Sensemaking – Karl Weick (1995)

It involves the seeking of understanding and the giving of meaning, to an event.

Focuses on constructing a ‘frame of reference’ – needed because most events we
experience are ‘equivocal’ (multiple interpretations)
Putting experiences into a framework allows people "to comprehend, understand, explain,
attribute, extrapolate and predict" (Starbuck and Milliken (1988, p51)
Kramer (2017) – it is the way we develop plausible explanations for our experiences and is
the process by which we construct our reality
Weick 7 general principles:
1. Sense making is grounded in identity construction. Our sense of our own identity,
'who we are' shapes how we interpret events.
2. Sensemaking is retrospective. We don’t not make sense of an event until after it as
occurred. When we reflect on the event has an effect on what we recall, what we
attend to and how we interpret the event.
3. Sensemaking is enactive of sensible environments. As we discuss events, we create a
narrative which helps us understand the event. This helps us understand our
interpretation of the event and the constraints imposed by the environment.
4. Sensemaking is social. We create our reality through social exchange of the
narrative. Plausible narratives are shared, and we collectively come to an agreement
on a meaning for understanding the event.
5. Sensemaking is ongoing. We are constantly encountering novel experiences, so we
are constantly making sense of them. In turn, our retrospective understanding of the
event shapes not only our sense of who we are, but also how we make sense of
similar events next time we encounter them
6. Sensemaking is focused on and by extracted clues. Extracted clues are the elements
we focus on, out of all the information we have about the event. We decide on what
information is important, relevant and acceptable and our attention is focused on
this. This focus affects how we will make sense of future events.
7. Sensemaking is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. We are likely to focus on
interpretations which seem plausible rather than seek objective truth.
  Sensemaking is matter of identity: it is who we understand ourselves to be in
relation to the world around us.
 Sensemaking is retrospective: we shape experience into meaningful patterns
according to our memory of experience.
 How and what becomes sensible depends on our socialization: where we grew up in
the world, how we were taught to be in the world, where we are located now in the
world, the people with whom we are currently interacting.
 Sensemaking is a continuous flow; it is ongoing, because the world, our interactions
with the world, and our understandings of the world are constantly changing. You
might also think of sensemaking as perpetually emergent meaning and awareness.
 Sensemaking builds on extracted cues that we apprehend from sense and
perception. Cognition is the meaningful internal embellishment of these cues. We
articulate these embellishments through speaking and writing – the “what I say” part
of Weick’s recipe. In doing so, we reify and reinforce cues and their meaning, and
add to our repertoire of retrospective experience.
 Sensemaking is less a matter of accuracy and completeness than plausibility and
sufficiency. We simply have neither the perceptual nor cognitive resources to know
everything exhaustively, so we have to move forward as best as we can. Plausibility
and sufficiency enable action-in-context.

Kramer’s Example of Sensemaking

"To help understand how the principles of sensemaking work together holistically, consider
employees working for a company accused by the local newspaper of dumping chemicals
into the stream behind its plant. To begin with, the situation is equivocal because there are
many possible interpretations of the situation. The accusation could be false, and the
newspaper was simply wrong for reporting it. If it occurred, the chemical spill could have
been an unavoidable accident due to some malfunctioning equipment. It could have been
the result of an untrained employee who did not know any better or a lazy employee who
simply cut corners to save time. Another interpretation could be that the company is always
looking to cut costs and so it disposed of the chemicals illegally to save money. Faced with
this equivocality, employees are likely motivated to make sense of this accusation
(retrospective). Employees likely overhear a number of peers discussing these various
explanations for the accusation (equivocality). During a discussion (enactive of sensible
environment), the group focuses on evidence provided by a trusted supervisor who says it
was an accident caused by a new, untrained employee who now understands correct
procedures. Eventually, the employees focus on the evidence provided by a supervisor that
this very minor accident was due to an untrained employee and the problem was corrected
through additional training before the story was written and the accusations in the
newspaper article of a large-scale problem were unfounded (extracted cues). Collectively
(social), the employees accept the supervisor’s explanation as the most likely explanation.
It is not critical whether this is an accurate explanation of the events as long as they agree
that it makes sense (plausible). By selecting this interpretation, the employees are
identifying as employees who trust management rather than as employees who are
cynical and believe that management would dump chemicals to save money (identity). A
commitment to this interpretation impacts the employees’ future communication as they
defend the company to others in conversations and condemn the newspaper for its
inaccurate reporting. Of course, if another report of a similar problem occurs two months
after this initial accusation from the newspaper, the employees must continue to make
sense of the situation (ongoing).”