What is Sensemaking?

Gathering and organizing ideas in a dynamic process, to both structure content and identify themes AND to make connections and identify outliers and points of dissent amongst this content.

Sensemaking can happen with an individual, a group, or a team, and can take place across just one session or across multiple sessions. Both the process and the product elevate the collective intelligence!

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From chaos to organized chaos,

and finally to a concrete summary or plan

with clearly identified key questions and gaps

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Listening Sessions

A series of lightly facilitated conversations with people across the organization, or from various external stakeholders, to gather, socialize, value, and make sense of their ideas around key questions

Listening Sessions can be particularly helpful to inform organization-wide strategy and action-planning work.

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"First drafting"

A process of intensive outlining that revolves around soliciting a brain dump of information on a specific topic from various sources (existing data and documentation, available resources, personal experience), to then organize and prioritize this information in a mega mindmap or outline

A great starting point when designing a course, drafting a guidance document or other knowledge management resource, and preparing narrative reports

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Career coaching

A coaching session or series of session with an individual who is considering a career change or pivot, to first clarify their objectives, then identify their needs and opportunities, and move into identifying practical next steps

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Storytelling coaching

A process of translating a meaningful experience into a memorable story, starting with identifying an impactful story for a given theme, then preparing with the storyteller a clear and impactful story arc, and finally polishing a captivating delivery

Why?

When might working with Sarah on
SENSEMAKING
be valuable to your team?

Collaboration

You want to hear from and learn from collaborators on a critical topic in a structured way; you also want to make sure they feel heard and valued.

Direction

There are too many ideas and information points
that could contribute to an initiative, and
you are too overwhelmed by them to know how to leverage this rich input.

Organization

You're struggling to collect and organize information for a report,
an organizational redesign, a new course, or another initiative,
and you want support and a process to guide this work.

Clarity,
Deep Dive

You and your team have some hard questions to ask,
or some key ideas to re-examine, and you want to go deeper than
your usual conversations, planning, and analyzing work.

Idea Translation

Your colleagues have great ideas and amazing stories,
but the way these are expressed, captured, and considered in written documents or storytelling don't do them justice!

What is Sensemaking?

Why?

When might working with Sarah on SENSEMAKING be valuable to your team?

Collaboration

You want to hear from and learn from collaborators on a critical topic in a structured way; you also want to make sure they feel heard and valued.

Direction

There are too many ideas and information points that could contribute to an initiative, and you are too overwhelmed by them to know how to leverage this rich input.

Organization

You're struggling to collect and organize information for a report, an organizational redesign, a new course, or another initiative, and you want support and a process to guide this work.

Clarity, Deep Dive

You and your team have some hard questions to ask, or some key ideas to re-examine, and you want to go deeper than your usual conversations, planning, and analyzing work.