Reflections on developing a SenseMaker framework to understand company culture
We spent last week working on a new narrative research framework using SenseMaker® with a new client - a quick snapshot of the organisation ahead of a big leadership and organisational design event in a month's time.
The week started with a workshop to explore the issue and the potential angles for the SenseMaker® triads, dyads, stones and questions to take. Thursday was boiling that down to a reasonable size and Friday making the always-difficult calls of what stays in and what gets cut out. Over the weekend, SenseMaker-Designer-extraordinaire Richard Hare is building the SenseMaker® site, while in parallel paper tests on the framework are being carried out so we can start collecting data on Tuesday - six working days from when we started.
As always, some learning in the process. Part of our workshop involves looking at elements of previous frameworks to select relevant pieces for this one - our experience is no two frameworks should ever be the same. Different context, different perspectives on the world, and different capabilities for taking action are all significant differences - and frameworks need adaptation for these.*
Two things, however, struck me:
- Exaptation of elements - something developed for one use gets repurposed for something completely different and in an entirely different field. The cross-fertilisation between government projects, UN agencies and our corporate customers is a real positive.
This time around, a triad developed to understand how roof-builders working on Canadian building sites choose which tools to buy got used without changes to see how employees make project decisions. (Other triads that have been common in projects since our first SenseMaker project in 2008 have evolved over the years - the language getting easier, problematic triad corners getting resolved, etc) - Triad questions matter. It's easy to overlook the question you ask at the beginning of a triad, as so much attention needs to go into what your three corners are. This week we flipped one triad at the last minute - we'd been asking "In your example, what motivated people?" but have switched it around to "In your example, people felt they had ...".
Our reasoning was that interpreting intention can be useful - it gives insight into what people think they want. That is always risky - our interpretations of our motivations/opinions/aspirations sometimes do not tally with our actions in the moment. Switching to what people actually got from an experience - and then looking at whether those experiences were seen as positive or negative - gives us a much clearer picture of what people actually value, rather than what they say they value.
And I have no doubt that there will be times when we want to ask the motivation question instead.
After 10 years and approaching 100 different frameworks for narrative research, we're still learning, still noticing how to improve, still spotting where it's not quite working.
Signing off on the website today, and collection starts in earnest tomorrow. By the time we get to the event, we'll have a solid picture of the current culture - where it might go, where it probably won't, along with examples to illustrate aspirations and frustrations.
Culture and complexity - helping you fix the next level problems - it's what we do. Want to know more? Get in touch here.
*There are exceptions, of course. In this case, I'd suggest that a standardised framework is necessary if you're doing academic research in different contexts and need to pre-define your common view of the world/model. It's also visible in organisations like Gallup and other employee engagement surveys - but there, the driver is the ability to commoditise their product and force customers to see the world through the provider's lens, rather than facilitate the client in expanding their own view of the organisation.
- Narrative (100)
- Organisational culture (95)
- Communications (93)
- Complexity (77)
- SenseMaker (77)
- Changing organisations (42)
- Cognitive Edge (37)
- Narrate news (35)
- narrative research (32)
- Cognitive science (25)
- Tools and techniques (25)
- Conference references (24)
- Recommendations (20)
- datespecific (20)
- Leadership (17)
- Employee engagement (16)
- Storytelling (15)
- Culture (13)
- Events (11)
- UNDP (11)
- Cynefin (10)
- hints and tips (10)
- internal communications (8)
- Engagement (7)
- Knowledge (6)
- M&E (6)
- customer insight (6)
- tony quinlan (6)
- Branding (5)
- Stories (5)
- culture change (5)
- Children of the World (4)
- Dave Snowden (4)
- Changing organisations (3)
- Courses (3)
- GirlHub (3)
- Medinge (3)
- Travel (3)
- anecdote circles (3)
- development (3)
- knowledge management (3)
- merger (3)
- micro-narratives (3)
- monitoring and evaluation (3)
- presentations (3)
- BRAC (2)
- Bratislava (2)
- Egypt (2)
- ILO (2)
- Narattive research (2)
- Roma (2)
- Uncategorized (2)
- VECO (2)
- citizen engagement (2)
- corporate culture (2)
- counter-terrorism (2)
- customer satisfaction (2)
- diversity (2)
- governance (2)
- impact measurement (2)
- innovation (2)
- masterclass (2)
- melcrum (2)
- monitoring (2)
- narrate (2)
- organisation culture (2)
- organisational storytelling (2)
- research (2)
- sensemaker case study (2)
- sensemaking (2)
- social networks (2)
- speaker (2)
- strategy (2)
- workshops (2)
- 2012 Olympics (1)
- Adam Curtis (1)
- Allders of Sutton (1)
- CASE (1)
- Cabinets and the Bomb (1)
- Central Library (1)
- Chernobyl (1)
- Christmas (1)
- Disaster relief (1)
- Duncan Green (1)
- ESRC (1)
- Employee surveys (1)
- European commission (1)
- Fail-safe (1)
- Financial Times anecdote circles SenseMaker (1)
- FlashForward (1)
- Fragments of Impact (1)
- Future Backwards (1)
- GRU (1)
- Girl Research Unit (1)
- House of Lords (1)
- Huffington Post (1)
- IQPC (1)
- Jordan (1)
- Joshua Cooper Ramo (1)
- KM (1)
- KMUK2010 (1)
- Kharian and Box (1)
- LFI (1)
- LGComms (1)
- Lant Pritchett (1)
- Learning From Incidents (1)
- Lords Speaker lecture (1)
- MLF (1)
- MandE (1)
- Montenegro (1)
- Mosaic (1)
- NHS (1)
- ODI (1)
- OTI (1)
- Owen Barder (1)
- PR (1)
- Peter Hennessy (1)
- Pfizer (1)
- Protected Areas (1)
- Rwanda (1)
- SenseMaker® collector ipad app (1)
- Serbia (1)
- Sir Michael Quinlan (1)
- Slides (1)
- Speaking (1)
- Sutton (1)
- TheStory (1)
- UK justice (1)
- USS vincennes (1)
- United Nations Development Programme (1)
- Washington storytelling (1)
- acquisition (1)
- adaptive management (1)
- afghanistan (1)
- aid and development (1)
- al-qaeda (1)
- algeria (1)
- all in the mind (1)
- anthropology (1)
- applications (1)
- back-story (1)
- better for less (1)
- case study (1)
- change communications (1)
- change management (1)
- citizen experts (1)
- communication (1)
- communications research (1)
- complaints (1)
- complex adaptive systems (1)
- complex probes (1)
- conference (1)
- conferences (1)
- conspiracy theories (1)
- consultation (1)
- content management (1)
- corporate values (1)
- counter narratives (1)
- counter-insurgency (1)
- counter-narrative (1)
- creativity (1)
- customer research (1)
- deresiewicz (1)
- deterrence (1)
- dissent (1)
- downloads (1)
- education (1)
- employee (1)
- ethical audit (1)
- ethics (1)
- evaluation (1)
- facilitation (1)
- fast company (1)
- feedback loops (1)
- financial services (1)
- financial times (1)
- four yorkshiremen (1)
- gary klein (1)
- georgia (1)
- girl effect (1)
- girleffect (1)
- giving voice (1)
- globalgiving (1)
- harnessing complexity (1)
- impact evaluation (1)
- impact measures (1)
- information overload (1)
- informatology (1)
- innovative communications (1)
- john kay (1)
- justice (1)
- kcuk (1)
- keynote (1)
- leadership recession communication (1)
- learning (1)
- libraries (1)
- likert scale (1)
- lucifer effect (1)
- marketing (1)
- minimum level of failure (1)
- narrative capture (1)
- narrative sensemaker internal communications engag (1)
- natasha mitchell (1)
- navigating complexity (1)
- new york times (1)
- newsletter (1)
- obliquity (1)
- organisation (1)
- organisational development (1)
- organisational memory (1)
- organisational narrative (1)
- patterns (1)
- pilot projects (1)
- placement (1)
- policy-making (1)
- population research (1)
- presentation (1)
- protocols of the elders of zion. (1)
- public policy (1)
- public relations (1)
- qualitative research (1)
- quangos (1)
- relations (1)
- reputation management (1)
- resilience (1)
- revenge (1)
- ritual dissent (1)
- road signs (1)
- safe-fail (1)
- safe-to-fail experiments (1)
- sales improvement (1)
- satisfaction (1)
- scaling (1)
- seminar (1)
- seth godin (1)
- social coherence (1)
- social cohesion (1)
- solitude (1)
- stakeholder understanding (1)
- strategic communications management (1)
- strategic narrative (1)
- suggestion schemes (1)
- surveys (1)
- survivorship bias (1)
- targets (1)
- tbilisi (1)
- the future backwards (1)
- tipping point (1)
- training (1)
- twitter (1)
- upskilling (1)
- values (1)
- video (1)
- voices (1)
- weak links (1)
- zeno's paradox (1)
- November 2024 (1)
- October 2024 (1)
- September 2024 (2)
- March 2020 (1)
- November 2019 (1)
- August 2019 (1)
- May 2019 (2)
- April 2019 (1)
- November 2018 (2)
- May 2018 (2)
- March 2018 (1)
- February 2018 (1)
- December 2017 (1)
- October 2017 (3)
- September 2017 (1)
- July 2017 (1)
- March 2016 (1)
- February 2016 (1)
- January 2016 (1)
- July 2015 (3)
- May 2015 (1)
- March 2015 (2)
- February 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (1)
- November 2014 (1)
- September 2014 (3)
- August 2014 (1)
- July 2014 (2)
- June 2014 (6)
- May 2014 (3)
- April 2014 (3)
- March 2014 (5)
- January 2014 (4)
- December 2013 (2)
- October 2013 (1)
- August 2013 (1)
- June 2013 (1)
- May 2013 (1)
- March 2013 (1)
- January 2013 (2)
- November 2012 (2)
- October 2012 (4)
- September 2012 (3)
- November 2011 (3)
- August 2011 (1)
- July 2011 (1)
- May 2011 (4)
- April 2011 (3)
- March 2011 (4)
- February 2011 (8)
- January 2011 (8)
- December 2010 (2)
- November 2010 (5)
- October 2010 (8)
- September 2010 (5)
- August 2010 (2)
- June 2010 (1)
- April 2010 (2)
- January 2010 (1)
- December 2009 (2)
- November 2009 (3)
- October 2009 (1)
- January 2009 (1)
- July 2008 (4)
- June 2008 (1)
- March 2008 (2)
- January 2008 (3)
- November 2007 (4)
- October 2007 (1)
- September 2007 (1)
- August 2007 (4)
- May 2007 (3)
- March 2007 (1)
- February 2007 (6)
- January 2007 (3)
- November 2006 (8)
- October 2006 (8)
- September 2006 (2)
- August 2006 (5)
- July 2006 (13)
Subscribe by email
You May Also Like
These Related Stories