The Sensemaking Workshop
The Institute for the Future predicts Sensemaking to be the #1 skill we'll need for 2020. But that's just a couple of years away!
In the meantime, the world is going through some of the greatest political, technological, cultural, economic and social changes ever witnessed.
What's going on? What do we need to do? How will we respond?
So what is sensemaking anyway!?
Sensemaking is described as:
the ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed.
When you're working with your team, customers, clients, users, stakeholders - what are they thinking and saying? What are they doing? What does it mean? How do we integrate all of that information to then move on to make a decision?
There's no shortage of data available to us; it's making sense of that data, making sense of what it means for our organisation, team, people...that's the work to be done.
There's an imperative to prepare our teams and organisation for both the ongoing uncertain and constantly changing future and to develop our capabilities as sensemakers : as individuals and collectively.
As smart machines take over rote, routine manufacturing and services jobs, there will be an increasing demand for the kinds of skills machines are not good at.
These are higher-level thinking skills that cannot be codified. We call these sense-making skills, skills that help us create unique insights critical to decision making.
Source: The Institute for the Future - Future Work Skills
The Sensemaking Workshop is a bespoke half or full day workshop experience tailored to your situation, industry, team and agenda.
We will work collaboratively and bring your team together: to build their individual and collective sensemaking skills and carry out sensemaking on your project, business, industry or sector issues.
Based on Lynne Cazaly's book 'Making Sense: A Handbook for the Future of Work', this program is creative, collaborative and insightful.
It's tailored to your workplace and team and includes individual, group and team exercises and activities to build capability and experience in sensemaking as well as deliver tangible and practical outputs from the day.
Many businesses and projects use this type of workshop as a Discovery Session, as a Project Kickoff or as an 'Are we on the same page?' session as part of a larger change or transformation project.
It's deeply insightful to gather stakeholders in the one room to get a 'sense-check': where are we, what do we think, what might be possible, what are our next steps?
Additionally, The Sensemaking Workshop is a powerful addition to a Design Thinking process to determine what is, what if, what wows, what works.
The Sensemaking Workshop is as eye opening as it is defining of a point in time.
It helps an organisation identify what's going on and what do we need to do about that.
This Sensemaking Workshop is ideal for
- strategic planning
- design thinking
- team building
- scenario planning
- insight sessions
- conferences and summits
- community and stakeholder engagement
- change programs
It helps you to keep asking 'what's the story' and 'now what do we need to do about that'
The Sensemaking Workshop brings a team or collective together, gets them working on real-world work-based situations and builds their knowledge, nous and know-how in sensemaking.
These skills are immediately transferrable back in their role in the organisation. This is how individual and collective sensemaking capability flows, grows and develops across an organisation.
Contact Lynne Cazaly to enquire about The Sensemaking Workshop at your place of work. Let's talk about why you want to bring people together, who might be in the room and what we could work on.
Making Sense: It's the #1 capability for the future of work