Sensemaking

Question 1

What is sensemaking?

Answer 1

Different way of understanding organizations as sensemaking processes.
Ongoing processes of meaning convergence; crises (collapses of sensemaking).

Helps explain the world around us and guides our decisions in a retrospective way.
We are constantly refining our frames as we interact with our context.

Question 2

Sensemaking is a process of …

Answer 2

creating a frame of reference (also known as mental model).

Question 3

Core message from sensemaking:

Answer 3

Reality as ongoing social construction
Based on shared frames
Understand what happens in cosmology episodes (also in less dramatic situations) is important as it helps us understand how we build new frames

Question 4

How we make sense:

Answer 4

Conscious, active, social task based on communication
Retrospective
Based on our experiences, knowledge, roles, etc…

Question 5

Cues that is inconsistent with frame.

Answer 5

Sometimes we are confronted with some cues that may not fit our current frame. And this is where sensemaking happens: when there is a misfit between cues and our current understanding/frame.
We can either discard the que or question the frame.
Sensemaking therefore triggers development of new frames.

Question 6

Recursive process.

Answer 6

Two-way process.
Cues are modifying our mental models.
And our mental models are looking for specific cues/data.

Question 7

Case of convergent mental frames

Answer 7

Decisions are easily made as people have common mental models, similar view on problems, solutions and what would be the most providential decision.

Question 8

Case of divergent mental frames

Answer 8

Decisions uncover potential divergences in mental models, that trigger processes in attempt for convergence, that could, if all goes well, lead to convergence, and hence, a decision.