We are all making sense of what’s going around us all of the
time. Some of it is retrospective. As the American organisational theorist Karl Weick has said, sensemaking is, at least in part, grounded in what has already happened. People pay attention to things in the past to
help make sense of the present, so as leaders it is helpful to recognise the
importance of feeling that the past is important. We can do this by demonstrating our respect
for the history of our organisation, and by identifying how it helps to tell
our collective story of our value and role in the world.
We may need to over-simplify history to help the process,
but that's okay if it helps our
people feel comfortable with the present.
In one large bank I worked with, for example, we drew on the proud history of the
founding fathers (and how they had taken personal risks in times of war to
protect the money and records of their customers) in order to reconnect leaders
with their underlying sense of purpose beyond making money.