EDO 816 Module 3 Complexity and Sensemaking Example

What Is the Story, and Now What? Sensemaking at a Small College in the Week a Neighbor Announced It Would Close

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Doctor of Education Program, Aspen University

EDO 816: Leading in Highly Uncertain and Rapidly Changing Environments

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Month Day, Year

What Is the Story, and Now What? Sensemaking at a Small College in the Week a Neighbor Announced It Would Close

On a Monday morning in February, Brookfield College, forty miles from Halden College, announced that it would close after the spring term. Its 900 students would need new colleges by fall, and its faculty and staff would lose their jobs. Halden, an invented private college of 1,350 students, had competed with Brookfield for decades. By Wednesday, three different stories about what the closure meant were circulating on Halden's campus, and by Friday a rumor that Halden would be next had reached prospective students' parents. Halden's president said nothing publicly until the following Thursday. This paper uses sensemaking theory to explain what happened that week and what leaders could do differently. The colleges, the people and the events are invented.

When Sense Collapses

Weick (1993) reanalyzed the Mann Gulch fire of 1949, in which thirteen smokejumpers died in Montana. The crew parachuted in expecting a routine fire that would be under control by morning. As the fire behaved in ways that did not fit that expectation, crossing the gulch and racing upslope toward them, their shared understanding of the situation broke down. When the foreman lit an escape fire and ordered them to drop their tools and lie down in it, the crew did not follow; the order made no sense within the framework they still held, and the role structure that might have led them to obey had already come apart. Weick argued that the disaster was a collapse of sensemaking and structure together, and he identified sources of resilience: the capacity to improvise with what is at hand, roles that people carry in their heads even when the formal structure fails, an attitude of wisdom that holds knowledge loosely and respectful interaction in which people both trust and question one another.

How Sensemaking Works

Weick et al. (2005) described sensemaking as an ongoing process through which people turn circumstances into a situation they can understand in words and act on. It begins with noticing and bracketing cues from a stream of experience, continues with labeling and categorizing them, and is retrospective, making sense of what has already happened. It works through presumption, connecting the abstract with the concrete, and it is social and systemic, shaped by conversations and by people's positions. Above all, it is about action: the central questions are what the story is and, once a plausible story is in hand, what to do next. Plausibility matters more than accuracy, because people act on stories that are good enough and revise them as action reveals more.

Three Stories in One Week

The table shows sensemaking as Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld describe it: early labels shaped what each group noticed afterward. Admissions, having labeled the closure an opportunity, saw inquiries as confirmation. Faculty, having labeled it a warning, saw the president's silence as concealment. Students, with no label from anyone at Halden, adopted the most dramatic one available.

The Leader's Role

Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991) studied the first year of a new president's effort to initiate strategic change at a large public university, using ethnographic observation from inside the change. They found that the president and top team alternated between sensemaking, building their own understanding of the situation, and sensegiving, attempting to influence how others understood it. The process moved through phases of envisioning, signaling, re-visioning and energizing, each involving both understanding and influence. Sensegiving was not a single announcement but a cycle in which leaders offered a framing, listened to how it was received and revised it.

Halden's president spent four days in private sensemaking: calls with the board chair, the chief financial officer and Brookfield's president. That work was necessary. But in the absence of sensegiving, other stories filled the space. By the time she spoke, the rumor had become the story she had to answer, and her message, that Halden's finances were stable and that it would welcome Brookfield's students with care, arrived as a defense rather than a framing.

Complexity and Its Limits

A college is a complex system in which meaning spreads through many conversations no leader controls. No sensegiving would have prevented every rumor. But a leader can offer an early, plausible frame that gives people something better than the most dramatic story available, and can revise it openly as facts emerge.

A Sensegiving Plan

Three practices follow from the analysis. First, a forty-eight-hour rule: after any major external event, the president or provost will offer an initial interpretation within two days, labeled as provisional, saying what is known, what is not and when more will be shared. Second, a standing interpretation team of the provost, the chief financial officer, the dean of students, the admissions director and two elected faculty members will meet within a day of such events, so that the groups whose stories diverged at Halden hear one another before acting. Third, open revision: updates will say explicitly how the interpretation has changed, a practice that reflects Weick's attitude of wisdom.

Conclusion

In the week after Brookfield's announcement, three groups at Halden noticed different cues, applied different labels and acted in ways that confirmed one another's fears. Weick's analysis of Mann Gulch shows how shared sense can collapse, Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld explain how labels guide what people see next and Gioia and Chittipeddi show that leaders must give sense as well as make it. A provisional frame within forty-eight hours, an interpretation team and open revision would give Halden's leaders a voice in the story before others write it.

References

Gioia, D. A., & Chittipeddi, K. (1991). Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation. Strategic Management Journal, 12(6), 433-448. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250120604

Weick, K. E. (1993). The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: The Mann Gulch disaster. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(4), 628-652. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393339

Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409-421. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0133