Being told to ignore the fire and take a different course of action contradicted their retrospective sensemaking. Therefore, the majority of men were understandably confused when they were ordered to build an “escape” fire, to reroute the existing fire.

 – Making Sense of Sensemaking: The Critical Sensemaking Approach

 Sensemaking has been defined as “how people make sense out of their experience in the world.”

 – Making Sense of Sensemaking 1: Alternative Perspectives

In The Long Ballad, Lord Wei wants to gift a disciple with some words of wisdom. He parts ways with said disciple after expressing his belief that the disciple would be able to figure out a somewhat elliptical statement of principle – A benevolent heart is invincible. The apparent contradiction in terms necessitated a deliberate process of sensemaking.

Unlike the said disciple whose task was essentially to derive principles for his life based on a laconic utterance formulated with the twin purposes of obfuscation and clarification, students today have to deal with a great deal of information meant to clarify but could obscure.

Sensemaking is a twenty-first century necessity. It is intuitive to the extent that some things just make sense and some things do not. It turns out what does and does not make sense may be a matter of common sense – common not in any universal sense but in a communitarian sense. In this sense, it is really not at all common, in the sense of an incontrovertible truth.

Apart from making sensible decisions, sensemaking is to also make sense of situations which are puzzling. Unlike puzzles which can be solved in the comfort of one’s home, some such situations carry with them stakes which are much higher.

Students today may have to make sense of the abundance of information they find online. They may have to make sense of rapidly unfolding emergencies which outcomes depend on their actions. They may also have to make sense of the mundane which detracts from what they have become used to.

Sensemaking is an area of scientific study and the lessons from this field of study has applications in how we deal with sudden changes in our environment and how we make decisions. It is also an area which has implications for how we rely on computer generated solutions to complex problems.

Karl E. Weick, who came up with the term Sensemaking (Mills et al., 2010), begins Chapter 1 of his book Sensemaking in Organizations by explaining that, “Sensemaking is tested to an extreme when people encounter an event whose occurrence is so implausible that they hesitate to report it for fear they will not be believed. In essence, these people think to themselves, it can’t be, therefore, it isn’t”.

Mills and others (2010) explain that “sensemaking occurs as a result of a shock, or break in routine”.

In a series of publications for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Computer Society, Klein, Moon and Hoffman (2006) ask what exactly it means to sensemake.

They began their first paper in the series with a compelling anecdote that illustrates how useful and important sensemaking is.

An elderly man has a host of medical symptoms, each of which is succinctly labelled with a frightening medical sounding name – arrhythmia. His son is naturally very worried. A learned doctor vanquishes all his fears with a simple story about what really all those symptoms meant, why they were occurring and why he (the son) could expect his father to regain vitality because of what had already been done for the latter.

In this paper, they highlighted the difference between sensemaking and a closely-related concept; situational awareness. In essence, to become aware of what a situation really is, we need to make (the right) sense of it. They explained that sensemaking is both “retrospective” – understanding what happened after it happened and “anticipates the future”.

It is very tempting to accept as unqualified truths, widely publicised and often repeated scientific findings and maxims which by definition, do not offend common sense. Klein, Moon and Hoffman (2006) very helpfully set their readers free with the truth from updated science.

A scientific finding related to sense making and which has to be qualified is confirmation bias. They made it clear that while confirmation bias – that we are predisposed to see what we want to see and blind to what we wish we were not in fact seeing, does operate, its operation may be limited to individuals who are not experts in the relevant area.

In their second paper, Klein, Moon and Hoffman (2006) explained that experts are wary of making assumptions which are not sufficiently supported with evidence. They did caution that experts could be “more skeptical about contrary evidence”.

This segues into their clarification about a maxim. We have all heard of the value of an open mind. They explained that while one must be open to new information especially if it contradicts strongly held understandings, open cannot mean to simply hold that information in the mind without doing more.

Indeed, they suggest that to make sense is to actively ask if I could be wrong.

At this stage, it may be useful to refer to Weick’s formulation of sensemaking. According to Mills and others (2010) who sought to build on Weick’s work, the way Weick saw it, people make sense of events by picking out features which confirm what they already believe to be true. It is more comforting (to prevent shock) to prefer an explanation which does not displace everything that previous decisions have been based on – lest the entire life is called into question. This is also important so that sense makers can continue to trust their own judgement.  How people make sense of a situation depends on how others talk about and describe such situations.

While Weick and Mills and others (2010) sought to explain how people actually make sense, Klein, Moon and Hoffman (2006) suggested a way to make better or better make sense.

A key reason certain explanations are preferred is the shock which comes with realisation and which can cause disillusionment. Explanations which are not merely “plausible” but which are also “accurate” (Mills et al., 2010) can also be enlightening.

Klein and others (2006) advise that an open mind is not the solution to a closed one.

They counsel instead that we should jump to conclusions and do so quickly. To avoid shock, we must not stay long where we land. Instead, we have to look for evidence not to prove right but to prove wrong that initial conclusion. Once that conclusion has been proven wrong, we should jump to yet another and then another and then another until, there is incontrovertible evidence which gives us firm footing.

To be sure, this is a dynamic process not least because things change and change regularly.

To sum up, sensemaking is to make sense of events and a deluge of information. We may be predisposed to making sense in ways which follow our natural rhythms to avoid situations in which the heart skips a beat.

In traditional Chinese medicine, it is said that a bitter gourd quenches a fiery heart.

The Brain Dojo