The obscure art of sense-making and more...
The obscure art of sense-makingBlog The obscure art of sense-making
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How effective is your sense-making? Sense-making in complex business and organisational situations is critical for the purpose of deciding on a course of action to address a set of circumstances; in coming up with a strategy, in other words. Sense-making is not often discussed (or perhaps not even that well understood) but it’s a very important ability of a team or an organisation to develop a shared understanding of both its circumstances and of itself within those circumstances. In times of change and uncertainty, this is especially important – for individuals too. It’s curious, is it not, how frequently smart people with the same information reach completely different conclusions? The cause isn’t intelligence or experience: it’s how systematically they approach the stage of strategic thinking referred to as sense-making. Of course, if the sense-making isn’t realistic, the strategy based on it won’t go well. As Joshua Cooper Ramo wrote in The Age of the Unthinkable, “If you are not seeing things properly, you have no hope of any sort of breakthrough.” Here are some specific aspects to think about:
Strategic sense-making can be a critical differentiator for leaders, simply making everything downstream easier – better strategy, clearer choices, more aligned implementation. Clearer sense-making leads to better strategy and wiser action. For more on this, why not join one of the March 2026 online Leadership Conversations on the subject? The post The obscure art of sense-making appeared first on David Fraser.     • View comments • Track comments •
You can’t control your way to alignmentBlog You can’t control your way to alignment
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Getting an organisation or a team pointing consistently in the same direction is famously difficult. Unfortunately, we face a counter-intuitive truth: You can’t control your way to alignment. On the contrary, to achieve genuine commitment to a direction from which momentum will really build, we need to let go of absolute control (albeit in the context of clear outcome expectations) and allow sustained, self-organising, interdependent, coherent behaviour to deliver the breakthrough we need. Is strategic alignment critical to your organisation’s performance? That seems likely. And yet, the instinct for more control – more oversight, more alignment meetings, tighter direction – actually makes things worse, creating compliance, not commitment. And compliance is too slow and fragile for today’s turbulent environment. We tend to think alignment only comes through stronger direction and more oversight, but that’s not true. Real alignment requires finishing the strategic debates, building genuine commitment, and creating the conditions for self-organising behaviour and discretionary effort, simply making everything easier and faster. We can take a systematic approach to achieving this counterintuitive shift, creating breakthroughs for organisations struggling with competing initiatives and fragmented effort. Some of the themes to consider are:
Some of the benefits are:
Is your current approach to alignment taking too much effort? Is it delivering the momentum you need? If this article has struck a chord, why not join our Strategic Leaders’ online monthly workshop group to work on these issues with a group of peers? The post You can’t control your way to alignment appeared first on David Fraser. • View comments • Track comments •
The (foregone) opportunity of dialogue at large eventsA series of well-informed and insightful speakers with some Q&A can make for a great event. An even better one might involve getting the “audience” to do some of the talking. Usually, the assembled company are well-informed and insightful too, if not perhaps quite as august as the invited guests. Perhaps it’s my particular experience of the possibilities, but I’m sensing more and more a missed opportunity to engage the audience more fully in an event by getting them to discuss the issues in groups and report back something to the whole. That transfers the learning into the community. OK, it might be a bit more chaotic compared to the traditional way of running things; it might involve giving up a bit of control, but it is likely to be more impactful. People remember what they said much more than what they heard. The post The (foregone) opportunity of dialogue at large events appeared first on David Fraser. • View comments • Track comments •
Reading the manual – understanding human interaction
I’m not the first to say this, I know, but it’s worth repeating: We gain from learning to understand more about how people interact. Many of us are never really taught this – certainly not in any systematic way. This gap – and opportunity – is especially true in numerate disciplines like my own, engineering. Engineers are stereotypically not as effective as they could be at professional relationships. And it’s not just engineers. That was my experience. I consider myself fortunate though to have been introduced to some effective sources of insight into how to understand and improve human interaction in professional (and other) settings. My books are one way I have endeavoured to share what has made a difference to me. We might wonder why we are not taught more about the psychology of human interaction at school. It is clearly a life skill. Perhaps we are too young, and it’s necessary to wait until we have a little more experience of life. By then, our development may need to be more self-directed. We may need to find the manual ourselves, whichever one(s) we choose – and then read it. The post Reading the manual – understanding human interaction appeared first on David Fraser. • View comments • Track comments •
What’s your habitual time unit of focus? And is it the only one you need?
What’s your habitual time unit of focus? An hour, a day, a week, a month – or more – or less? What quantum of time do you block out for a singular, intense task? Probably all intervals of time have their place, depending on what you need to get done, though, of course, there are limits to sustaining concentration a single thing. The question is whether we adopt these units all as much as we need to or would benefit from. Our schedule is probably already interspersed with fixed appointments and meetings. I’m talking about how we deploy our discretionary time around all of that, such as it is. Focus for an hour (only) is a frequent habit for me, and a successful one, up to a point – not too long to be shutting other things out and long enough to make an impact on a task. Blocking out a longer period of time exclusively on one self-directed activity is uncomfortable and seems very, well, dangerous – too long to be ignoring everything else, but it’s necessary – necessary to make progress on bigger projects. Many sources guide us in shutting out inconsequential activity and maximising our attention to what matters most. That’s very important, and necessary to achieve profound outcomes. Unfortunately, it’s generally not enough. We also need to accommodate the seemingly inconsequential activities that add up to vital progress too. For instance, it’s little use getting a book written or a product developed if we don’t also progressively do the little things that gather an audience for our work. Fewer sources show the way in doing both: focusing on the big things but still fitting in the small tasks without losing ourselves in the “thin” things – successfully “spinning plates” in other words. Being conscious of different units of time and setting boundaries around those may help. Different ones apply in different situations. For instance recently, I’ve been finding having a clear focus for a day (besides the existing commitments) is something worthwhile to strengthen – to decide that today I’m going to concentrate on x, even though y and z are also clamouring for attention. They can have their turn tomorrow and the next day. Which units of focus are you using effectively: Less than an hour An hour A day A week A month More than a month? Sustaining a clear focus for a whole day is the stretch for me. Perhaps it is for you too. The post What’s your habitual time unit of focus? And is it the only one you need? appeared first on David Fraser. • View comments • Track comments •
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