◆ 3
This chapter introduces “sensemaking” as a key leadership capability
for the complex and dynamic world we live in today. Sensemaking,
a term introduced by Karl Weick, refers to how we structure the
unknown so as to be able to act in it. Sensemaking involves coming
up with a plausible understanding—a map—of a shifting world;
testing this map with others through data collection, action, and
conversation; and then refining, or abandoning, the map depending
on how credible it is.
Sensemaking enables leaders to have a better grasp of what is going
on in their environments, thus facilitating other leadership activities
such as visioning, relating, and inventing. This chapter outlines ten
steps to effective sensemaking, grouped under enabling leaders to
explore the wider system, create a map of that system, and act in the
system to learn from it. It illustrates how rigidity, leader dependence,
and erratic behavior get in the way of effective sensemaking, and how
one might teach sensemaking as a core leadership capability. The
chapter ends with a student manual on sensemaking from an MBA
leadership class.
u Deborah Ancona
MIT-Sloan School of Management
SENSEMAKING
Framing and Acting in the Unknown
1
4 ◆ The Handbook for Teaching Leadership
A
t the MIT Sloan School of Management
we teach the “4-CAP” model of lead-
ership capabilities. The four capabilities
include sensemaking, relating, visioning, and
inventing (Ancona, Malone, Orlikowski, &
Senge, 2007).
While participants in our leadership
workshops and classes are reasonably com-
fortable with the idea that relating is about
building trusting relationships among peo-
ple and across networks, visioning involves
painting a compelling picture of the future
and what is possible, and inventing means
creating the structures and processes needed
to move toward the vision, most scratch
their heads at the term sensemaking. And
yet our 360-degree survey data reveal that
sensemaking is highly correlated with lead-
ership effectiveness—even more than vision-
ing. In addition, when people finish our
programs—and even five years later—they
report that sensemaking was one of the
most valuable concepts and skills they have
learned. “Sensemaking” lingers in organi-
zational vocabulary long after our courses
are over.
So what is “sensemaking,” and why is it
so central to effective leadership?
What Is Sensemaking?
Karl Weick, the “father of sensemaking,”
suggests that the term means simply “the
making of sense” (Weick, 1995, p. 4). It is
the process of “structuring the unknown”
(Waterman, 1990, p. 41) by “placing stimuli
into some kind of framework” that enables
us “to comprehend, understand, explain,
attribute, extrapolate, and predict” (Starbuck
& Milliken, 1988, p. 51). Sensemaking is
the activity that enables us to turn the ongo-
ing complexity of the world into a “situation
that is comprehended explicitly in words
and that serves as a springboard into action”
(Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005, p. 409).
Thus sensemaking involves—and indeed
requires—an articulation of the unknown,
because, sometimes trying to explain the
unknown is the only way to know how
much you understand it.
Finally, sensemaking calls for courage,
because while there is a deep human need
to understand and know what is going on in
a changing world, illuminating the change
is often a lonely and unpopular task. The
leader who demonstrates that an organiza-
tion’s strategy has not been successful, for
example, may clash with those who want to
keep the image of achievement alive.
In the realm of business, sensemaking
can mean learning about shifting markets,
customer migration, or new technologies. It
can mean learning about the culture, poli-
tics, and structure of a new venture or about
a problem that you haven’t seen before. It
can mean figuring out why a previously suc-
cessful business model is no longer working.
Sensemaking often involves moving from
the simple to the complex and back again.
The move to the complex occurs as new
information is collected and new actions are
taken. Then as patterns are identified, and
new information is labeled and categorized,
the complex becomes simple once again,
albeit with a higher level of understanding.
Sensemaking is most often needed when
our understanding of the world becomes
unintelligible in some way. This occurs
when the environment is changing rapidly,
presenting us with surprises for which we
are unprepared or confronting us with
adaptive rather than technical problems to
solve (Heifetz, 2009). Adaptive challenges—
those that require a response outside our
existing repertoire—often present as a gap
between an aspiration and an existing
capacity—a gap that cannot be closed by
existing modes of operating.
At such times phenomena “have to be
forcibly carved out of the undifferentiated
flux of raw experience and conceptually
fixed and labeled so that they can become
the common currency for communication
exchanges” (Chia, 2000, p. 513). As such,
sensemaking is about making the intrac-
table actionable. But action is not a sepa-
rate and later step in sensemaking. Rather,
acting is one more way of understanding
Sensemaking ◆ 5
the new reality, providing additional input
for us to bracket and assign meaning (Weick
et al., 2005).
Thus, sensemaking involves coming up
with plausible understandings and mean-
ings; testing them with others and via
action; and then refining our understand-
ings or abandoning them in favor of new
ones that better explain a shifting reality.
Brian Arthur (1996) uses a gambling
casino analogy to illustrate the kind of pro-
found uncertainty we currently face that
creates a great need for sensemaking:
Imagine you are milling about in a
large casino with the top figures of high
tech. . . . Over at one table, a game is
starting called Multimedia. Over at
another is a game called Web Services.
There are many such tables. You sit at
one.
“How much to play?” you ask.
“Three billion,” the croupier replies.
“Who’ll be playing?” you ask.
“We won’t know until they show
up,” he replies.
“What are the rules?”
“These will emerge as the game
unfolds,” says the croupier.
“What are the odds of winning?” you
wonder.
“We can’t say,” responds the house.
“Do you still want to play?”
Sensemaking in such an environment
involves “being thrown into an ongoing,
unknowable, unpredictable streaming of
experience in search of answers to the ques-
tion, ‘What’s the story?’” (Weick, Sutcliffe,
& Obstfeld, 2005). It means looking for a
unifying order even if we are not sure if one
exists. It requires figuring out how best to
represent this order and continuing to play
the game indefinitely even if we never know
if we have found the order. This, according
to Joseph Jaworski and Claus Otto
Scharmer (2000), is the moral of Brian
Arthur’s casino analogy. “What distin-
guishes great leaders from average leaders
is their ability to perceive the nature of the
game and the rules by which it is played, as
they are playing it” (p. 2).
Seen from this perspective, sensemaking
is an emergent activity—a capacity to move
between heuristics and algorithm, intuition
and logic, inductive and deductive reason-
ing, continuously looking for and provid-
ing evidence, and generating and testing
hypotheses, all while “playing the game.”
As such sensemaking requires that leaders
have emotional intelligence, self-awareness,
the ability to deal with cognitive complexity,
and the flexibility to go between the “what
is” of sensemaking and the “what can be”
of visioning. Perhaps equally important, it
also requires that leaders be able to engage
others in their organizations in figuring out
how to play the game.
How critical is sensemaking in today’s
world? We are certainly in the midst of
enormous global change, whether we con-
sider politics, economics, climate change,
resource depletion, or dozens of other
arenas. In the sphere of business, John
Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, believes that
“from a business model and leadership
perspective, we’re seeing a massive shift
from management by command-and-
control to management by collaboration
and teamwork. You could almost say this
shift is as revolutionary as the assembly
line” (Fryer & Stewart, 2008, p. 76).
Questions abound: How will global com-
petition play out? Will China and India
dominate this century? Is the economic
crisis over? How will terrorism impact
international trade relations?
But sensemaking is not limited to such
cosmic problems. At an organizational
level, leaders need to engage in sensemak-
ing to understand why their teams are not
functioning, why their customers are leav-
ing, and why their operations are falling
short on safety and reliability. At a personal
level, sensemaking can help in understand-
ing why you have not lived up to your own
expectations as a leader, or why you don’t
seem to be getting along with your new
boss. We teach sensemaking to undergradu-
ates, MBAs, mid-level executives, and top
6 ◆ The Handbook for Teaching Leadership
management teams since the ability to
understand a changing context is needed at
every level.
How Does Sensemaking Help?
So yes, sensemaking is an extremely useful
skill, but how exactly does it work? Weick
(2001) provides one answer, by likening
sensemaking to cartography. Maps can
provide hope, confidence, and the means
to move from anxiety to action. By map-
ping an unfamiliar situation, some of the
fear of the unknown can be abated. By hav-
ing all members of a team working from a
common map of “what’s going on out
there,” coordinated action is facilitated. In
an age where people are often anxious
about their circumstances, mapmaking
becomes an essential element of sensemak-
ing and leadership. In a world of action
first, sensemaking provides a precursor to
more effective action.
As we try to map confusion and bring
coherence to what appears mysterious, we
are able to talk about what is happening,
bring multiple interpretations to our situa-
tions, and then act. Then, as we continue to
act, we can change the map to fit our experi-
ence and reflect our growing understanding.
It is important to note that in this sense
of the word, there is no “right” map. Sense-
making is not about finding the “correct”
answer; it is about creating an emerging
picture that becomes more comprehensive
through data collection, action, experi-
ence, and conversation. The importance of
sensemaking is that it enables us to act
when the world as we knew it seems to
have shifted (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld,
2005). It gives us something to hold onto
to keep fear at a distance.
This use of sensemaking can be illus-
trated through a story (articulated in a
poem by Holub, 1977) and elaborated here
for illustrative purposes. A small military
unit was sent on a training mission in the
Swiss Alps. They did not know the terrain
very well, and suddenly it began to snow. It
snowed for two days. There were large
drifts everywhere, and it was hard to see
through the clouds and blowing snow. The
men considered themselves lost. They were
cold and hungry, and panic began to spread
through the unit as they thought of what
would become of them. But then one of
them found a map in his pocket. Everyone
crowded around trying to figure out where
they were and how they could get out. They
calmed down, located themselves, and plot-
ted a route back to their base.
They pitched camp, lasted out the snow-
storm, and moved into action. Of course
they didn’t always hit the landmarks they
thought they would, so getting back
involved still more sensemaking. They got
help from villagers along the way, and
shifted their path when faced with obsta-
cles. And then, when they finally got back
to base camp, they discovered that the map
they had been using was actually a map of
the Pyrenees and not the Alps.
The moral of the story? When you’re
tired, cold, hungry, and scared, any old
map will do (Weick, 1995).
When I use this story with students, they
protest that a bad map can be a disaster—
especially when you are wandering
around in the mountains in the middle of a
blizzard—and of course that’s true. Given a
choice, we would all choose the best map
possible. Yet the soldiers in the story were
able to survive using a bad map because
they acted, had a purpose, and had an
image of where they were and where they
were going, even though they were in many
ways mistaken. The point is that in sense-
making, the map is only a starting point.
One then has to pay attention to cues from
the environment, incorporate new informa-
tion, and in so doing turn what may be a
poor map into a useful sensemaking device
(Weick, 1995).
There are many reasons why a poor map
may be “good enough.” First, a poor map
may actually enable leaders and teams to
move ahead with assurance toward goals
that might seem unattainable if their view of
Sensemaking ◆ 7
the world was actually more accurate.
Under some circumstances, accuracy may
immobilize, while partial reality may moti-
vate. Indeed, the very idea that accuracy is
possible pertains more to the “object”
world where situations are constant, than to
the flow of organizational life in a shifting
context. Second, enabling people to get
some sense of a situation, calm down, and
act may be more important than finding
“the” right answer, which we can never find
anyway. Third, in a rapidly changing envi-
ronment speed may trump accuracy. And
finally, it is very difficult to know whether
our perceptions will prove accurate or not,
because these perceptions and the actions
they promote will themselves change our
reality, and because different perceptions
can lead to the same actions.
In short, plausibility as opposed to accu-
racy is more important in sensemaking—
stories and maps that explain and energize,
that invite people to discuss, act, and con-
tribute ideas trump those that are more
exclusively focused on trying to achieve the
best possible picture of a reality that is
changing and elusive (Weick, 1995).
How Does Sensemaking
Connect to Other Leadership
Capabilities?
Once we have a better grasp of what is
going on in our world through sensemak-
ing, then we have a much clearer idea of
how to engage our other leadership capa-
bilities of visioning, inventing, and relating.
With a clearer sense of the external terrain,
our visions and execution capabilities
improve because they “fit” current circum-
stances. With the focus and energy that
come with a plausible map, relating, vision-
ing, and inventing can flourish. With a
greater understanding of the people with
whom we work, communication and col-
laboration proceed more smoothly. In a
society that values action, effective leaders
must rely on and reward the sensemaking
that helps direct and correct that action.
On the other side, a vision for the future
helps to focus sensemaking on areas of
importance to the organization; inventing
provides more data for sensemaking; and
relating provides the interactive network
through which sensemaking can occur.
For example, Victor Fung, the Chairman
of the Li & Fung Group, a global sourcing,
distribution, and retail enterprise, engages
the company in a planning process every
three years. The unique element of this
process is that once the plan is set, it does
not change for the three-year period. This
allows the company to focus on results
with a long enough runway to achieve sig-
nificant stretch goals over the plan period.
Given the uncertainty in the current
environment, prior to the planning process
for 2011–2013, twenty-six manager teams
were formed to engage in sensemaking and
inventing new directions for the firm. Some
looked at trends in the Chinese economy,
some benchmarked best practices in HR
and IT in companies around the world,
some looked at better ways to collaborate
globally to serve customers, while others
re-examined internal cultural artifacts to
determine their fit with changed conditions.
Through shared sensemaking in teams
including people from different geographies
and parts of the organization, new ideas
emerged and pilot projects were tested and
fed—real time—into the planning process.
The result: a new three-year plan better
suited to changed external conditions.
How Do You Do
Effective Sensemaking?
While sensemaking is quite a complex con-
cept, it can be broken down into three core
elements: exploring the wider system (steps
1 to 4), creating a map of the current situ-
ation (steps 5 and 6), and acting to change
the system to learn more about it (steps 7
to 9). Each element can be further broken
down into a set of suggested behaviors.
8 ◆ The Handbook for Teaching Leadership
Explore the Wider System
This aspect of sensemaking is perhaps best
captured in the words of Marcel Proust:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not
in seeking new landscapes but in having
new eyes.” The key here is to work with
others to observe what is going on, to tap
different data sources and collect different
types of data, and to keep prior biases from
interfering with your perceptions. Some
helpful tips include the following:
1. Seek out many types and sources of
data. Combine financial data with trips to
the shop floor, listen to employees as well as
customers, and mix computer research with
personal interviews.
We learn the most about events or issues
when we view them from a variety of per-
spectives. While each may have its own
particular flaws, when the different modes
of analysis reveal the same patterns, we can
feel more confident as we converge on an
interpretation of what is really going on
(Weick, 1995).
At IDEO, a product design company, this
aspect of sensemaking is a key ingredient in
innovative design. One team that was rede-
signing a hospital emergency room put a
camera on the head of a patient and left it
on for ten hours to add some visual data
from a key stakeholder to the other infor-
mation they had. The result: ten hours of
ceiling! This new perspective completely
changed the mental models of the designers,
who up to this point had not fully consid-
ered the patient experience. Armed with this
new mindset they shifted the design to
include writing on the ceiling and other
spaces most visible to patients. Without the
additional data, which greatly enriched the
designers’ understanding of what was really
happening in the ER environment, the final
design would have been far less effective.
2. Involve others as you try to make
sense of any situation. Your own mental
model of what is going on can only get bet-
ter as it is tested and modified through
interaction with others.
Sensemaking is inherently collective; it is
not nearly as effective to be the lone leader
at the top doing all the sensemaking by your-
self. It is far better to compare your views
with those of others—blending, negotiating,
and integrating, until some mutually accept-
able version is achieved. Soliciting and valu-
ing divergent views and analytic perspectives,
and staying open to a wide variety of inputs,
results in a greater ability to create large
numbers of possible responses, thus facilitat-
ing resilient action (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003).
In a recent sensemaking exercise, the
members of a team charged with determin-
ing how much the economic downturn had
affected their firm all started out with very
different estimates. All of these estimates
suffered from a lack of knowledge about
certain parts of the business. By listening to
the input of the finance, HR, engineering,
and marketing groups, and discussing the
very different assumptions and data sources
of each group, the team eventually con-
verged on an estimate and a cooperative
response across functions.
3. Move beyond stereotypes. Rather
than oversimplifying—“Marketing people
are always overestimating the demand”—
try to understand the nuances of each par-
ticular situation.
“Seeing with new eyes” requires that we
look at each new situation with an open
mind, understanding it in all of its unique
aspects. Relying on stereotypes is the oppo-
site of this approach, attributing qualities to
the situation that belong to a stereotype but
are not really present in the situation itself.
Our political process, for example, seems
to be stalled at the moment by the inability
of many politicians (and citizens) to under-
stand and respect other points of view.
Rather than see with new eyes, people
rely on labels (“Democrat,” “Republican,”
Sensemaking ◆ 9
“liberal,” etc.) as if these stereotypes alone
represent the views, policies, and solutions
of all members of the other group. The
result, ultimately, is an inability to come up
with fresh and widely acceptable solutions
to our very real problems.
4. Be very sensitive to operations. Learn
from those closest to the front line, to cus-
tomers, and to new technologies. What
trends do current shifts portend for the
future? What’s behind the trends that we
see recurring in different parts of the world?
Andy Grove, the former CEO and chair
of Intel, believed in being “paranoid.” By
that he meant that you always have to be
worried about new trends that can destroy
or enhance your business, and new com-
petitors that can win in the market. So he
designed Intel to monitor many trends—to
do ongoing sensemaking. This involves
watching what customers are buying and
where they go if they drop Intel, finding out
what new research is being done at key uni-
versities, continuously tracking quality, and
checking constantly that this information is
accurate and up to date. Why? Because in
his industry it is important to respond to
changes in markets and technologies early,
not when others have already captured a
competitive advantage.
CREATE A MAP OR STORY
OF THE SITUATION
As mentioned earlier, sensemaking can
be likened to cartography. The key is to cre-
ate a map/story/frame that—at least for a
brief period of time—adequately represents
the current situation that an organization is
facing. Furthermore, it is not really useful
for each person to have his or her own
map; a team or organization needs to have
a shared map to enable shared action.
5. Do not simply overlay your existing
framework on a new situation. The new
situation may be very different. Instead, let
the appropriate map or framework emerge
from your understanding of the situation.
Despite telling people that they have to
let a map emerge, in many subtle ways old
maps reassert themselves. If you go to an
interview with a set of fixed questions,
those questions will frame and in some
ways restrict the information you obtain.
Contrast that with an open-ended question,
such as “What do you think about x?” In
this case you are more likely to uncover
unanticipated and potentially valuable
viewpoints and information.
Take, for example, the leaders of a
large global company operating in China.
Because they had always understood their
competitors to be other large global com-
panies, they could not understand their
falling profits and loss of market share.
After all, their competitors were not gain-
ing market share, so what was happen-
ing? It was only after local operators
explained that small, local, Chinese com-
panies were exploding on the scene and
taking away business that they under-
stood. These competitors had not even
been on the company’s radar screen,
despite having been on the scene for a
number of years. The established pattern
of sensemaking remained limited to the
large, global players.
Or consider Costco managers who
viewed their scope of responsibility to be
sales, marketing, and distribution. Issues
of the myriad players in the supply chain
were just not part of the picture. However,
as managers came to be increasingly wor-
ried about reliability of supply, this old,
and in many ways limited, framework no
longer seemed to work. Suddenly, as they
saw for the first time their connection to
all points along the supply chain, the man-
agers found themselves concerned with the
sustainability of bean-grower communities
on the other side of the world. Their men-
tal model had changed and they were bet-
ter prepared to act.
10 ◆ The Handbook for Teaching Leadership
6. Put the emerging situation into a new
framework to provide organizational mem-
bers with order. Use images, metaphors,
and stories to capture the key elements of
the new situation.
It is not always easy to move from a
complex and dynamic situation to a singu-
lar image or metaphor. “To consolidate bits
and pieces into a compact, sensible pattern
frequently requires that one look beyond
those bits and pieces to understand what
they might mean” (Weick et al., 2005).
Often it is necessary to move outside a sys-
tem in order to see the patterns within.
When John Reed, the retired chair of
Citigroup, was in charge of the back office
he came to categorize their operations as
more of a “factory” than a “bank.” This
new image became a reality as he hired
managers from car companies, reorganized
work in assembly lines, and consequently
greatly improved efficiencies.
Or consider the experience of Gandhi
when he left South Africa and came to
India. When asked to join the Indian
Independence Movement, he refused, say-
ing that he knew nothing about India. His
mentor then suggested that he get to know
India, so he spent months riding the trains
from village to village. When he returned
he told the Indian National Congress that
they did not understand the “real India,”
which was not made up of lawyers and
merchants in Delhi, but “700,000 vil-
lages” with millions of people that “toil
each day under the hot sun.” Then Gandhi
courageously told the party leaders that
they were not so different from their
British rulers, that they needed to discard
their limited maps and substitute one
based on a new picture of India based on
real information about the common man,
not the privileged few.
Of course, there is always more than
one metaphor that can capture a situation,
which means that any given metaphor is
likely to be contested. In Egypt, for exam-
ple, the battle between government leaders
and the crowds in Cairo’s Independence
Square involved competing metaphors:
were those occupying the square traitors
who should be punished or patriots fight-
ing for freedom and democracy who should
be celebrated.
ACT TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM
TO LEARN FROM IT
People learn about situations by acting
in them and then seeing what happens
(Weick, 1985). Children often learn the
rules in a family by pushing boundaries
and then looking for the point at which
they get reprimanded. Doctors sometimes
learn what is wrong with a patient by start-
ing a treatment and seeing how the patient
responds. In short, directed action is a
major tool with which we learn about situ-
ations and systems.
7. Learn from small experiments. If you
are not sure how a system is working, try
something new.
While action is a key sensemaking tool, it
is often wiser to begin with—and learn
from—small experiments, before broaden-
ing the action to drive change across the
larger system. Sensemaking involves “acting
thinkingly,” which means that people
“simultaneously” interpret their knowledge
with trusted frameworks, yet “mistrust
those frameworks by testing new frame-
works and new interpretations. . . . ” Or,
put another way, “[A]daptive sensemaking
both honors and rejects the past” (Weick et
al., 2005, p. 412).
Several companies we work with at the
MIT Leadership Center have had business
models in which they sell products, ser-
vices, or technology to organizations that
then brand and sell them to the ultimate
customer. In many cases, the companies
eventually decided that they could make the
finished products or services themselves
and sell them at much higher margins. But
this new business model would put the
companies in direct competition with their
Sensemaking ◆ 11
own customers—a risky move and a whole
new way of acting in the marketplace. The
solution: small experiments. Try the new
approach in one product domain, see what
happens, determine what works and what
doesn’t work, and then expand to other
product domains, operating with a much
greater sense of what it actually means to
work under this new business model.
8. People create their own environ-
ments and are then constrained by them. Be
aware and realize the impact of your own
behavior in creating the environment in
which you are working.
Sensemaking involves not only trying
out new things but also trying to under-
stand your impact on a system as you try to
change it. In one organization, for example,
the leaders launched a new initiative to
encourage lower-level employees to offer
suggestions and ideas for new ways of
working. They toured the plants, held meet-
ings, and approached employees in informal
settings. However, these actions were read
differently by the employees. One employee,
for example, explained that when a meeting
is held in a conference room with arranged
seating, the formal atmosphere prevents
people from speaking up. Others explained
that an apparently informal conversation
with a leader is viewed as a “test,” not a
true inquiry. In other words, the leaders’
attempts to listen to the voice of the employee
were seen by the employees through an
“authority-ranking social frame,” and hence
they did not have the desired effect (Detert
& Treviño, 2010). For their part, the leaders
in this example did not really examine the
impact of their new role as “empowering
leaders,” and did not do the necessary sense-
making to understand how employees really
felt. Hence a well-intentioned attempt at
empowerment actually increased the sense
of centralized control, with neither party
realizing how their conditioned thinking
impacted the system and inhibited change.
The ideas outlined above can help a
leader improve his or her sensemaking
skills, but leaders should never forget that
sensemaking is not a one-and-done activ-
ity. Operating in a complex and uncertain
world means needing to course-correct
quickly when (not if) things go wrong. This
means that you have to detect, contain,
and bounce back from errors. You need to
improvise solutions to problems as they
appear rather than letting them escalate
and get out of hand. Thus, sensemaking in
a new situation can help you understand
and act in that situation, but rapid sense-
making is also needed when your actions
do not have the predicted consequences or
when what you thought was coming
around the corner is not there at all.
Systems that are better able to deal with
these surprises do not get bogged down in
finding blame or wishful thinking about
what might have been. Instead they work
to restore, invent, improvise, and recover
in creative ways (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003).
What Gets in the Way
of Effective Sensemaking?
If sensemaking is such an important leader-
ship capability in a world of complexity,
uncertainty, and continuous change, then
why is it that we stumble at doing it at all,
much less doing it well? Part of the answer
lies in the fact that sensemaking may be most
needed when we feel under threat or crisis,
and the very mechanisms that get engaged to
deal with fear are the ones that can hamper
sensemaking. Thus far this chapter has
emphasized that sensemaking involves
exploring our changing world through mul-
tiple kinds and sources of data, selecting
new frameworks and new interpretations to
form new maps and mental models that
offer plausible explanations of the changes
going on, then acting with resilience, verify-
ing and updating our maps as needed to
better our understanding and achieve more
desirable outcomes. Yet if sensemaking is
most often needed when our understanding
of the world seems inadequate and we are
12 ◆ The Handbook for Teaching Leadership
surprised by events, then such times are also
moments of threat and fear that may rein-
force existing maps and mental models,
increase our reliance on old information,
and inhibit action. Threat and fear are asso-
ciated with rigidity, a need for direction, and
erratic behavior—which work against effec-
tive sensemaking.
RIGIDITY
Ever since the classic article by Staw,
Sandelands, and Dutton (1981) it has been
shown that threat and fear lead to rigidity.
Thus, in individuals, teams, and organiza-
tions, threat often results in the consider-
ation of fewer external cues and a reliance
on tried and true modes of operating. As a
result, threat is often more associated with
inertia, protection of the status quo, and
sometimes even inaction—the deer in the
headlights syndrome. Threat is seen as the
time to batten down the hatches, keep out-
siders away, and get back to business as
usual. Yet, threat conditions are when high
levels of sensemaking and change are most
needed. Thus, leaders at all levels within an
organization need to fight against this
rigidity in order to enable active sensemak-
ing and inventing.
The evidence is clear: Companies that
make changes during economic down-
turns, that offer new products and services
for a new set of circumstances, and that
prepare for the moment when things will
change in a more positive direction are the
ones that not only survive but prosper. For
example, right now many companies are
coming out with less expensive versions of
products in the United States and looking
to move more of their sales to countries
such as China, India, and Brazil where
economies are still growing at high rates.
But seeing what changes are actually tak-
ing place and knowing which actions will
be most useful requires sensemaking and
an ability to push against the rigidity that
comes with threat.
DEPENDENCE ON DIRECTION
Threat and fear also can result in con-
striction of control and a felt need for
direction (Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich,
1985; Staw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981).
In the face of uncertainty, people look to
others to show them the way. When people
are afraid, they look for direction and reas-
surance. In such instances leaders do need
to be reassuring, to communicate what
they know and what they don’t know, and
to show care and concern. They also need
to indicate how they plan to move ahead
and mobilize for the new times ahead.
However, the last thing that leaders should
do is to treat their employees like children,
dependent upon the one leader—even if
there is a pull to do so.
People need to be treated as capable
adults. If sensemaking is inherently social,
and if more and different kinds of data are
important, especially from the front lines
during times of threat, then leaders at the
top of the organization need to encourage
others further down in the organization to
assist in ongoing sensemaking. For exam-
ple, at Best Buy it wasn’t top management,
but a young marketing manager, who
began to see what a lack of communication
was doing to relationships with employees.
She decided to use social media technolo-
gies to get employees (there are 160,000)
to participate in polls, brainstorm new
ideas, and attend town-hall meetings with
management. The result was a greater level
of dialogue, more new ideas for increased
sales, and a 32 percent drop in turnover
(Tucker, 2010).
ERRATIC BEHAVIOR
Threat and fear can also result in erratic
behavior as leaders try one solution and
then another in a frantic search for some-
thing that works. However, such dramatic
shifts in behavior make it very difficult to
engage in effective sensemaking. In order
Sensemaking ◆ 13
to assess if action in a new environment is
working, you need to have time to deter-
mine the outcomes of your actions and to
examine key feedback loops as multiple
factors play out over time.
In medical crisis simulations new interns
attempted to diagnose patients with symp-
toms that did not conform easily to clear-
cut diseases. Some displayed rigidity
responses, leaping to the most likely diag-
nosis and ignoring signals that the diagno-
sis was incorrect. Others engaged in erratic
behavior, trying new treatments but never
holding to them long enough to determine
if they were working. The most successful
doctors engaged in effective sensemaking
by paying attention to the cues that a
treatment was not working and then try-
ing the next one long enough to determine
if it might work (Rudolph, Morrison, &
Carroll, 2009). Thus, leaders need to help
themselves and others to act and limit the
effects of rigidity and dependency, while
avoiding erratic action where learning is
minimized.
Of course it is not only threat and fear
that inhibit effective sensemaking. In a glob-
ally competitive environment our reward
structures are geared toward rewarding
immediate action and hence we may be
signaling that sensemaking is not a valued
activity. Also, while the leadership litera-
ture and leadership training tend to con-
centrate on interpersonal skills, negotiat-
ing, visioning, execution, decision-making,
charisma, and collaboration, sensemaking
is seldom seen on the list. If organizations
want to see more effective sensemaking
then they will have to create the kinds of
practices, structures, vocabulary, and
rewards that encourage it.
TEACHING SENSEMAKING AS A
LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY
Any program or class that includes sense-
making as a leadership capability should
use multiple teaching modes to bring this
complex concept to life and create capacity
in this domain. Combining theory, role
models, action learning, feedback, and
class assignments can result in a rich cur-
riculum that students will enjoy. At MIT,
we teach sensemaking as one of four lead-
ership capabilities so that students can see
how it is intricately interwoven with creat-
ing connections, building a vision, and
implementing change.
We have also found that providing a safe
environment for students to learn about
leadership theory, get feedback on their
capabilities, practice new skills, reflect, and
plan is best done outside the framework of
regular classes. With this in mind, we believe
that a workshop format—one to three full
days—works best. If this format is not pos-
sible, we have taught this sequence in three-
hour blocks once a week.
THEORY
Since students seldom have an existing
knowledge base on sensemaking, some
theoretical introduction is necessary. While
there are a number of excellent books on
the subject (see the reference list at the end
of the chapter) we find it more productive
to provide short lectures on sensemaking
coupled with some of the other learning
modes. Lectures often follow the format of
this chapter: They start with a brief discus-
sion of the core concepts, describe the role
of sensemaking in today’s world, then pro-
vide an overview of what makes for effec-
tive sensemaking and what gets in the way.
To give concepts more meaning, we ask
our students to think of an instance when
they had to engage in active sensemaking—
starting a new job, moving to a new city, or
trying to do economic forecasts in a reces-
sionary environment. Students also meet in
groups to discuss leaders they have seen
who do sensemaking well or poorly, and
probe for what these leaders actually did in
their sensemaking. They can then apply the
concepts to their own experiences.
14 ◆ The Handbook for Teaching Leadership
ROLE MODELS
One of the most effective ways to learn
about sensemaking is either to listen to cur-
rent leaders talk about their own sense-
making activities, or watch videos of lead-
ers in action and analyze their sensemaking
activities. In either case, students should be
encouraged to push for specifics: How did
the leader know that sensemaking was
needed? What types of data did he or she
collect? Who else was engaged? What
forms did exploration and mapping take?
What experiments were run?
In terms of media as opposed to “live”
presentations, commercial films sometimes
provide excellent examples of sensemaking
and other leadership capabilities. In the
movie Gandhi, for example, Gandhi must
engage in sensemaking when he goes to
South Africa and has to try to understand a
new culture, when he goes to India and
must prepare for the fight for indepen-
dence, and when he must strategize about
how to deal with setbacks to his goals for
the country. Whether traversing India on
the roof of a train, talking to people of all
walks of life, figuring out not only condi-
tions within India but the aspirations and
weaknesses of the British colonial rulers,
Gandhi’s sensemaking is constant and criti-
cal to his relating, visioning, and inventing.
The movie Apollo 13 has a wonderful
sensemaking sequence as both the astro-
nauts and mission control try to make
sense of what has gone wrong with the
mission when it is rocked by explosives.
Pitting old mental models—you can’t have
such a failure, it must be instrument error—
against incoming data—alarms going off,
the rocket shaking, gas leaking—the film
shows the difficulties of effective sense-
making during a crisis. A more recent film,
Social Network, provides an outstanding
picture of ongoing sensemaking by the
various players in the unfolding drama of
the Facebook phenomenon.
In the absence of guest speakers or vid-
eos, current news stories can be analyzed.
Examining the sensemaking of President
Obama as new crises emerge, or the
Secretary of the Treasury during the eco-
nomic crisis, or the marketing group of a
global company as they see China, India,
and Brazil emerging as economic power-
houses can all help students understand
the concept.
ACTION LEARNING
While it is valuable to analyze the sen-
semaking of others, the best way to learn
sensemaking is to actually do it. One way
to accomplish this is by having students
pretend they are about to take over another
person’s job. The students can each put
together a plan for sensemaking about
the job and then compare their plans to
those of others, discuss the differences,
and combine approaches to improve their
sensemaking approach. They can then
interview the person to test how their
approach worked.
Students might also do the sensemaking
necessary to decide if a particular venture
capital company should buy a new start-up
and then ask a member of the company to
comment about how his sensemaking dif-
fered from theirs.
Sensemaking, however, is done best in
the context of real world projects, and at
the team level where the social aspect of
sensemaking becomes apparent. In some
of our projects we challenge students to
come up with a consulting plan or design
a new product. The students are formed
into x-teams (Ancona & Bresman,
2007)—externally oriented teams that
must build connections outside of the
team as well as inside—and asked to first
explore their environment. They investi-
gate their own capabilities; the organiza-
tional terrain; the organizational strategy;
potential allies and adversaries; customers
and competitors; and current trends that
might affect their success. They interview
each stakeholder in the project and try to
Sensemaking ◆ 15
understand expectations for the team and
its product, desired outcomes, and his or
her view of the situation. After this explo-
ration phase, they create a map of what
they have discovered and begin to act to
assess if the map is plausible. As they go
through this process, team members are
asked to keep track of their initial assump-
tions and whether those assumptions are
confirmed or negated. Workbooks are
used to guide these activities. Finally, they
move into actually doing the project. Such
projects result in students having a real
appreciation as to how they might incor-
porate sensemaking into their own leader-
ship toolbox.
FEEDBACK
Many of our students participate in
our 360-degree feedback process using
the 4-CAP leadership framework. The
sensemaking segment asks raters from the
students’ former employers to evaluate
the student on exploring the wider sys-
tem, e.g., uses a broad array of types of
data and analytic lenses; mapping, e.g., is
able to consolidate bits and pieces into a
coherent whole; and acting in the system,
e.g., tries small experiments to determine
if they understand the organization.
Students get feedback on how their sense-
making was viewed by managers, peers,
subordinates, and possibly other outside
groups such as customers and suppliers.
After examining the feedback, students
are coached on what the data might mean
and they are asked to put together an
action plan on how they can continue to
hone their skills and improve on their
weaknesses. In addition, their sensemak-
ing capabilities are compared to the other
capabilities to determine its relative
strength in the student’s repertoire of
skills and behaviors. Through this exter-
nal assessment and self-evaluation and
planning, students develop a better sense
of who they are as leaders and how they
can move forward in their leadership
development.
ASSIGNMENTS
Another assignment that helps students
learn about sensemaking is to have them
consolidate everything they have learned
into a “leadership change manual.” The
goal is to create a pragmatic tool for carry-
ing out organizational change—a tool that
must include a section on sensemaking. An
example of a student change manual can be
found in Figure 1.1.
Another assignment asks students to
describe their “leadership signatures” or
their unique way of leading. One section of
this assignment is focused on how students
actually engage in sensemaking—for exam-
ple, Are they over-reliant on computer
search and not so good at face-to-face com-
munication? Are they good at analysis but
not so good at action?—and includes a sec-
tion on how to hone strengths and improve
on weaknesses.
By linking theory, role models, action
learning, feedback, and assignments in
class, students can and do improve their
ability to carry out effective sensemaking.
Conclusion
In a world that is growing “smaller” but
ever more complex, where unpredictable
events and shifting political, economic, envi-
ronmental, and social conditions challenge
us at every turn, we all need to make better
sense of what is going on. We should all
explore the wider system, create maps that
are plausible representations of what is hap-
pening, and act in the system to improve our
understanding of reality. We will never cap-
ture it all, and never know how close we are.
The best we can do is to make sensemaking
a core individual, team, and organizational
capability so that we can break through our
fears of the unknown and lead in the face of
complexity and uncertainty.
16 ◆ The Handbook for Teaching Leadership
2.0 Sensemaking: Idenfying Specificaons
Sensemaking can be thought of as the process by which leaders gather data about the problem
facing the organizaon, much like engineers gather informaon about a technical problem by
solicing engineering specificaons.
Sensemaking is oen one of the
first steps managers take to help
understand the context in which a
company and its people operate.
Sensemaking partners closely with
relang, and together they form
the Axis of Enablement. In a
dynamic business environment,
sensemaking efforts must be
connually updated throughout the
change process.
Installaon Steps
To conduct effect sensemaking, a leader must:
Explore the wider system
It is important to listen and broadly queson all internal and external stakeholders that have
been idenfied. If the nature of the problem or change is not already explicit, then it is
important to use this informaon to help define the issue. Formal and informal interviews,
reports, social media and other online content are all valuable sources of informaon that can
be leveraged. The data gathering process dovetails closely with relang and so provides an early
opportunity to build rapport with employees.
Pursue opinions that differ from your own
Leaders must keep an open mind when building a sensemaking map. An important part of this is
to quickly idenfy your own mental models and assumpons and realize how these may bias
your approach to data collecon. Quesoning these underlying assumpons is also crical to
ensuring that cogni
ve biases do not interfere with your sensemaking process. Leaders should
delay the formaon of opinions unl sufficient data has been gathered, including informaon
Cut out and keep
Installaon Hints:
Get data from mulple sources
Pursue opinions that differ from your own
Test your assumpons with experiments
Seek out mulple perspecves
Iterate, but also remember to act on your data
Troubleshoong:
Build credibility by Relang in interviews
Don’t be afraid to talk to people outside the
company/industry for advice
1
2
Figure 1.1 Example of a Student Change Model
Sensemaking ◆ 17
from those that may disagree with his/her perspecve. Never be afraid to ask, “What am I
missing here?”
Test your assumpons
Sensemaking is an iterave process and because of this, leaders will need to evaluate their
progress periodically to see if they are headed in the right direcon. This is especially important
when confronted with adapve, rather than technical changes, as the nature of the soluon
may need to change over me as the environment changes. Once enough balanced data is
gathered to form an inial hypothesis, leaders should ‘learn by doing’ through low-risk
experiments to test their understanding and add the data gathered from these trials to their
sensemaking map.
Adopt mulple perspecves
Try to see the issues from mulple perspecves. If a leader has reached his/her conclusions
independently and the conclusions seem ‘too easy’ then the leader’s ideas may simply be
reiterang organizaonal stereotypes. Leaders should make use of teams and commiees of
key stakeholders comprising those with power, those in opposion to the change, and also
those without authority (but who will be affected), to ensure their iniaves incorporate
mulple perspecves. Viewing the issues from only one or two perspecves is unlikely to
capture enough informaon for complex changes.
Iterate and Act
Sensemaking is an ongoing process that extends beyond just inial data gathering and
implementaon, but also captures feedback on the change’s success aer compleon. As more
data is obtained, a leader must update his/her map of the organizaon or issue and the leader’s
vision or invented opons also refined. However, it is important for a leader not to be paralyzed
by masses of data such that no acon or progress is made and the iniave stalls. Therefore,
once sufficient balanced informaon is gathered it will be me to take acon and secure those
early victories to help the change process gain momentum.
Troubleshoong Tips
The sensemaking process can be daunng as data becomes overwhelming and inially unknown
gaps in understanding are illuminated. Leaders should keep in mind the following ps to
facilitate the sensemaking process.
Build credibility
If a leader is brought in to turn around a new group or secon, then there is a strong chance that
any past credibility they have built up, may not travel directly with them to the new group.
However, the sensemaking process provides an excellent opportunity to
establish rapport, find
out about employees’ concerns, and also to explain and advocate the purpose of the change.
Listening to employees, showing empathy and understanding, and demonstrang that their
views have been heard and incorporated can help enormously. Nong down salient points
3
4
5
(Continued)
18 ◆ The Handbook for Teaching Leadership
during interviews can not only help leaders to recall facts later, but also demonstrate their
commitment to listening. Through the sensemaking and relang processes, leaders can oen
build credibility by demonstrang trustworthiness, competence, and dynamism.
Idenfy who to talk to
Leaders should try to map out likely stakeholders and include a balance of those that may
support, oppose or be indifferent to the change iniave. During these inial interviews seek
recommendaons from each of these people regarding whom to talk to next. However, leaders
should be aware that these referrals may be designed to reinforce the stakeholder’s own
posions. If possible, leaders should talk to others that have been in similar situaons, perhaps
outside of their companies and ask experts what sources of informaon they found most
valuable.
Real World Example: Chuck Vest’s Leadership as President of MIT
When Charles Vest was appointed as President of MIT he inherited a complex organizaon that
required considerable sensemaking to navigate. One parcular organizaonal change he
implemented centered on ensuring gender equally at MIT. While a commiee of female faculty
members highlighted the need for change, Mr. Vest set about conducng hundreds of
interviews, oen by referral, to help build his map of the instuon. When he heard that
women were discriminated against within the facules he reviewed the data and addressed the
problem in a “just do it”
fashion that helped him secure an early and meaningful victory to build
upon.
Figure 1.1 (Continued)
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