Collective Sense-making Bringing different perspectives together to understand in order to act

We make sense of the world through what we know, notice, and understand. But our individual perspectives are limited by bias, blind spots, and the growing complexity around us. Collective sensemaking brings different perspectives together in conversation, helping us build a richer understanding of difficult situations and decide how to act.

Making sense of the world

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 are constantly trying to make sense of what is happening around us. We notice things, interpret them in the light of what we already know, talk to ourselves about what they might mean, and decide how to respond.

Much of this happens naturally and without much conscious thought.

But there are limits to how well we can make sense of a difficult situation on our own.

• We are subject to cognitive biases, emotions, assumptions, and blind spots.
• We are often deluded about how much we know. Our understanding of the world is far less complete than it feels.
• We tend to accept ideas and assumptions that are deeply embedded in the groups and cultures to which we belong.
• We can only ever see part of a situation. Our experience, position, relationships, and responsibilities influence what we notice and what remains invisible to us.

Thinking alone is valuable, but it can easily become a conversation with ourselves in which our existing assumptions go largely unchallenged.

Knowledge is distributed

There is another problem.

In complex situations, no single person has access to everything that matters. Knowledge is distributed across many people, each of whom sees the situation from a different position.

A senior manager may understand the wider organizational context but know little about what is happening at the coal face. Someone working directly with customers may see emerging problems long before they become visible in reports. A newcomer may notice assumptions that everyone else has stopped questioning.

No one necessarily has the complete picture.

This becomes increasingly important when circumstances are uncertain or changing quickly. The challenge is not simply to collect more information and pass it upwards to someone who can make the right decision. Often there is no single interpretation waiting to be discovered.

We have to make sense of the situation together.

Thinking together

One way of doing this is to bring a diversity of people together in dialogue.

There is an interesting connection here with the wisdom of crowds. The traditional idea is that the combined independent judgements of many people can sometimes be more accurate than the judgement of any one individual.

Collective sensemaking works rather differently. Its value comes not simply from having many different perspectives, but from allowing those perspectives to interact. We listen, question, challenge, respond, and build on each other’s thinking. The conversation itself becomes part of how we make sense.

There is also an interesting middle ground. Research into the wisdom of crowds of crowds suggests that people can deliberate in small groups while maintaining diversity between those groups. This combines something of the independence of the crowd with the value of conversation within smaller groups.

The value lies not simply in having more people in the room. Ten people who share the same assumptions may reinforce each other’s view of the world rather than broaden it.

What matters is the interaction between different perspectives.

In conversation, we can hear how other people see the situation. We can ask questions, test assumptions, challenge each other’s thinking with respect, uncover information that others do not have, and notice things that do not fit our existing explanations.

Someone says something that causes another person to reconsider an assumption. A question exposes a gap in our understanding. Two apparently contradictory perspectives turn out to reveal different parts of the same situation. An idea emerges that nobody brought into the conversation fully formed.

Our understanding develops through the conversation itself.

This is sometimes described as interthinking: thinking with others through dialogue, where ideas and understanding can emerge that none of us may have reached alone.

This is more than exchanging information. We are thinking together.

Interthinking: Thinking Together

Why our best thinking often happens in conversation

We often think of thinking as a private activity that happens inside our heads. This overlooks the way dialogue shapes our ideas, even when we appear to be thinking alone. Interthinking helps us see conversation as a shared process through which understanding, insight, and new possibilities can emerge between us. Continue reading

Collective sensemaking

This process is often described as 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

Nancy Dixon describes the collective dimension this way:

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 word intentionally matters here.

Collective sensemaking is not simply getting a group of people together and asking them what they think. The quality of the conversation matters. People need enough space to speak openly, listen carefully, question assumptions, disagree, and explore ideas that may initially be incomplete or uncertain.

This does not mean that the conversation has to produce agreement.

Different interpretations may remain. Indeed, disagreement can itself be useful information. If thoughtful people with different experiences see the same situation differently, understanding why they disagree may tell us something important about the situation.

Conversation does not remove bias

Collective sensemaking has its own problems.

Groups have biases just as individuals do, and cognitive biases can shape our conversations in ways we may not notice. We can conform to dominant opinions, defer to authority, silence uncomfortable voices, become attached to an early explanation, or reinforce the assumptions of our own group.

Bringing people together does not automatically produce better thinking.

But conversation also gives us an opportunity to expose some of these limitations. When there is sufficient diversity and openness, other people can see things that we cannot see for ourselves. They can question what seems obvious to us and introduce experiences and perspectives that do not fit comfortably with our own.

We cannot eliminate bias, but we can become more aware of it and create conversations in which our assumptions have a greater chance of being noticed and questioned.

The Impact of Cognitive Biases in Conversation

Cognitive biases can lead to flawed or irrational conclusions in a conversation

Cognitive biases affect how we interpret and respond to conversation and reason together, potentially leading to flawed or irrational conclusions, but there are ways to mitigate their impact. Continue reading

From sensemaking to action

Sensemaking is not the same as decision-making. It is part of a continuing process through which we understand what is happening, consider what it means for us, decide how to respond, and learn from what happens next.

A useful way of thinking about this is:

Sensemaking → Meaning-making → Decision-making → Action → Sensemaking…

Sensemaking asks: What is going on? We bring together what we know, notice, and experience to develop the best understanding of the situation that we can.

Meaning-making asks: What does this mean for us? Given what we understand about the situation, we consider its significance, implications, and possible impact on what matters to us.

Decision-making asks: What are we going to do? Our understanding of the situation and what it means for us informs the choices we make about how to respond.

Action puts those decisions into the world.

But action changes the situation. We observe what happens, notice expected and unexpected consequences, learn something new, and begin making sense again.

The process is therefore not a straight line with a clear end point. In complex situations, our understanding can never be final. Sensemaking, meaning-making, decision-making, and action continually inform one another.

Nor do they all have to involve the same people. We may make sense of a situation collectively and explore what it means together, while responsibility for a particular decision rests with an individual or a smaller group.

Collective sensemaking with AI

As AI increasingly becomes part of our conversations, a further question arises: what role, if any, might it play in collective sensemaking?

AI may help us explore alternative perspectives, question assumptions, notice connections, or bring information into a conversation that we might otherwise overlook. But this also raises questions about how much weight we give its contributions and whether involving AI changes the nature of making sense together.

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
• Medium: Collective Sensemaking: The Game Has Evolved by Miljan Bajic