Sensemaking
Sensemaking or sense-making is a process by which a large population of people are able to give meaning to their collective experiences, referred to as story-based or narrative-based assessment, and 'the first form of scalable ethnography'. By collecting real, unfiltered experiences on the ground, sensemaking can be used to create a story-based repository of insights and learning through a crisis or transformation. Sensemaking helps glean a clearer understanding of what is really going on to minimize the negative impacts from the past, find the evolutionary potential in the present, and help shape a regenerative future.
Video Tutorials
The video below automatically starts at the 6:13 mark, and is an excellent primer on sensemaking by Dave Snowden.
The video below documents the sensemaking process with a community in Africa
Resources
- Open Participatory Organization (OPO) - A self organization system that utilizes sensemaking.
- Collective Presencing - A study in sensemaking through collective presencing, sourced from the Art of Hosting co-creation framework.
- SenseMaker - A widely used sensemaking tool developed by Cynefin, Dave Snowden
- Narrative-Based Transdisciplinary Research Using the SenseMaker Tool - A case study site explaining sensemaking in Africa.
- Be The Change Cooperative - A self-organized organization that administers sensemaking scans in co-creation communities.
- A pilot SenseMaker scan to track ecosystem health, mutualistic, co-creative behavior - Please do not submit any scans! See screenshot below:
Case Study
