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Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal

Thinking outside the bun: the manager's role in sensemaking

Linda Wheeler

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To cite this document: Linda Wheeler, (2006),"Thinking outside the bun: the manager's role in sensemaking", Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, Vol. 20 Iss 5 pp. 12 - 14

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Thinking outside the bun: the manager’s role in sensemaking

Linda Wheeler

A

fast food restaurant specializing in Mexican fare once had a slogan of ‘‘Think outside the bun.’’ The Mexican fast food restaurant wanted to teach people to change their usual ‘‘hamburger’’ thinking and behavior. Learning can be defined as a permanent change in behavior. If employees are to learn and develop within and with organizations, they must be open to changing their thinking and behavior. They have to learn to think

• utside the bun. Is there any effective way to teach that, especially since people tend to

resist changes in their comfort zone of thinking and behaving?

Sensemaking

How people make sense of the world – ‘‘sensemaking’’ – impacts how they see, interpret, and respond to potential or actual change, whether in themselves or their organization. Resistance to change can often be a matter of perceiving change through different lenses than do the managers trying to implement change. Dutton and Dukerich (1991), in their article ‘‘Keeping an eye on the mirror: image and identity in organizational adaptation,’’ studied the impact on employees and non-employees of a change in policy by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey regarding allowing homeless people to spend time in its facilities. How employees and others changed their view of the Port Authority and how the Port Authority ‘‘sold’’ the change is very much at the heart of sensemaking. As Dutton and Dukerich (1991, p. 547) stated:

A knowledge of individuals’ beliefs about an organization’s identity is crucial for discerning the importance of an issue, its meanings, and its emotionality.

Sensemaking, as developed by Weick (1995), makes the following assumptions:

B What one expects is what one sees. B As humans it is very important that we make some sort of sense of the world. We have a

strong need for organization, for cause-and-effect in order to be comfortable.

B People cannot possibly take in all the sensory cues we receive every day, so we

consciously and more often unconsciously choose which cues (sensory inputs) to ‘‘notice’’ and which to ignore.

B Cues we ignore do not exist for us. B Cues we tend to accept are cues that fit with our assumptions about ourselves and the

world around us.

The sensemaking process

The process of sensemaking is very simple, but we almost never recognize that we are doing

• it. We make sense of our world by putting cues we notice into existing frames in our heads.

These frames are the beliefs, assumptions, biases, and perceptions we have developed

PAGE 12 j DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS j VOL. 20 NO. 5 2006, pp. 12-14, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1477-7282 DOI 10.1108/14777280610701586

Linda Wheeler is an assistant professor based at the Western Illinois University, Moline, Illinois, USA. Downloaded by University of California Los Angeles At 23:22 21 June 2016 (PT)

• ver the years and to which we are very attached. We generally do not notice cues that do

not fit our frames unless they are so unusual that we are ‘‘forced’’ to notice them. Once we put a cue into one of our frames, we then make a connection between the frame and the cue in order to draw a conclusion. For example, one frame might be a belief that skateboarding is a waste of time. The person with that belief sees a person skateboarding. The connection that person makes in his head is that the person skateboarding is wasting time. How we respond to cues shapes our situation and our reality. For example, a police officer pulls up at a stoplight. Two teenage boys are standing on the corner. They ‘‘salute’’ the police

• fficer. The officer has several choices, each of which will produce a different reality for the
• fficer. He can ignore the boys. He can cheerfully ‘‘salute’’ back. He can pull over and

castigate the boys for the gesture. What he does next helps him create his reality. The response of the boys to whatever action the officer takes will help further create their reality, and so forth, back and forth. Another example is the self-fulfilling prophesy. A classic case is of the grade school teacher being told that certain of her incoming students are gifted, certain ones are average intellectually, and some are ‘‘slow.’’ Although the students so described were really just picked randomly and were all at about the same intelligence level, by the end of the year the so-designated gifted ones excelled, the so-designated average ones performed averagely, and the so-designated slow ones were behind.

Plausibility, not accuracy is important

People also work from plausibility rather than needing accuracy in assessing their situations and reality. Weick (1995, p. 54) gives an example of a true story that happened during the Second World War:

The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps sent a reconnaissance unit into the icy wilderness. It began to snow immediately, snowed for two days, and the unit did not return. The lieutenant suffered, fearing that he had dispatched his own people to death. But on the third day the unit came back. Where had they been? How had they made their way? Yes, they said, we considered ourselves lost and waited for the end. And then one of us found a map in his pocket. That calmed us down. We pitched camp, lasted out the snowstorm, and then with the map we discovered our bearings. And here we are. The lieutenant borrowed this remarkable map and had a good look at it. He discovered to his astonishment that it was not a map of the Alps, but a map of the Pyrenees.

The idea behind this example is that in order to make sense of something, people do not need a full and accurate ‘‘map.’’ Almost any map will do if it gets people orienting themselves and moving in their sensemaking. What people really need is a good story that motivates them, even if the story is not complete. What is important is that the story has plausibility, coherence, and reasonableness, a mental model from which people can make

• sense. As a person receives more information over time, he can alter the theory to fit the

now-learned information. Without any theory or expectations, however, people cannot begin to learn and change.

Our jobs as managers in change

One of our jobs as managers, then, is to provide employees with well-crafted stories that teach them about upcoming organizational change. We should also provide them with

‘‘ How people make sense of the world – ‘sensemaking’ – impacts how they see, interpret, and respond to potential or actual change, whether in themselves or their organization. ’’

• VOL. 20 NO. 5 2006 jDEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONSj PAGE 13

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information as the change unfolds so they can update their ideas about the change and continue to enthusiastically work toward it. The other job we have as managers is to constantly examine our assumptions, biases, and perceptions; constantly examine the frames we are using for various situations; and truly think ‘‘outside the bun.’’ We must also teach our employees to test their assumptions, biases, and perceptions so that they also will be able to embrace change. Sensemaking (which we all do) is based on our assumptions about other people, about right and wrong, about what is important to us, and about

• urselves. We will not be successful in making organizational changes if we do not know
• urselves, and if we are not able to put ourselves into our employees’shoes to help them sort
• ut the organizational change sensory inputs that get thrown at them constantly during times
• f change.

Keywords: Organizational change, Change management

References

Dutton, J. and Dukerich, J. (1991), ‘‘Keeping an eye on the mirror: image and identity in organizational adaptation’’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 34, pp. 517-54. Weick, K. (1995), Sensemaking, Sage, Thousands Oaks, CA.

Corresponding author

Linda Wheeler can be contacted at: l-wheeler@wiu.edu

PAGE 14jDEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONSj VOL. 20 NO. 5 2006

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