Sensemaking Sprints - Step Back, Before We Leap Forward

Sensemaking Sprints Mission:  To navigate complexity and uncertainty ... learning before you go about acting

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Formats:  Navigating Complexity, Building Culture & Inclusivity, Framing Challenges, Retrospective Learning & Knowledge, System Mapping Gap & Bridge Analysis

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Defined: In an increasingly VUCA,  never-normal world,  there are now frequently situations, crisis events and moments in time where we need to take stock of how we react to the environments around us. Organizations need to make the complex, complicated and chaotic simpler. They need to embed learning from past experience. They need to make the unclear clearer. They need to instinctively see the systems and connections collectively. T.hey need to evaluate the very nature of how we make decisions and they need to frame those challenges back to your company or team.. All this work is an important backdrop preceding any intended action.

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The Cygnus Difference: 

• Complexity Appreciation - value the multi-causal, interdependent environments we operate in 

• Sensemaking Depth - multiple sensemaking principals not specifically married to one framework

• Applied Thinking - climbs out of academia, places more importance on applying learning to action

• Collaborative Facilitation  - experts capable of extracting cues, narratives and perspectives mutually faced

• Compendium & Compass  - informed by Guild methods, frameworks and mapping venture, a Rosetta Stone for making sense of the world

Options:  Act as prelude to a Strategy or Transformation Sprint, Introduce as a whole Training engagement to enrol full organization tiers of leaders in the learning.

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Key Elements of Sensemaking:

- Environments -  cultures, knowledge, frames, disruptions. structures, experiences, barriers, habits, skills, biases, and identities

- Data & Inputs - scanning, scrolling, shape, missings, variables, relationships, anomalies, beliefs and experiences

- Content - quality, examples, patterns, uncertainties, data, networks, influences, opinions, and visualizations

- Interpretation - context, norms, representativeness, connections, inferences, synthesis, and surprises

- Gaps - questions, riddles, angst, discomfort, ambiguities, difference and amplitude from desired state

- Bridges -ideas, attitudes, memories, thoughts, beliefs, values, cognitions, stories, emotions, institutions, and rituals

- Helps - mandates, recommendations, inducements, learnings, framings, reduce hindrances, decision maps, systems, consensus, and plausibilities

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For deeper insight into the topic: read our post The 20 Reasons Why Sensemaking & Critical Thinking Matter