2 Sensemaking and the Power of Reframing

      Nancy Turner was delighted to participate in a summer institute for new college presidents. The timing was perfect. She had just begun as president of North Valley Community College. She was optimistic but not naive, and she was eager to learn. Turner knew she faced big challenges. North Valley was respected in its region and in the community college world – strong and varied vocational programs and a solid record of sending students to four‐year institutions. “A firm foundation gives me room to build,” she reassured herself on accepting the presidency. But she also knew there were clouds on the horizon.

      North Valley had suffered budget cuts in recent years due to declining state appropriations. Faculty and staff had seen no raises in two of the prior three years, and morale on campus bordered on dismal. North Valley's chief academic officer and dean of instruction, Bill Hartley, was widely unpopular on campus, partly because he had been the point person in the push by Turner's predecessor to increase teaching loads in response to budget cuts. Turner knew she needed a strong partnership with the chief academic officer to get things rolling in the right direction. She was leery, however, of aligning herself too quickly or closely with a controversial campus figure.

“Take it slow” was the advice of Turner's mentor and former boss. The advice resonated with Turner's own style. Plus, she wanted more time to get to know Bill Hartley. His close‐to‐the‐chest style seemed unusually cool, and Turner wondered how much came from his weariness after years of battling campus opposition and how much was due to his disappointment that she, not he, had been selected as president.

      “Well, the board chose me,” mused Turner with some measure of satisfaction. “At least, most of them did.” Turner had to admit that the board's split vote still troubled her.

      “Forget about it,” her board chair advised. “Those people were making a statement in support of our faculty, not voting against you. A few well‐connected faculty got to their friends on the board and tried to hold up the hiring process until next year's state appropriations were announced. And that gang has a history of disagreeing with the rest of the board anyway. We just vote them down and get on with our work,” he added with a smile. “Trust me. We're confident that you're the one to lead this campus out of its malaise.” Turner wanted to believe him.

      Only weeks after moving into her new office, Turner found herself sitting around a table, discussing her situation with five other new presidents at the summer institute. She laid out her situation as objectively as she could, then asked, “If you were me, where would you start? How can I get this presidency off on the right foot?” Her colleagues jumped in with enthusiasm, as Turner expected. She was surprised, however, that everyone offered different advice.

      “Get a vision and fast! You're the captain of the ship, and you better know where you're steering it. Rally the campus around a sense of direction and renewed purpose,” suggested the first president.

      “I disagree,” said the second. “You don't want a one‐woman show. You want engagement and a strategic planning process that involves the campus in setting priorities. Without that, there's no basis for decision‐making. And involving folks in a campus‐wide activity is good for morale.”

“Maybe,” began the third, “but you know what Jim Collins says in Good to Great [2001]: First you have to have the right people on the bus. Nancy, you need a team that you can count on. Fire that chief academic officer, and get people who can build programs without taking it out of faculty hides. Go it alone, and you'll collapse from trying to carry the whole campus on your shoulders.”

      “Interesting,” said the fourth, “that no one suggested what I see as job number one: start with the faculty and work on morale and communications. Get out there. Hold faculty dialogue meetings. Get communications lines open and functioning. Tell everyone your picture of the college. Listen to theirs. Let them ask questions. Ask questions yourself. Good working relationships with the faculty are the key to a successful presidency.”

      “Nope,” said a fifth emphatically. “Start with your board. As president, you live with strong board support, or die without it. Without them, your wings are clipped and you can't go anywhere.”

      Lively debate ensued as the group explored what Turner should do. Her colleagues provided additional ideas and stories to buttress their perspectives. They referenced best selling leadership books and gurus. Turner was impressed by her colleagues’ intelligence and gratified by all the input. Almost everything they said made sense. But the discussion never arrived at the convergent picture she had hoped for. The diversity of views and variety of suggestions raised a question about whether there was anything else that she and her colleagues had missed. Five experienced academic leaders offered five different leadership paths, all convinced they were right. Turner was intrigued by issues she hadn't thought about. She was clearer about her options – she could choose among multiple roads going forward, each with its own pluses and minuses. But she felt little closer to answering her original question: “Where do I begin?” All the counsel seemed to produce more uncertainty than clarity. “I still don't know where I'm going,” laughed Turner. “But I'm afraid that it's going to be a bumpy ride.”

Turner's situation illustrates an important truth: sensemaking is the difficult art at the heart of academic leadership. We'd all like instant clarity about the complexities that we face and a clean slate to begin our academic leadership, but we are rarely that fortunate. Academic leaders bring their own individual ways of scanning their environment and interpreting what they see. They step midstream into institutions that already have distinctive histories, cultures, and traditions. Their ideas about how to lead are based on implicit and often deeply buried belief systems about what's important and how things work. Those beliefs vary, as we see in the different scenarios offered to Turner.

      A key challenge for Turner and any academic leader is how to make accurate sense of complex circumstances, recognize available choices, choose the best path forward, and convey all that to others in a compelling manner. Whether we call this executive wisdom, sound judgment, or reflective practice (Schön, 1983), the lesson is clear. Effectiveness requires untangling the conundrums of the academy and the realities of your current situation, and translating both into sensible actions for self and others. Like all leaders, Turner needs to discern if she is seeing the right picture or if she has tuned in to the wrong channel. This is not always as easy as one would wish.

      Cluelessness is a perennial risk, even for very smart people. Sometimes, the information that leaders need is hard to get. Other times, they ignore or misinterpret data right before their eyes. A look at the basics of sensemaking offers insights into why that is so.

      Sensemaking involves three basic steps: notice something, decide what to make of it, and determine what to do about it. Humans are pretty good at all three, but they do them so automatically that they tend to overlook three important – and limiting – features of the process.