How do we make sense of the world so we can act in it?
Collective Sensemaking
How do we make sense of the world?
Sense-making: How do we make sense of the world so we can act in it?
Credit: Dave Snowden
We can think things through on our own, but there are problems with the internal conversations we have in our heads.
- We are full of cognitive biases, emotions, and blind spots.
- We are deluded; we think we understand far more than we do.
- We tend to blindly accept things we have been taught or are deep in our tribal cultures.
And there is a second factor.
In our increasingly complex, fast-paced, ambiguous world, no single leader or individual can know everything or be smart enough alone to address the challenges that face us.
Today, managers often know less about an issue than their staff. They are too far away from the coal face, and the world is changing too rapidly for them to keep up.
One of the best ways to make sense of an issue or challenge in high complexity or uncertainty situations and ultimately make better decisions and innovate is to bring a diversity of people together in dialogue.
The more creative conversations are the ones that we have with each other, where we challenge each other (with respect), question each others’ thinking, point out biases, fill blind spots and thus burst the thought bubbles in which we live.
These small group conversations are not without their biases either, and although impossible to eliminate, if we are aware of them, we can convene our conversations in such a way as to minimize them.
It is through conversation that we manage our knowledge. This is often called Collective Sensemaking, Collaborative Sensemaking, or Conversational Sensemaking.
Sensemaking is the ability or attempt to make sense of an ambiguous situation.
More exactly, sensemaking is the process of creating situational awareness and understanding in situations of high complexity or uncertainty in order to make decisions.
It is a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively
Credit: Gary A. Klein
Collective Sensemaking is a conversational event where people intentionally come together for the purpose of using their varied perspectives and cognitive abilities to make sense of an issue or problem they are mutually facing.
Credit: Nancy Dixon
The Knowledge Café is a powerful collective sensemaking tool.
Resources
- Blog Post: Collective Sensemaking: How One Organization uses the Oscillation Principle by Nancy Dixon
- Blog Post: Leveraging Collective Knowledge: NASA’s Constellation Program by Nancy Dixon
- Blog Post: Using Collective Sensemaking to Put Caring Back in Healthcare by Nancy Dixon
- Blog Post: Collective Sensemaking -The Democratization of Organizations by Nancy Dixon
- Blog Post: The Collapse of Expertise and Rise of Collaborative Sensemaking by David Holzmer
- Medium: Collective Sensemaking: The Game Has Evolved by Miljan Bajic
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