My recent ONA (Organizational Network Analysis) work with clients and with the Chicago masterclass have brought home for me the role of ONA in sense-making, and the distinction “sense-making” itself. A network analysis gives an organization data presented both visually and quantitatively that sparks insights that prompt good, probing questions and lead to action. In one of my recent client projects, one of the senior managers who had been skeptical of ONA said it was “spot on” with respect to his intuition about the behaviors and relationships in his group. The whole picture — a complete set of questions and relationships laid out in a series of charts — gave the organization a sense of where it is in time, and set them off into inquiries about where more connectivity would enhance the organization.

I’ve also been working with Verna Allee, who positions ValueNet Works[TM] as a sense-making experience. Verna and I have both worked with David Snowden, whose Cynefin framework provides a method and mindset for working on hard, complex problems. The foundation (for me) of Cynefin begins with a core set of sense-making heuristics and methods: being able to make sense of a context and identify it as simply ordered, complicated, complex, or chaotic. I particularly like tto use David’s phrase descriptive self-awareness as it captures the purpose of network analysis: to give organization a new language for dialogue.

For those of you interested in learning actual techniques and methods for sense-making in organizations (coupled with key methods in narratives and networks), check out the Cynefin course in Washington, DC, December 12-14.