1995, p. 39). 

Sensible Environments

Action, or enactment, is a precondition for sensemaking (Weick, 1995, p. 30). "[I]n organizational life, people often produce part of the environment they face (Pondy & Mitroff, 1979, p. 17)" (Weick, 1995, p. 30).  "[T]here is not some kind of monolithic, singular, fixed environment that exists detached from and external to these people [italics in original]" (Weick, 1995, p. 31). "Instead, in each case the people are very much a part of their own environments" (Weick, 1995, p. 31).  "They act, and in doing so create the materials that become the constraints and opportunities they face" (Weick, 1995, p. 31).

An exercise in sensemaking

Imagine that you are traveling along the interstate on your way home from work.  You have traveled this same road every work day for several years.  Every curve, bump, and pothole is known to you. But, today, you drive upon an area of the interstate with shards of glass, bits of metal, maybe tire tracks, near an obviously missing section of guardrail that you know borders a steep ravine.

What do you sense?

Upon what, specifically, do you base your sense of the situation?

What will you do based upon the sense you made of this situation?

Retrospective

Retrospective.

"The idea of retrospective sensemaking derives from Schutz's (1967) analysis of 'meaningful lived experience'" (Weick, 1995, p. 24). "The key word in that phrase, lived, is stated in the past tense to capture the reality that people can know what they are doing only after they have done it [italics in original]" (Weick, 1995, p. 24). In other words, retrospective sensemaking occurs when an individual attempts to find meaning in a present situation by reflecting on lived experiences (Weick, 1995, p. 26). "[W]hatever is occurring at the moment will influence what is discovered when people glance backward" (Weick, 1995, p. 26). 

Identity Construction

 Grounded in identity construction.

“Sensemaking begins with a sensemaker” (Weick, 1995, p. 18). An “individual ‘is a typified discursive construction’ (Knorr-Cetina, 1981, p. 10)” (Weick, 1995, p. 20). “Identities are constituted out of the process of interaction” (Weick, 1995, p. 20). “To shift among interactions is to shift among definitions of self” (Weick, 1995, p. 20).  “Thus the sensemaker is himself or herself an ongoing puzzle undergoing continual redefinition, coincident with presenting some self to others and trying to decide which self is appropriate” (Weick, 1995, p. 20). “Depending upon who I am, my definition of what is ‘out there’ will also change” (Weick, 1995, p. 20).  The establishment and maintenance of identity is a core preoccupation in sensemaking (Weick, 1995, p. 20).  

What is Sensemaking?

            “The concept of sensemaking is well named because, literally, it means the making of sense” (Weick, 1995, p. 4). “Sensemaking involves the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing” (Obstfeld, Sutcliffe, & Weick, 2005). “Viewed as a significant process of organizing, sensemaking unfolds as a sequence in which people concerned with identity in the social context of other actors engage ongoing circumstances from which they extract cues and make plausible sense retrospectively, while enacting more or less order into those ongoing circumstances” (Obstfeld et al., 2005). “Stated more compactly and more colorfully, ‘[S]ensemaking is a way station on the road to a consensually constructed, coordinated system of action’ (Taylor and Ven Every, 2000, p. 275)” (Obstfeld et al., 2005).  “At that way station, circumstances are ‘turned into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard to action’ (p. 40)” (Obstfeld et al., 2005).  “These images imply three important points about the quest for meaning in organizational life” (Obstfeld et al., 2005).  “First, sensemaking occurs when a flow or organizational circumstances is turned into words and salient categories” (Obstfeld et al., 2005). “Second, organizing itself is embodied in written and spoken texts” (Obstfeld et al., 2005). “Third, reading, writing, conversing, and editing are crucial actions that serve as the media through which the invisible hand of institutions shapes conduct (Gioia et al. 1994, p. 365)” (Obstfeld et al., 2005).

            “Explicit efforts at sensemaking tend to occur when the current state of the world is perceived to be different from the expected state of the world, or when there is no obvious way to engage the world” (Obstfeld et al., 2005).  “In such circumstances there is a shift from the experience of immersion in projects to a sense that the flow of action has become unintelligible in some way” (Obstfeld et al., 2005).  “To make sense of the disruption, people look for reasons that will enable them to resume the interrupted activity and stay in action” (Obstfeld et al., 2005). “These ‘reasons’ are pulled from frameworks such as institutional constraints, organizational premises, plans, expectations, acceptable justifications, and traditions inherited from predecessors” (Obstfeld et al., 2005).  “If resumption of the project is problematic, sensemaking is biased either toward identifying substitute action or toward further deliberation” (Obstfeld et al., 2005).

            Sensemaking is a process that is (1) grounded in identity construction (2) retrospective (3) enactive of sensible environments (4) social (5) ongoing (6) focused on and by extracted cues and (7) driven by plausibility rather than accuracy (Weick, 1995, p. 17).