Q. “How can we know what we think until we see what we say?”
The author in this article supports emergent change that is brought about by the plant level employees rather than planned change that is imposed by corporate level managers. The analogous to emergent and planned change would be TQM (Total Quality Management) which is influenced by Eastern management style and Re-engineering concept (evolved by Michael Hammer in early 1990s) which is influenced by Western management style.
Effective sensemaking and effective emergent changes are closely related. The more fully sensemaking activities are activated, the more effective the change. The above mentioned sentence has a rationale as if people at the local level are set free, people try to make sense of what is happening and adopt some program to deal with local (countrywide) problems. In the above mentioned sentence in ‘we say’, we refer to front line (business unit) level managers. In ‘We know what we think’, we refers to corporate level managers. Within the framework of sensemaking, management sees what the front line says and tells the world what it means. The example for not following this statement is that KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) corporate (Headquarters) didn’t listen to what KFC-Japan president had to say about their experiment for twelve-piece minibarrel, flexible kitchen design (that could be ideal for U.S. shopping malls) which was a success in Japan. Instead KFC-Japan was told to stop with this experimentation and another experiment with ‘chicken nuggets’ in 1981. ‘Chicken nuggets’ concept was soon copied by McDonald’s and was a great success.
Four essentials for sensemaking are animation, direction, attention and updating and dialogue. Emergent change and sensemaking are likely to be more effective when the culture of the corporation makes it clear that people are valued when they experiment with job descriptions (animation), implement a directive strategy (direction), rewrite requirements that no longer fit the environment (attention and updating) and speak up when things aren’t working (dialogue). People need to act in order to discover what they face, and they need to talk in order to discover what is on their mind. The “saying” involves action and animation; the “seeing” involves directed observation; the “thinking” involves the updating of previous thinking.
