Sensemaking[1]
By John Perkins, Ph.D.
5201 22nd Ave NE Ste. 201
Seattle, WA 98105
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Life teems with ambiguity and emergencies where people must find their way without adequate preparation or complete information. A theoretical model called sensemaking describes how people reduce ambiguity, uncertainty or complexity. They may do so in three ways:
1.Sensemaking processes include meetings, discussions, brainstorming, and so on.
2.Sensemaking activities include paper and pencil assessments, fact-finding trips to gather more information, and the like.
3.Sensemaking artifacts include all paper documents such as minutes and reports, electronically recorded communication such as audiotapes, and records of communication on the Internet, such as webpages and e-mail.
There are three perspectives[2] in sensemaking:
First person sensemaking includes all the ways a person can clarify attempts to understand concepts or a situation in private and while alone. It may include making lists or comparison tables, conducting independent research, recalling dreams, or taking long walks. It also includes all the prior life experiences and education a person consciously or unconsciously draws upon while contemplating what he or she needs to make sense of.
Second person sensemaking involves peer-level interactions and alternating cycles of rehearsal and performance. The essential feature of second person sensemaking is participants can speak directly to one another, ask questions, and everyone’s understanding progresses at about the same pace.
Third person sensemaking means ways of making sense that affect people who are not part of the decision process in a direct, personally knowable way. It shows two different faces. One face of third person sensemaking subordinates people and their experiences. The influence of this perspective pervades our culture through the domination of the scientific method and the practice of speaking of “truth,” “facts,” and “knowledge” as though they existed independent of human understanding and interpretation.[3] It leads some to prefer impersonal “research” conducted and disseminated by authorities and experts. These authorities may even be long dead.
The other face of third person sensemaking emerges from first and second person sensemaking to create a participative structure in which others can be invited to join. People who prefer this mode of sensemaking understand that the theories and practices of others serve only as guides.
Ways of interpreting and applying legal principles illustrate both approaches to third person sensemaking. An example is Justice Earl Warren’s awakening to the realities of discrimination for Negroes (term used during that time) and how that changed him and his approach to the 1954Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case.
One story is that before the Court announced its monumental decision in the spring of 1954, he took a tour of the Virginia Civil War battlefields. Warren's driver, an African-American, dropped him off for the night at a hotel in Virginia. When the driver picked up Warren the next morning, Warren asked him where he had stayed. He had slept in the car, as there were no hotels in the area that accepted blacks. Warren, reportedly, was shocked and immediately ended his tour (Kluger, 699). One can speculate how this experience affirmed his thinking about the case. He was also sensitive to the role he had played as governor in promoting the relocation of Japanese-Americans into detention camps during World War II. The regret he felt about this, which was revealed in the autobiography that was published after his death (Kluger, 661-662), may also have played a role.[4]
Discrimination is a form of third person sensemaking—the social practices and laws cannot be changed by direct person-to-person (second person sensemaking) discussion. Had Warren’s driver approached the white personnel in the available hotels ALL of them would have turned him away. And each could disown personal responsibility by citing the segregation laws of that particular state.
The Supreme Court, through its role as the highest court in the country, has the power to interpret the Constitution and laws. Interpreting laws is a form of third person sensemaking because the Justices of the Supreme Court do not personally know the millions of citizens their opinions affect. Among themselves, as they debate a case and arrive at their positions, Justices are engaging in second person sensemaking.
Precedent is one form of third person sensemaking that follows the previous decisions of others. The legal precedent at the time had established “separate but equal” as the law of the country. That precedent provided one source for Warren’s thinking about the case, but Warren also had his own experiences to draw upon. He regretted his role in detaining Japanese-Americans during WW II. The power to detain people is a form of third person sensemaking. He heard how discrimination had prevented his driver from finding a hotel. Listening to his driver’s experience is a type of second person sensemaking. He concluded from this that something must be done (first person sensemaking); worked outside of public view with this fellow Justices to craft an unanimous decision (second person sensemaking); which fundamentally changed the legal precedent about race relations in this country (third person sensemaking). Warren demonstrated the type of third person sensemaking that includes current experiences and an empathetic understanding of how policies impact the actual lives of others.
As we face complex situations, sensemaking offers a way to chip away at the confusion. As E. L. Doctorow once remarked, sometimes it feels like we are driving at night on an unfamiliar back road in the midst of a thick fog. We drive slowly and carefully because we can only see a small distance ahead. But it is possible to make the whole journey that way.
Perkins, Sensemaking, page 1 of 4
[1] Karl E Weick, 1995, Sensemaking in Organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
[2] William Torbert, 1997, Developing Courage and Wisdom in Organizing and in Sciencing, available 12/18/97 at
[3] George Soros, 1995, A Failed Philosopher Tries Again, Speech text, available 2/6/97 at:
[4] Robert E. Botsch, 1999, Briggs v. Eliott (1954), available on 5/22/02 at Botch relied upon Richard Kluger, 1976, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality, New York: Knopf.