Sensemaking 2: What I do to make sense

I’m a professional research scientist. Research is what I do day in, day out. So what I do for sensemaking might not be what you do at all, or it might be really relevant. I don’t know.

But I do know that sensemaking is a big, big part of my job. And I know that there are sensemaking methods…and then there’s what actually happens. I’m going to ignore the sensemaking prescriptions for the moment and focus on what really goes on.

The common conception of research is that a scientist first thinks up a hypothesis, then collects data to test it, then writes up a neat analysis confirming or disconfirming the hypothesis. That’s beautiful, but it’s also almost completely wrong.

When I’m making sense of some complicated area, it’s more of a full-contact, sweaty, wrestling-around-with-data kind of thing. Trust me: it’s not nearly as antiseptic and passionless as the common conception would have it. This is red-blooded science as played on the field. It’s more of a rugby scrum than a still-life chess game. Here’s how it goes for me…

FIRST: Figure out what it is that you’re trying to understand or get done—let’s call this the domain. This is crucial because you can waste a lot of time doing various experiments or studies on the wrong thing. I find it valuable to write out a quick summary of what I’m trying to understand… often just as a note in my notebook, or maybe in an email to a friend. The point is that you need to frame things because the act of framing helps to focus on what to do next.

Of course, it’s not always so neat. Sometimes you only come to realize later what the topic really is. Sometimes you frame a domain one way and later discover that this isn’t a good framing at all. Then things shift and that’s where it gets interesting.  And then every so often you end up by accident in a domain that you hadn’t planned on studying. That’s serendipity, and it happens more than you’d think. Regardless, knowing your domain leads to the next step…

SECOND: Collect a lot of information about the domain. I like to read about how others think about the domain, what works and (just as importantly) what doesn’t work. Sometimes people will say how they think about the whole domain, and that’s often incredibly useful because they’ll have already organized things in a way that’s useful. I look for varying opinions and results. In the discrepancies between accounts there’s often something of interest. (Something like this: “Smith says people always do X, but Jones says they never do X… how can they both be right?”)

I should point out that often you can make sense of something just by doing this kind of research. It happens all the time—you’re working on a domain, and then someone writes an article that explains it all. A newspaper reporter would call that “being scooped.”

As you collect and organize, you'll find that you can target your collecting more finely.  That's when I'll start to do experiments (to collect exactly the data I need). 

THIRD: Organize the information.  Depending on what the domain is, you might look for an organization that helps you see the entire structure of what’s known, or you might end up building a very detailed model. In almost every case, I spend a lot of time figuring out how to organize the information I have into some kind of representation. This representation could be something as simple as a bunch of folders with topics, or it could be a much more complex spreadsheet model. But figuring out how to represent (and organize) what I know is key. Making this representation is usually when the “ah-ha” moments happen. It’s when pieces of the puzzle start falling into place and I realize the connections between everything.

FOURTH: Iterate. Realize that you almost never get it right the first time. Sometimes I’ll get the original domain wrong, and I’ll be studying the wrong thing. Sometimes I’ll collect a lot of junk information that I have to winnow out. And sometimes I’ll just create representations of that information that don’t work out.

In any case, keep iterating—on the domain, on the information set, on the representation—until you’re to a point where you can satisfy your need to make sense of the original domain.

FIFTH: Do. As in, do whatever it was you wanted when you figured out what the domain was. Research of the kind I work on is always trying to figure out something so you can do the next thing.

I know this is all a little abstract, but tomorrow I’ll post with a real example of a research sensemaking story that will map onto all of these steps. Then Friday I’ll summarize all of the amazing and remarkable comments folks have been making on the “Sensemaking 1” post. (Thanks for all your comments, btw, I’ve been enjoying reading them!)