The Executive Sensemaking Loop: Turning Monthly Scans into Real Decisions
- RESTRAT Labs
- 2 days ago
- 12 min read
Updated: 17 hours ago
Executives today face a constant challenge: making decisions in a fast-changing, uncertain world. Traditional methods often fail because they assume stability, leading to rushed actions, overanalysis, or avoidance. The Executive Sensemaking Loop offers a structured 30-day process to help leaders gather signals, interpret them collaboratively, and review outcomes to improve decision-making. It’s built on insights from experts like Karl Weick, Dave Snowden, and Amy Edmondson, focusing on creating shared meaning in ambiguity and fostering better team alignment.
Key Takeaways:
3-Step Process: Scan for weak signals, interpret them as a team, and review decisions to learn.
Tools & Frameworks: Use Cynefin for decision-making in complexity, pattern recognition for insights, and psychological safety for open dialogue.
Outcomes: Better decision quality, earlier risk detection, and stronger team collaboration.
This approach helps leaders move from rigid plans to flexible learning cycles, ensuring decisions are more effective in volatile environments.
Leadership and Decision-making in the Face of Great Risk
How to Build a 30-Day Sensemaking Process
Creating a 30-day sensemaking cycle strikes a balance between gathering enough useful insights and maintaining the pace needed for timely decisions. This approach helps teams stay agile without falling into reactionary decision-making.
Step 1: Scan and Collect Signals
The first step is all about gathering weak signals - those early indicators that often go unnoticed in traditional research. Instead of diving deep into a single area, this phase casts a wide net, collecting information from various sources like competitor moves, regulatory updates, customer behavior trends, internal performance data, and technological advancements.
To make this manageable, some organizations adopt lightweight frameworks to organize the scanning process. This ensures comprehensive coverage without overwhelming team members. A key part of this step is pausing to observe rather than rushing to analyze. Research on inner agility highlights the value of stepping back to notice patterns that might otherwise be missed. This pause creates space for fresh insights.
The goal here is to challenge assumptions rather than reinforce them. Teams should actively seek out information that contradicts their current beliefs, asking questions like, "What are we overlooking?" or "Who might see this differently?" This mindset ensures that the scanning process remains open and exploratory, rather than constrained by preconceived notions.
Step 2: Interpret Signals and Align on Meaning
Once signals are collected, the next step is to make sense of them. This involves turning scattered data into meaningful stories through team discussions. For these discussions to work, team members need to feel safe sharing different perspectives. As Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety shows, open dialogue is essential for uncovering new insights.
A good starting point is to reframe the questions being asked. Instead of focusing on how signals fit into the current strategy, teams might ask, "What assumptions do these signals challenge?" or "What needs to change for us to understand these patterns?" This shift in perspective often reveals insights that are easy to miss.
Drawing on Gary Klein's work in decision-making, teams should use both analytical thinking and intuition to identify patterns, especially in complex situations. Karl Weick’s sensemaking framework also emphasizes the importance of collective interpretation. By combining diverse viewpoints, teams can build a shared understanding of ambiguous signals.
Take the example of a global manufacturing company struggling with productivity issues after a merger. Initially, the CEO and CFO disagreed on the solution - one wanted to cut costs, the other to fund innovation. After stepping back and asking open-ended questions like "How might we be wrong?" and "What else could be happening?", the team uncovered a surprising root cause: employee mental health and uncertainty about the merger’s impact. This breakthrough came from listening to diverse perspectives, including insights from the CHRO and other executives.
To avoid groupthink, teams can conduct "listening tours" across their organizations, asking open-ended questions like "And what else?" This approach ensures that emerging patterns are viewed from multiple angles before decisions are made. Once a shared narrative is established, leaders can review past decisions to refine their sensemaking process.
Step 3: Review Past Decisions and Learn
The final step focuses on learning from recent decisions. Inspired by Dave Snowden's Cynefin Framework, this phase encourages teams to probe, sense, and respond - testing small actions before committing to larger strategies. Retrospectives are not about assigning blame but about understanding how well the team’s interpretation of signals translated into action.
These sessions revolve around three key questions:
What signals did we act on?
How accurate were our interpretations?
What would we do differently with the same information?
For example, after uncovering the human impact of their merger, the manufacturing company’s leadership conducted a 10-day listening tour. By engaging directly with employees at all levels, they uncovered additional perspectives that reshaped their strategy. This deeper understanding led them to adjust their integration plan, shifting focus from purely operational metrics to employee well-being and customer value.
Retrospectives also evaluate team dynamics during interpretation sessions. Were all voices heard? Were dissenting opinions explored? Did the team rush to conclusions, or were they comfortable sitting with ambiguity? These process insights are just as important as the content itself for improving future cycles.
Moving Beyond Rigid Frameworks to Flexible Interpretation
When faced with uncertainty, leadership teams often rely on rigid frameworks. It’s understandable - sticking to established procedures feels secure. But this approach can lead to decisions that fail to address the actual demands of the situation. To navigate uncertainty effectively, leaders must move away from rigid playbooks and embrace a more flexible, context-driven way of thinking.
This shift requires what researchers call "adaptive agility." It’s about being okay with not having all the answers upfront and staying open to possibilities that rigid frameworks might completely overlook.
Framework Rules vs. Context-Based Decisions
The key difference between sticking to rigid frameworks and adopting flexible interpretation lies in how each handles uncertainty. Traditional frameworks are rooted in an expert mindset, relying on best practices to eliminate ambiguity. While this might work in predictable scenarios, it struggles in complex, fast-changing environments.
Flexible interpretation, on the other hand, thrives on uncertainty. It’s about resisting the urge to resolve ambiguity too quickly and instead using it as an opportunity to uncover new insights.
Take the example of a manufacturing merger. Initially, the CEO and CFO followed their integration playbook to the letter - detailed scenario planning, clear targets, and systematic execution. But when productivity dropped, their rigid adherence to frameworks led to conflicting solutions. The CFO wanted to close factories based on cost analysis, while the CEO pushed for increased innovation funding. Both approaches missed the mark.
It wasn’t until they paused and admitted they didn’t have all the answers that they uncovered the real issue. By conducting listening tours with workers and managers, they realized that employee anxiety - not operational inefficiencies - was the root cause of the productivity slump. This moment of flexible interpretation led to a more effective solution than their initial framework-driven plans.
Planning Cycles vs. Learning Cycles
Traditional planning cycles are built on the assumption that thorough planning leads to flawless execution. While this works in stable environments, it breaks down in complex, unpredictable situations. These cycles fixate on rigid goals and outcomes, leaving little room for adaptation.
In contrast, learning cycles take a different approach. They focus on setting a general direction and experimenting with small, safe-to-fail initiatives to gather insights. Instead of avoiding failure, the goal is to learn quickly from minor setbacks before they escalate.
Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework illustrates this well. In complex scenarios, leaders should probe, sense, and then respond - a sequence that directly opposes the traditional approach of trying to sense everything upfront before acting.
For example, a listening tour during the merger uncovered insights that no amount of upfront planning could have revealed. The team realized their original question - “How do we solve productivity problems?” - was the wrong one. A better question emerged: “How do we address the human impact of this merger while maintaining operational excellence?”
Shifting from rigid planning to adaptive learning naturally leads to a focus on making thoughtful, high-quality decisions.
Why Decision Quality Beats Speed in Complex Situations
In today’s fast-paced business world, there’s immense pressure to make decisions quickly. But research by Gary Klein on naturalistic decision-making shows that quality, not speed, is what determines success in complex, high-stakes environments.
Taking time to reflect often leads to better outcomes. Rushing decisions can result in three common pitfalls: acting without thinking, overanalyzing to the point of paralysis, or avoiding responsibility altogether.
High-quality decisions require what Karl Weick describes as "sensemaking" - the process of creating shared meaning from ambiguous signals. This takes time, as it involves stepping back from immediate challenges to gain perspective and consider new possibilities.
The earlier merger example highlights this. The CEO and CFO’s initial rush to act based on their individual expertise led to flawed decisions. But when they slowed down and sought broader input, they uncovered the real drivers of their challenges.
This approach ties back to the importance of psychological safety. As Amy Edmondson’s research shows, creating an environment where people feel safe to share ideas and concerns is critical for uncovering breakthrough insights. Building this kind of trust takes time, but it pays off with decisions that are more thoughtful and effective.
Ultimately, slowing down to make better decisions doesn’t mean becoming indecisive. It’s about recognizing that in complex situations, the fastest path to success often involves pausing to understand the problem deeply before taking action. Decisions made this way may take longer upfront, but they lead to smoother execution and better outcomes in the long run.
Measuring Results from Executive Sensemaking Loops
By using a structured approach to sensemaking, leaders can observe clear improvements in performance. Moving from rigid frameworks to a more flexible sensemaking process leads to tangible gains in how organizations operate and adapt.
Key Metrics That Indicate Success
Organizations that adopt structured 30-day scanning processes often report fewer significant strategic shifts and better early risk detection. This method allows risks to be identified sooner, enabling precise adjustments to portfolios and reducing the need for sweeping changes. These outcomes validate the effectiveness of the 30-day sensemaking process.
Leadership teams also experience smoother portfolio rebalancing, frequently making smaller, targeted resource shifts. This creates what’s known as "adaptive stability", where organizations stay aligned with their strategic goals while remaining responsive to external changes.
Additionally, the quality of decisions improves. A larger percentage of decisions hold up over time without requiring major revisions, reflecting stronger initial judgment.
Signs of Improved Team Intelligence and Alignment
Beyond the numbers, effective sensemaking loops bring noticeable improvements in how leadership teams function. Teams develop a shared understanding of market dynamics and strategic challenges, enhancing their collective intelligence and ability to handle uncertainty.
Instead of defending individual viewpoints, team members build on diverse insights, turning strategic discussions into collaborative problem-solving sessions. This shift echoes Karl Weick’s insights on how leaders create shared meaning from ambiguous situations.
Teams also handle conflicting information more effectively, seeing it as an opportunity to refine their understanding rather than dismiss it. By keeping multiple hypotheses in play until clearer patterns emerge - a concept aligned with Dave Snowden’s methods - leaders navigate complexity with greater confidence. These qualitative changes directly support the quantitative metrics of improved performance.
How Organizations Are Applying This Today
Many organizations have adapted lightweight scanning frameworks based on these sensemaking principles, tailoring them to their specific needs. These approaches naturally extend the adaptive leadership strategies discussed earlier.
For example:
Technology companies conduct structured decision retrospectives to uncover hidden assumptions and identify blind spots in decision-making.
Financial services firms hold signal synthesis sessions where leaders from different functions share market intelligence and regulatory updates for group analysis.
Manufacturers use portfolio pulse reviews that combine performance data with forward-looking insights.
Some organizations even bring in external facilitators during the early stages to help teams build confidence in navigating structured ambiguity, creating an environment where collective interpretation can thrive.
Ultimately, organizations that invest in thoughtful sensemaking processes gain long-term benefits. Teams develop what Gary Klein describes as naturalistic decision-making skills - the ability to recognize patterns and make sound judgments even in high-pressure, ambiguous situations. This reflective approach drives better outcomes and positions organizations to succeed in complex environments.
The Future Role of Sensemaking in Leadership
As artificial intelligence reshapes information flow and global uncertainty persists, sensemaking is emerging as a critical leadership skill. Companies that incorporate structured processes into their operations gain a long-term edge over those clinging to traditional planning methods.
Making Sensemaking Part of Daily Operations
Leading organizations are no longer treating sensemaking as a one-off activity. Instead, they are weaving it into their daily routines, fostering what some experts call "adaptive stability." This concept reflects the ability to stay strategically focused while flexibly responding to shifting circumstances.
To achieve this, leaders must cultivate what McKinsey researchers term "inner agility." This means developing the ability to reflect thoughtfully and navigate disruptions with intention rather than reacting impulsively. Organizations adopting such practices report that their leadership teams grow more at ease with uncertainty and sharpen their ability to recognize patterns over time.
"To address complex problems, we need to become more complex ourselves."－ Sam Bourton, Johanne Lavoie, and Tiffany Vogel
A crucial element is institutionalizing a "pause-and-reflect" cycle, as emphasized in Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework. Instead of rushing from identifying signals to taking immediate action, successful organizations create deliberate opportunities for collective interpretation. This process helps leadership teams turn ambiguity into strategic clarity.
Some companies are even embedding "safe to fail" experiments into their regular scanning processes. By testing interpretations quickly, rather than engaging in endless debates, they foster a culture where learning from small failures is as valuable as celebrating successes. This approach equips organizations to handle the challenges posed by rapid data influx and uncertainty.
Handling Faster Information Flow and Uncertainty
The rise of data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence is fundamentally altering how executives make decisions. Traditional forecasting often falters when market conditions shift faster than planning cycles can keep up, making sensemaking an essential leadership tool.
Leaders who view "ignorance as an asset", as some researchers suggest, open their organizations to opportunities that rigid expertise might overlook. This mindset encourages teams to stay alert to unexpected patterns and emerging possibilities that standard analytical models may miss.
"Ignorance is a necessary asset in today's disruption. Expecting that you can know everything is a hubristic concept of the past."－ Sam Bourton, Johanne Lavoie, and Tiffany Vogel
The most forward-thinking organizations are reframing their strategic questions instead of seeking improved answers to old ones. This shift allows leadership teams to challenge hidden assumptions and deepen their understanding of complex issues before committing resources to specific solutions.
As former Intel CEO Andy Grove observed, even as complexity grows, the central challenge remains constant:
"None of us have a real understanding of where we are heading."－ Andy Grove, Former CEO of Intel
This underscores the importance of transforming information gathering into actionable strategies. Structured processes for collective interpretation are no longer optional - they are vital. Organizations that excel in this area are better prepared to navigate uncertainty than those relying solely on individual expertise or algorithms.
Summary: Converting Information Scans into Clear Decisions
By implementing a structured 30-day process, organizations can shift from reactive to adaptive leadership. Drawing on insights from experts like Snowden, Klein, and Edmondson, companies can establish systems that turn scattered signals into actionable decisions.
While the 30-day scanning cycle provides a solid foundation, the true advantage lies in how leadership teams collectively interpret ambiguous information. According to Karl Weick's research, this shared meaning-making ability becomes a lasting competitive edge in volatile markets.
"Pausing in the chaos of great change is a counterintuitive action that can lead to greater creativity and efficiency."－ Sam Bourton, Johanne Lavoie, and Tiffany Vogel
Organizations investing in these capabilities report tangible benefits, such as fewer strategic reversals, earlier risk identification, and better alignment between leadership and operations. Recognizing patterns under pressure not only reduces the need for strategic rework but also strengthens team cohesion.
Ultimately, the future belongs to leadership teams that prioritize setting a clear direction over rigid goals. By empowering their organizations to find creative solutions within a shared framework, they position themselves to thrive in an era where complexity is the norm. Frameworks provide structure, but sensemaking delivers direction - mastering both is the key to success in a constantly evolving landscape.
FAQs
How does the Executive Sensemaking Loop help leaders navigate uncertainty and make better decisions?
The Executive Sensemaking Loop offers leaders a structured monthly process to transform scattered signals into clear, actionable insights. By leveraging frameworks such as Cynefin’s probe–sense–respond, leadership teams can make sense of complex situations, spot subtle early warnings, and adjust strategies more effectively.
A key element of this approach is fostering psychological safety, which creates an environment where open discussions and collective interpretations thrive. This not only improves the quality of decisions but also builds a culture of trust. Through regular retrospectives and recognizing patterns, organizations can minimize strategic missteps, identify risks earlier, and maintain resilience amid uncertainty and complexity.
How can organizations apply a 30-day sensemaking process across different industries?
Organizations can adopt a 30-day sensemaking process by setting up regular, structured discussions that help leadership teams interpret key signals and adjust their strategies accordingly. Take healthcare, for example: executives might hold monthly reviews to monitor trends in patient care or track regulatory updates, ensuring they're aligned on the most pressing priorities. In the tech world, teams could focus on analyzing market changes or competitor moves to fine-tune their product roadmaps.
Some effective practices include creating an environment of psychological safety where team members feel comfortable sharing information freely. Tools like the Cynefin framework can be used to navigate complex decision-making scenarios, while regular retrospectives provide a chance to review past decisions and improve future strategies. These methods not only help organizations adapt more quickly but also enhance their ability to detect risks and avoid unnecessary strategic revisions.
Why is psychological safety essential for effective sensemaking, and how can leaders nurture it within their teams?
Psychological safety plays a key role in helping teams make sense of complex situations. When team members feel safe to share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns without fear of judgment or repercussions, it creates an environment where open communication thrives. This openness is crucial for interpreting nuanced signals and making well-informed decisions, especially in uncertain or challenging scenarios.
Leaders can create and sustain psychological safety by fostering open discussions, appreciating a variety of perspectives, and treating mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. Demonstrating active listening, showing genuine empathy, and being open about their own vulnerabilities can further build trust. This makes it easier for team members to contribute honestly and work together effectively.