Sensemaking is like listening on steroids

The performance enhancing tool for workplaces today is sensemaking. It's the skill of connecting dots and understanding the deeper meaning of what’s being discussed.

When we try to take information in, understand what’s going on or decide what to do, we can use sensemaking to help us listen, think and decide. Too often we suffer misunderstandings, time wasting repetition, conversations that go around in circles, people interrupting, and still others who repeat information … but LOUDER! We’re all trying to understand what’s going on, and work out what we need to do about it.

It can be too hard (and dull) to make sense just sitting around a table or via remote hookup looking at each other. That’s because sensemaking may not come as naturally as we assume it does. 'I can listen, I can think, I can talk. Therefore I can make sense, can’t I?’

We need to do something more. We need to write some stuff down, to map it out - and thankfully, 'any old map will do’, says sensemaking guru Karl Weick.

More to come this week on sensemaking...if you'd like more info on sense making, let me know. 

Know where your thinking is at

With all the information flooding in to our mind - posts, meetings, documents, reports, media ... plus the things we make up in our own mind - knowing where your thinking is at is a powerful form of self-leadership.

Where are you?

⬅️ Are you at HINDSIGHT - the past? This is about stories, sharing what happened and it helps us make sense of now or the future via what has already taken place.

⬇️ Are you at INSIGHT - the now, present? This is where information is coming in ("incoming!!") and we need to interpret it, connect it and integrate it.

➡️ Are you at FORESIGHT - the future, thinking about the next? This is about predictions, projections of what might happen (based on what happened in the past or what's happening now).

None of them, or any of the locations are wrong or right. It's the knowing where you're "at", this is the powerful thing about thinking and sensemaking.

Sensemaking is understanding the deeper meaning of things and how we connect the dots. Are you aware of how you make sense?

Drowning in it

Drowning in it. Have you felt the ‘drowning in it’ feeling? It happens daily in meetings, or on Day 1 of a new job, drowning in all that information!

The Institute for the Future named ‘Cognitive Load Coping' as something we’ll need to be good/better/best at for the 2020s. We can't wait for a magic pill - we need to do better with information, now.

A key is understanding that cognitive overload can happen:

🌕 s-l-o-w-l-y without you barely noticing it (until you're in a daze, like at a conference), or

🌕 swiftly (when someone presents lots of complex info, data, results and - aaargh, we've lost the thread).

We can build skills to manage our own cognitive load (more on that over the coming weeks). But as leaders, we must focus and ruthlessly prioritise when presenting information to others - for their load.

TIP: Package information up in chunks that are easy for digestion. This means losing long lists of bullet points; too tough to make sense of.

Here's my infamous slide presented at a conference on Day 1. (The Day 2 speakers stayed up late deleting all their bullet points! 😆 And the presentations were better!) Ditch the list of dots, it's zzzzz. What helps your cognitive load? 

The secret to leadership is simple

'The secret to leadership is simple’. So said Seth Godin ... and he says many wonderfully frank, clear and compelling things.

The concept, behavior and practice of leadership can get complicated and confusing - especially when you’re in the thick of it.

Like when you’re dealing with the human side (which is most of the time), or handling conflict and tension or leading through a significant and unsettling time of change (which is most of the time).

The slide deck from that leadership program or your ‘colour’ from that diagnostic tool might not help you so much when you’re waist deep in the tricky stuff.

Seth’s quote below here has been a helpful guide to me. So much so, I “elevated” it : that is, I took the words and made an artifact, an anchor, a reminder of it, and put it in front of my face where I can see it...to remind myself to not make leadership too complicated.

Has leadership become too complicated? What helps you with leadership?

'Any old map will do'

I wrote earlier about sensemaking and how we need it to collaborate, make decisions and make progress. How do we ‘make sense’, particularly in a group? Currently, we sit around a table, look at each other and talk at each other. It’s so verbal. Blah blah and blah, and some more blah blah. We’re trying to explain things, influence, persuade, educate, inform, involve and engage.

All of that with words? That’s a big ask of any words coming out of our mouth to achieve.

As if we should all be famous orators, preachers and inspirers! But some of us aren’t. And it can be unsafe in some workplaces to even open your mouth to put forward your thoughts. For making sense, you don’t need fancy drawing skills. You need a map.

Thanks to Sensemaking guru Dr Karl Weick’s advice, ‘any old map will do.’ You see, a map provides us with a point of reference, a starting point. To start to make sense, get some of the information - words, shapes, ideas - onto something map-ish; a note pad, tablet, white board, flip chart.

It need not be pretty. It needs only to be practical. It’s a starting point after all.