Sensemaking

Sensemaking is an approach to designing and implementing systems and activities. Sensemaking has been under development since 1972. It consists of a set of philosophical assumptions, substantive propositions, methodological framings, and methods. Sensemaking literally means the making of sense of social actors that need to construct the situations they experience in a meaningful way. Some perspectives emphasized sensemaking as an individual activity, while others focus on the social nature of this process. Sensemaking is the process through which people make sense of their situations. Sensemaking is [Page 867]described as placing stimuli into frameworks, comprehending, dealing with surprise, constructing meaning, interacting to produce mutual understanding, and the patterning of experience.

Karl Weick systematically explored, explained, and organized the properties of sensemaking in seven elements: (1) grounded in the construction of individual and organizational identity; (2) retrospective in nature; (3) based on enacting sensible environments to deal with; (4) fundamentally a social, not an individual process; (5) an ongoing and dynamic process in that changes occur as events occur; (6) focused on cues in the environment and focused by cues in the environment; (7) driven by the plausibility of possible interpretations.

Sensemaking requires enactive and sensible environments. In organizational life, members of the organization often contribute to production of the environment or at least part of the environment they live in. Action is also required for sensemaking. Sensemaking cannot occur without an action in the environment. The environment cannot produce an action without individual members' conscious effort. Organization and the environment are factors that influence each other.

Sensemaking is also a social process. Human thinking and social functioning in an environment are essential aspects of sensemaking. Sensemaking is an ongoing (learning and action) process. It is not easy to determine a starting or an ending point for sensemaking. Sensemaking is focused on and by extracted cues (signs). In life, people are confronted with a lot of cues. Sometimes cues are too much to notice. A sensemaker will only notice a few cues based on sensemaker's filter and interest. A sensemaker's interests and unconsciousness depend on what cues a sensemaker focuses on. Sensemaking is driven by plausibility. Most of the time, people are cognitively lazy. When we find an answer to the question, we stop searching.

Weick's example of, “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?” explains how these seven elements are used in sensemaking:

• Identity: The recipe is a question about who I am as indicated by discovery of how and what I think.
• Retrospect: To learn what I think, I look back over what I said earlier.
• Enactment: I create the object to be seen and inspected when I say or do something.
• Social: What I say and single out and conclude are determined by who socialized me and how I was socialized, as well as by the audience I anticipate will audit the conclusions I reach.
• Ongoing: My talking is spread across time, competes for attention with other ongoing projects, and is reflected on after it is finished, which means my interests may already have changed.
• Extracted cues: The “what” that I single out and embellish as the content of the thought is only a small portion of the utterance that becomes salient because of context and personal dispositions.
• Plausibility: I need to know enough about what I think to get on with my projects, but no more, which means sufficiency and plausibility take precedence over accuracy.