What is Sensemaking?
Sensemaking is the ongoing process by which people create meaningful interpretations of ambiguous, complex, or novel situations. It is how people construct explanations for what is happening and what they should do about it.
How it works
Karl Weick defined sensemaking as a retrospective process: people act first and then construct an explanation for what happened and why. This reverses the rational model (understand, then act) and explains why organizations often discover their strategy in hindsight rather than executing a predetermined plan. Sensemaking is social (constructed through interaction), ongoing (continuously revised), and driven by plausibility rather than accuracy (good-enough explanations that enable action rather than perfect analysis that causes paralysis).
Applied example
A team receiving ambiguous data about declining sales creates a narrative (‘The market is shifting toward mobile’) that organizes their understanding and guides action, even though the actual cause might be a pricing error in one region. The narrative is plausible enough to enable coordinated action, which is more valuable than waiting for perfect understanding.
Why it matters
Sensemaking explains how people and organizations navigate ambiguity, revealing that understanding often follows action rather than preceding it.
