What goes wrong when you ignore that organizational meaning-making?

The most common reason fails: Single-source meaning-making — relying on one leader to interpret all events and communicate meaning to the organization. This creates three problems: (1) the leader's interpretation is limited by their perspective, missing signals visible to other functions; (2) the organization does not develop its own meaning-making capability, remaining dependent on the leader for interpretation; and (3) meaning-making becomes a bottleneck, with events remaining uninterpreted until the leader processes them. The antidote is distributed sensemaking — creating practices that enable the organization to collectively interpret events, drawing on diverse perspectives and producing richer, more actionable interpretations.

The fix: Practice organizational sensemaking on a recent ambiguous event in your organization — a competitor action, a customer behavior change, an internal metric shift, or a market development. Gather three to five people from different functions or teams and run this 30-minute protocol: (1) Data sharing (5 minutes): each person shares the facts they know about the event — observations, data, direct quotes. No interpretations yet. (2) Individual interpretation (5 minutes): each person writes their interpretation — what they think the event means and what response it warrants. (3) Interpretation sharing (10 minutes): each person shares their interpretation. Note where interpretations agree and where they differ. (4) Synthesis (10 minutes): construct a shared interpretation that integrates the diverse perspectives. The shared interpretation does not need to be unanimous — it needs to be actionable. What does the group agree the event means? What response does the shared interpretation warrant? Compare the shared interpretation to any individual's initial interpretation. Is the shared version richer, more nuanced, and more action-informing?

The underlying principle is straightforward: Creating shared meaning about the organization's purpose and direction. Organizations do not operate on facts alone — they operate on interpretations. The same event (a competitor's product launch, a customer complaint, a revenue decline) means different things to different people depending on the interpretive framework they apply. Organizational meaning-making is the collective process of constructing shared interpretations — agreeing on what events mean, what they imply, and what response they warrant. In self-directing organizations, meaning-making is especially critical: without a manager to tell people what events mean, the organization must collectively construct meaning through shared sensemaking practices.