Sensemaking does not presume that there are generic right answers about things like taking risks or following rules. Instead, sensemaking is about how to stay in touch with context. I want to suggest that, in the face of doubt, leaders are best served if they focus on animation, improvisation, lightness, authentication, and learning. Successful sensemaking is more likely when people stay in motion, have a direction, look closely, update often and converse candidly. People need to act in order to discover what they face, they need to talk in order to discover what they think, and they need to feel in order to discover what it means.
Improvisation involves the flexible treatment of preplanned material.
Improvisation materializes around a simple melody, formula or theme that provides the pretext for real-time composing and embellishment. A hunch held lightly is a direction to be followed, not a decision to be defended. It is easier to change directions than to reverse decisions, simply because less is at stake. To drop these tools is not to give up on finding a workable answer. It is only to give up on one means of answering that is ill-suited to the unstable, the unknowable, the unpredictable.