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A Guide to Sense Making and its link to Emergent Strategy

Writer's picture: Hubert Saint-OngeHubert Saint-Onge

By Hubert Saint-Onge



In a previous blog post on dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty, I mentioned that sense-making is the best process for deciphering market dynamics masked by turbulence, disruption, and the cumulative complexity that ensues. Sense-making can act as a hinge between understanding the main patterns and formulating hypotheses about how to take action as part of an emergent strategy to penetrate these markets successfully.  


The Crucial Role of Sense-Making in Understanding Ambiguous Environments


Sense-making is a dynamic and iterative process that empowers teams to discover patterns and interpret complex and ambiguous situations. It involves gathering information, identifying patterns, and constructing coherent narratives that are otherwise difficult to discern in ambiguous environments. Sense-making taps into a team's collective knowledge and wisdom, giving them a clearer picture through otherwise nebulous and opaque conditions. This empowerment instills a sense of confidence and capability in the team, enabling them to navigate even the most ambiguous market environments.


Repeated sense-making sessions provide points of reference that help identify relevant market dynamics and high-level directions that can help identify alternative pathways for piercing through the fog. As new information becomes available, sense-making allows for continuously updating and revising a team’s understanding of rapidly changing markets. This ability to gradually identify market dynamics where conditions change quickly is essential to identifying key reference points to infer the underlying cause-effect map. Once greater clarity has been achieved, hypotheses can be formulated on how to operate successfully in the market.  


Sense-making is a highly participative process that brings together people with different perspectives on these markets. The process unfolds in a way that cultivates a strong sense of unity and a shared purpose to collaborate and reach a shared understanding. It involves gathering information, identifying patterns, and constructing narratives that help make sense of the situation. This shared purpose and drive to succeed serve as the foundation for working through what will often appear as conflicting opinions. The dynamic nature of this work over time helps debunk existing mindsets and conditions team members to greater adaptability, which is crucial in ambiguous environments. By identifying patterns and connections through the give-and-take of these discussions, they can identify alternative pathways that were not obvious before, fostering a sense of connection and alignment within the team.


Once these hypotheses can be tested with key market stakeholders such as clients, suppliers, and others who deal with this market. These discussions will lead to further refinements in the outcomes of the sense-making process. For individual team members, sense-making allows them to navigate uncertainty by connecting new information with their existing knowledge and experiences. The constant ‘epuration’ brought by working through different perspectives involved in reaching a consensus on effectively seeing through these markets with innovative strategies and solutions that competitors cannot easily imitate because they will not be aware of the supporting logic resulting from hours of committed exchanges. They cannot replicate the strength of conviction essential to the coordinated actions that flow from a highly disciplined sense-making exercise.  


The demanding process of forging different points into a strong collective commitment to undertake strategy formulation and execution will create a definite advantage in the market. As they interact, working through complex and challenging exchanges, team members develop the trust required to learn from one another. The cohesiveness they generate in sense-making discussions will stand them in good stead when shifting from developing a coherent view of the market to orchestrating the formulation and execution of new strategies.  This is when the learning and coherence achieved together will pay off when they outpace competitors.


Targeted Outcomes of Sense-Making Discussions

 

A team-based sense-making exercise dealing with an ambiguous market environment aims to help a team not only develop a deep understanding of the complexities of the market but also provide the basis for developing a cohesive action plan. The targeted outcomes of such an exercise include the following:  


  1. Enhanced understanding of ambiguous and complex situations: One of the primary outcomes is a deeper collective understanding of the external environment. The sense-making team aims to clarify ambiguity by identifying trends and understanding the implications of various factors affecting the organization’s market performance.

  2. Assessment of the market dynamics: Sensemaking discussions identify the key conditions contributing to market ambiguity and generate hypotheses about the market’s evolving state. By sharing insights and interpretations, the sense-making team can provide the organization with the information required to operate more effectively in the market and respond faster to changing conditions.

  3. Improved communication and collaboration: These discussions facilitate consensus-building around the key factors affecting the organization’s market performance. They also foster better communication and collaboration among leadership team members. By sharing diverse perspectives and coming to a coherent view, these teams can break down silos and enhance teamwork across the organization.

  4. Identification of growth possibilities: The sense-making team analyzes the market’s current trajectories to map out future developments. As a result, the team develops a shared understanding of the market’s dynamics and potential opportunities. Leaders can leverage the insights gained in sense-making to identify new avenues for growth and mitigate risks.

  5. Better decision-making framework: Sense-making discussions help develop a more transparent decision-making framework. By establishing criteria based on the insights gained, teams can make more informed and timely decisions.

  6. Informed risk management: These discussions can help leaders better understand the risks associated with different responses to what they project could take place in the market. By identifying uncertainties and avoiding potential pitfalls in contingency plans, teams can develop more robust risk management measures.

  7. Promotion of a learning culture: A key by-product of sense-making discussions is cultivating a culture of learning and adaptability within the organization. They foster collaboration and communication across teams, enhancing an organization’s innovation capacity by encouraging reflection, critical thinking, and open dialogue.  

  8. Initial basis for formulating emergent strategies: Another targeted outcome is to provide the basis for developing actionable plans based on the insights gathered. The discussions should lead to specific next steps to ensure the organization can respond effectively to the changing landscape.


Guidelines for sense-making meetings

Sense-making takes on a different tenor than other discussion teams usually have. It is geared to help a team collectively interpret and understand complex or ambiguous situations where no individual alone can discern patterns or solutions through the turbulence, chaos and disruptions that characterize them. In a sense-making dialogue, teams discover new patterns or pathways by complementing one another’s points of view to interpret collectively what is happening in these environments. This process provides a team with a “wider lens” by building on another’s knowledge and perceptions to gather information, identify emergent patterns, and construct a coherent narrative that can pierce through the fog to see enough for testing and designing new approaches to these markets. This explains why sense-making discussions must take on a different character than the everyday team meeting. The 10-point guidelines below will support successful sense-making discussions.  


A. The facilitation of productive sense-making discussions

It is often best for a senior team leader to act as a facilitator of sense-making teams. Sense-making discussions can be challenging for participants. The sense-making process requires that participants share what they know, consider how it intersects with other points, and find commonalities to craft unified meaning from their collective perspectives. They agree upfront to a set of ground rules that guide how the discussion unfolds: they build on one another perceptions, complement their thinking, and sharpen their collective understanding.


1.     Create a Safe Space for Open Dialogue: Create a team environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their thoughts, doubts, and concerns without fear of judgment or criticism. Exploring all points of view is necessary to uncover valuable insights and arrive at a collectively owned direction. Building trust encourages the expression of diverse perspectives, fosters open dialogue, and generates strong consensus with creativity and commitment.


2.     Embrace Diverse Perspectives: Encourage input from all team members, recognizing that diverse viewpoints can enrich the sense-making process. Be aware of the engagement of members, invite quieter members to share their perspectives, and ensure that all voices are heard. Build on one another’s points to find ways to reconcile contradictory views. Use differences of opinion as an opportunity to generate new insights. Incorporating diverse perspectives is essential for a robust sense-making process. Assembling teams with varied backgrounds and expertise will contribute to challenging assumptions and uncovering blind spots.


3.     Encourage Reflection and Inquiry: Promote an attitude of curiosity, where team members are encouraged to ask questions and reflect on the assumptions of others and their own. Questions drive the dialogue forward. Balance inquiry with advocacy and advocate with inquiry. This is the best way to create deeper insights and innovative solutions. When asking questions replaces advocacy as the prevalent mode of participation, it deepens understanding and promotes collaborative problem-solving.


4.     Practice Active Listening: Actively listen to each other and welcome differing opinions as more fodder for generating new insights. Do not interrupt, acknowledge others' contributions, and build on one another’s points to enhance understanding and collaboration.


5.     Use Evidence wherever possible: Present real-world observations rather than assumptions or anecdotal experiences. Leave out experiences no longer relevant to the current environment other than for comparison purposes. Be ready to provide insights to help interpret inferences and ground them into a practical context.   No data or individual data source is privileged.


6.     Framing the Situation: Build on the initial discussions to assess the progress made in identifying the key characteristics of the context and understanding how they relate to each other. It's about creating a narrative or a mental model that makes sense of the perceptions and evidence from earlier discussions. The key questions, the patterns detected, the insights, and the hypotheses emerging from the discussions are inherent to this framing. As the sense-making discussions evolve and new understandings emerge, it is essential to keep updating the framing. The level of coherence inherent to the framing is an indication of the progress the team is making in understanding markets.


7.     Focus on Actionable Insights: Ensure discussions lead to concrete outcomes: the team must carry through its thinking to identify actionable insights. It is essential to keep the discussion centred on the specific questions or issues at hand and avoid digressions that dilute the discussion and disengage other team members. Be guided by the need to generate collective insights that advance the discussion and bring it to a higher level by encompassing different perspectives. When the team reaches an impasse in its discussion, it is essential for facilitating leaders to intervene to take another tack on discussing alternate points of view.   


8.     Leadership Support and Facilitation: Strong leadership support and facilitation can significantly enhance the effectiveness of sense-making discussions. Leaders should model the desired behaviours, such as open-mindedness and curiosity, and actively guide the discussions to keep them focused and productive.


9.     Allocate Sufficient Time: Ensure ample discussion time to explore ideas and insights thoroughly and articulate solid findings. Rushed conversations may lead to superficial understanding; scheduling regular sessions dedicated to sense-making can facilitate deeper engagement and a more substantial commitment to follow through on the results.


The team leader must ensure that all participants commit to these ground rules and hold them responsible for their enforcement.


B. The documentation of the outcomes of sense-making discussions

Documenting discussion outcomes helps track the evolution of the team’s thinking over time. Documentation is key to avoid losing ground between meetings and repeating discussions that have already been settled.


1.     Designate a Note-Taker: Assign a specific person to take notes during the discussion. This individual should be responsible for capturing unresolved issues, key insights, decisions, and action items in real time, helping to ensure that no essential points are missed. The ability to show the evolution of the discussion with maps on a large whiteboard or digital screen is necessary for team members to follow the evolving logic of the debate and avoid getting lost in the different considerations.  Utilizing digital collaboration tools such as mind maps allow for real-time document editing and can contribute to the documentation while the discussion is happening, enhancing engagement and accuracy.


2.     Record the key insights and conclusions drawn during discussions: Map out the new hypotheses/assumptions that emerge and register the areas of agreement formed through the exchange. Recording the insights and conclusions reached during discussions is essential for maintaining the continuity of the discussion without losing key findings—list unresolved issues for further discussion.


3.     Build maps of highlighted connections and cause-effect relationships: Note unresolved differences to share with team members so that they can self-reflect and prepare to resolve them in future meetings.


4. Review key insights regularly:Kick off meetings with a review of key insights identified in previous discussions to validate them, reinforce learnings, and ensure the team remains aligned. At the end of the debate, take a few minutes to review the documented insights with the team. This validation step ensures everyone agrees on the captured insights and allows for any necessary corrections.


Limitations of sense-making in leadership teams for emergent strategy


Although sense-making is a powerful tool in our current market environment, the ‘human condition’ and organizational dynamics can interfere. This list of potential drawbacks must be considered and mitigated as a note of caution.   


1. Overemphasis on Consensus: While alignment is essential, striving for consensus can sometimes stifle dissenting opinions crucial to shaping valid interventions in the marketplace. Encouraging diverse viewpoints is necessary, but if the team focuses excessively on achieving agreement, it may overlook critical insights.


2. Cognitive Biases: Confirmation or groupthink cognitive biases may influence participants in sense-making discussions if not guided by skillful facilitation. These biases can lead to a narrow or biased interpretation of information, where team members may favour insights that align with their pre-existing beliefs or mindsets while disregarding contradictory evidence. The quality of the discussions depends on understanding the assumptions and attitudes held by individuals or collectively by team members and debunking them when they surface. Forging new mindsets comes naturally through learning how to overcome our challenges together. Rooting out self-serving considerations is also essential because all participants will potentially have an “axe to grind” in one way or another.  


3. Lack of Diversity in Perspectives: If the leadership team lacks diversity, whether in terms of backgrounds, experiences, or viewpoints, the sense-making process may be limited or incomplete. Homogeneous teams may overlook critical insights from a broader range of perspectives, ultimately stifling innovation and adaptability. The facilitator must go out of their way to ensure quick-thinking, articulate participants are added to the mix to bring a broader lens to the discussions.  


4. Resistance to Change: Sense-making discussions can sometimes imply the need for changes in strategy or operations that may be met with resistance from team members. This reluctance can hinder the effectiveness of the discussions and prevent the emergence of necessary strategies. The facilitator has to be alert to this propensity and intervene to ensure a high-integrity discussion; otherwise, the discussion will gradually lose focus and meander into mediocrity.   


5. Information Overload: The complexity of the business environment can result in an overwhelming amount of information. During discussions, leadership teams may struggle to sift through data and insights effectively, leading to confusion and indecision rather than clarity and actionable strategies. The documentation process must be geared toward simplifying the findings without losing substance.  


6. Time Constraints: Leadership teams often operate under significant time pressure, limiting the depth and thoroughness of sense-making discussions. Rushed conversations may not allow for a comprehensive exploration of insights, resulting in superficial or missed opportunities and conclusions that have not been adequately stress-tested. It is key for the facilitating team leader to ensure that the right amount of time is allocated to these discussions to avoid misguiding information being adopted downstream.  


7. Getting lost in ambiguity and complexity: Sense-making and emergent strategies are geared to deal with uncertainty and complexity. When faced with ambiguous situations, leadership teams may find reaching consensus or actionable outcomes challenging, leading to frustration and indecision. When the facilitator sees that the discussion has exhausted itself, it is best to move to another topic and come up later with a better articulation and positioning.


8. Incomplete or vague findings: Even if sense-making discussions yield valuable insights, a gap may slip between what is discussed and market reality. The insights gathered may be too vague and generalized to translate into practical strategies. These problems will likely be addressed when defining emergent strategies or testing them in the market through execution.  Still, detecting these gaps before moving to that stage would be necessary.  


The intersection of sense-making and emergent strategy

 

In fast-changing, complex environments, organizations must be offensively and defensively agile. The intersection of sense-making and emergent strategy can contribute to adjusting effectively to disruptive market changes (defensive adaptability) and rapidly seizing new opportunities (offensive agility).  As competitors pointlessly try to navigate indecipherable markets, organizations enhance their resilience and agility by adopting an emergent strategy framework and leveraging team-based sense-making work to pivot quickly in response to changes in the external landscape.


The emergent strategy approach emphasizes a more organic, less structured development of strategic directions based on real-time feedback from execution-driven learnings. When they become part of emergent strategy work, sense-making discussions make meaning by engaging in dialogues to frame problems, set directions, agree on how to realize them and learn from their execution. These exchanges create coherence and commitment around what team members want to achieve. Making meaning together is the most effective way to deepen collective commitments.


Cognitively driven, rigidly structured strategic planning frameworks have become obsolete due to the emergence of ambiguity. The emergent strategy approach best deals with emergent market conditions, where strategic directions evolve through experimentation and agile adaptation.  This explains why strategy formulation and execution are integrated in an emergent strategy approach. Emergent strategy development emphasizes the need for organizations to remain responsive to changing conditions and to continuously assess their strategies based on the experience and learning gained with dynamic execution.     


Sense-making becomes a precursor to emergent strategy by clarifying chaotic environments and helping leaders and teams interpret complex scenarios. By embracing these concepts, organizations can enhance their agility and responsiveness. Collecting data, perceptions, experiences and inferences from observed patterns to craft a clearer picture of their external environment allows them to identify emerging opportunities or threats and adjust their strategies accordingly. This approach arises from recognizing that organizations can no longer afford to plan over several months a year ahead; instead, emergent strategies are best developed organically based on real-time feedback and learning. This ‘real-time’ based approach allows organizations to pivot quickly.


While many remain stuck in structured year-long planning, separated from the realities of execution, some organizations are adopting more agile ways of dealing with high-velocity markets. For instance, by actively engaging with customers and analyzing feedback, Starbucks was able to pivot to a digital-first approach, enhancing its delivery and mobile ordering capabilities. The case for combining team-based sense-making and an emergent strategy approach becomes compelling.


Conclusion


Sense-making helps demystify complex, fast-moving situations, allowing leadership teams to see opportunities and threats more clearly. This clarity is essential for formulating strategies that align with the current context. Sense-making discussions are designed to cut through the “ambiguity fog” and give the senior leadership team the confidence to take quick, purposeful action in the marketplace.

The interplay between sense-making and emergent strategy is critical for navigating complexity in today’s business environment. By leveraging sense-making and emergent strategy processes, organizations can stay agile and responsive to change with innovative strategies.


My next blog will detail a readily implementable approach to emergent strategy making.  

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