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Making sense in organizations: Gold Nuggets, Signal Events and Cautionary Tales
Dr. P. Michael McCullough
[a working manuscript: revised 2.19.00]
Introduction
Those who study organizations have witnessed a rolling forward of research paradigms (Kuhn, 1961) from decision making, to
information processing, to organizational learning (Argyris and Schon, 1996). Each of these deals with some aspect of human
cognition in the context of organizing. Some writers maintain the most fundamental of all cognitive activities is that of
“making sense” of organizational events. Weick (1995) and a number of others (Dunbar, 1981; Gioia & Chittipeddi,
1991;Goleman, 1985; Huber & Daft, 1987; Starbuck & Milliken, 1988 and Westley, 1990) are among those who have written a
good deal on the subject of how people make sense in organizations. Weick says people tend to not know what believe until
they see what they say. Then after they establish a belief, they tend to only “see” what corroborates that belief. Organizations
are often the locus of varying believes and therefore the scene of many efforts to make sense.
The sharing of narratives (for our purposes here, stories and narratives will be used interchangeably) is an essential element of
organizational sensemaking. In fact, it is possible to view organizations as symbolic systems with as many narratives as it has
individuals (Cooren, 1999). Most organizational stories are told from the perspective of the top manager, what Boje, Luhman
and Baack (1999) prefer to call the macro-story, but they could just as easily be told (and indeed are) from any of the other
points of view, the various micro-stories (Boje, 1995; Boje, Luhman and Baack, 1999). The birds-eye view – the view from
the top – includes a narrative of time and space that becomes as real as any of the other facts about the organization, such as the
physical plant, organizational charts or functional departments (Searle, 1995). Those who work within the organization, even
at the top, are never able to see it as “objectively” as those observing it from the outside do. Each “organizationally-bound”
person sees the organization from inside his or her own ongoing narrative. That is, each participant tells the organization’s
story to him or herself and this narrative is one subplot of many in the story of each person’s life. However, no one story
evolves independently of the others.
Taken together, the various narrative accounts within the organization can be evaluated for consensus or themes. You might
say that collective sensemaking is a search for themes, whereas individual sensemaking is a search for a reduction in
uncertainty (Kramer, 1999). Being an organizational sociologist, Weick (1995) dwells more on sensemaking at the collective
level than on individual contributions to sensemaking. Clearly, there can be no social understanding without individual
contributions. My interest is in exploring how individual narratives are composed and in turn both reduce individual
uncertainty and contribute to (collective) sensemaking. Crossan, Lane and White (1999) developed a model to connect
learning at the individual level to that of the institution. They end their article by suggesting that more needs to be done to
explain individual learning in an organizational context. What I am proposing is an explanation as to how “individual meaning
making” feeds collective learning through both the composition and exposition of narratives or stories.
My Hall of Fame Story
Now for my attempt to make sense of what I am talking about. I introduce my discussion with a little story. Two of my wife’s
brothers, a mutual friend and I, borrowed an Oldsmobile Station Wagon in 1989, and drove from Northern Kentucky to
Cooperstown, New York to see Johnny Bench inducted into the Hall of Fame. We had a flat tire on the way out, in Utica, NY,
on Sunday afternoon when nothing was open. We laid over and the next morning one of the brothers-in-law and I went
looking for a gas station open to get the flat tire repaired so we could put it back on the car and return home. It was about 6
AM and we pulled in to a gas station run by a guy named Mike Papaglia. The garage was immaculately clean and organized.
You could have eaten a white bread sandwich off the floor. He was listening to some sort of classical music and he was very
upbeat for a early Monday morning.
Just prior to the trip I had been reading Robert Pirsig’s (1974) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In the book he
recounts the time he learned that if you take your motorcycle to someone who does not care, you get what you deserve. It is
better to work on your own motorcycle. In other words, caring is fundamental to quality workmanship.
What I saw that morning in Mike Papaglia’s garage was a perfect example of someone who cared. He treated us kindly, not
taking advantage of the fact that we were stranded tourists, and he projected an air of concern for our situation. The result was
our tire was fixed quickly, expertly and cheerfully and all on an early Monday morning.
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So what’s the point of the story? I believe it is a homespun example of how we proceed through life, making sense, reducing
uncertainty, weaving narratives. In this story I came under the influence of the understanding of another person (Robert Pirsig
through his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), absorbed it into my way of looking at one aspect of the world,
and then lived through an episode that helped validate my perception of the “truth” about quality. I was left with a sense of
having cleared something up, having reduced uncertainty. I can never really know whether or not what I experienced was a
revelation of an absolute truth, but that type of certainty is not necessary. I have low standards when it comes to truth. All I
require is increased faith in my own understanding.
Sometimes the event we live through may appear to be all that happens. That is, it may seem that there was no prior insight,
but that the event itself teaches us. However, I would maintain that for us to learn from events we first must be “opened up”.
The sense we are making of things as we live helps guarantee that we will be able to make sense of what transpires in the
future. My visit to Mike Papaglia’s garage could never have meant as much had it not come while my thoughts were on Robert
Pirsig’s statements about the relationship between caring and quality. This, I would maintain, is not an isolated incident. It
happens to us all and it happens a lot. What appears to be fortuity or serendipity is actually common, ordinary occurrence.
Exposing oneself to new ideas is like making choices. Both open up future universes.
For each of us looking ahead, this process looks like chaos; looking back it looks like fortune, but from the outside looking in
(from the perspective of another person) when we understand something now because of what we have been through before,
we just look smart. Cast one more vote for a liberal arts education, since exploration outside a narrow view increases the odds
of future sensemaking connections.
Gold Nuggets, Signal Events and Cautionary Tales
Weick (1995) says that sensemaking is a social activity. However, some of the elements of it he implies, include private
thought on the part of individuals involved. There is, of course, no other way for social activity to occur than through
individual contributions, however intertwined they may be with those of others. The nature of these individual contributions is
the basic subject of this paper. To be even more specific, I am interested in the notion of what Shotter (1983) calls a seed.
Weick goes on to call it an extracted cue. My understanding of Shotter’s seed notion, is that in the flow of events we make
sense in part because we already have the seeds for doing so. Weick seems to be saying that the current situation causes us to
extract certain cues and that this is accomplished through retrospective thought.
The point I am making is that the way some people register their experience leaves them with potential meanings or what I will
call Gold Nuggets. Not all experience is registered the same way. Some people see more of what might be called the enfolded,
implicate or potential meaning (Bohm, 1980) than do others. As we will see later, whether I process phenomena with both
implicate and explicate order, can depend on me and the situation in which I find myself. I would further maintain that some
mental states are more conducive to seeing enfolded order in our experience. The primary purpose of this paper is to discuss
the nature of “seeing” enfolded order, what that leads to, and to some extent, why we sometimes “see” it and we sometimes do
not. I am following Bohm’s definition of enfolded order, which is what is implied by a phenomenon rather than what it is
explicitly.
I will use three separate metaphors to describe the process of making meaning through insight into enfolded order. The first
metaphor assumes we sometimes bring away an understanding of the enfolded order from our experience. These bits of
implications we take away from our living, I will call Gold Nuggets (GNs), because, like little bits of found gold, their value
lies mainly in the future. Before they can become valuable they must be polished and refined. This refining process will not
occur for many of the GNs we uncover. Many of them we will lose all together, they fade from our minds. Perhaps a few
examples will help explain what I mean by GN.
Everywhere we go GNs are scattered about us. Sometimes we bend over, pick them up and put them in our pocket, and other
times we grind them with our boot heel and keep right on walking. They may be bus fumes on the corner of Fifth and Vine
Street, the motion of a friend’s hand as she waves goodbye, or an aerial view of a glacier pointing up through white clouds. If I
am mindful (Trungpa, 1993) the bus fumes will be noted and subsequently available in my memory, attached to emotions I felt
as I stood on the street corner. To certain observers a friend’s goodbye contains all the meaning of a well-written short story.
Whereas another person may be so preoccupied as to not even store the wave in memory. The aerial view of a glacier pointing
up through white clouds is such an exceptional site, most people cannot help but notice it. Even the most oblivious airline
passenger might well stop in mid-sentence to comment on the breathtaking view of Mount Baker off the right wing.
Sometimes the nuggets come in clusters, as might the smell of assorted flowers, the panoramic view of Vancouver as we top a
hill permitting us our first view of the bridges, Stanley park and the exo-skeletal blue and green steel buildings. That whole,
fresh moment may stay with us as one large GN. No one would disagree that it matters greatly to our experience, whether we
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see Vancouver on the horizon for the first time as a prisoner in the back seat of a police car, as opposed to seeing it as a free
person from the front seat of our own automobile. Who is more likely to “see” the GN in the panorama that is Vancouver, all
other things being equal, the prisoner or the free person?
How shall we define GN then? GNs are what we pick up on our life’s journey, and here I use journey literally and figuratively.
The first time I drive by a section of woods at dusk, I might see the cypress trees draped with Spanish moss as having a ghostlike shape. Our wonderful minds see images not only for what our senses say they are, but also for what they imply to our
higher cognitions. Fiction writers often train themselves to see things both ways, explicitly and implicitly. Something about
processing stimuli both digitally (literally) and with analogue content (figuratively), causes them to be more retrievable
afterwards (Griffith, 1999). GNs are the associations we make during literal or vicarious experience. They are the trappings of
what things imply.
In some cases, based on the variety of our former experience, we may see immediately what a “thing” implies. In other cases,
we only need live a while longer for the “thing’s” implication to register. Consider the contrast between the sage and the
novice in a field of stimuli. The sage is “picking up” all sorts of implications (GNs) as she reads a novel, listens to a lecture or
drives through a city she has never seen before. The novice, on the other hand, might just as well be walking slowly across a
moonscape, since nothing refers to anything he has ever experienced before. Almost everything is explicit, nothing implied. If
Bob, who has never read or heard anything from the Bible, sees one person slap another on the cheek, Bob will not be
reminded of what Jesus said about turning the other cheek. There is no reflecting back for Bob, no rich metaphor to entertain.
In other words, there is no GN. When we make rich connections between present experience and previous understanding, we
fashion GNs. But it does not stop there. The GN connections we have made demonstrate value when a subsequent event
transpires, an event for which our previous rich-connection is well suited. Without the rich GN connection, our processing of
an event is too shallow for it to serve us well later on.
The subsequent phenomena, that which causes us to hark back to a GN, I will call Signal Events (SEs). SEs, by definition, are
only possible if a person has in mind one or more GNs. So now we are operating at the third level of meaning. First there was
the GN, which was a figurative connection we made between an experience (real or abstract) at time two and an earlier
experience (real or abstract) at time one. SEs are further associations made after the original connection (GN). Successive SEs
refine the original GN. After many SEs, our GN may have increased in value and richness to the point that we might call it
wisdom. SE-refined GNs in many cases are fashioned into what I will call Cautionary Tales (CTs). These tales bear the
wisdom we accumulate with respect to a given piece (or pieces) of SE-refined GN insight. With the telling of the CT to others,
the sharing of the relatively unrefined GN, or just announcing the connection between a SE and our GN, our original
understanding of the GN may undergo alteration. The process of articulating what we mean - and the adjustments suggested
by those to whom we make our announcement- may cause us to come away with a GN that appears to have almost no value at
all, or one that is now more valuable than ever. Expert knowledge has a lineage of GN-SE-CT connections.
Here are what I believe to be some conditions for GNs, SEs and CTs to occur. First, we will not get GN insight unless we have
the cognitive tools and propensity necessary. While almost every adult has the capacity for GN insight, not everyone cultivates
it. You might say poets cultivate it more than most. Or perhaps it would be more apt to say that those who cultivate GN
thinking are often called poets. Second, we may or may not be conscious of GNs we are carrying around with us at any given
time. They are GNs just looking for a home, for SEs. Third, GNs are closer to latent understanding than to manifest
understanding. They are unrefined. Hence the term gold nugget.
We need to frame our meaning of Signal Events (SEs) as well. First, there is a window of opportunity within which an event
must occur so it becomes the SE for a corresponding GN. The size of this window depends on the strength of the GN
connection and singularity of the event. Second, whether events are connected to GNs - whether they are called SEs – almost
certainly depends on the “state of the individual’s mind” when the event is experienced. Who knows what all the variables
are? Stress, heightened awareness, ennui, depression, euphoria may all mediate the extent to which GN-SE associations are
made. Third, SEs may be more likely to occur upon moving from one field to another, due to the increased attention that
results from the transition from one field to another. “Freshness” might be a good term for the mental condition that elicits
more SEs. Fourth, when the SE is outside the stimulus field of the GN, the significance of the connection may well be
increased. SE connections to a GN in another field may seem more powerful or universal.
As for Cautionary Tales (CTs), I believe the following to be true. First, CTs are both “pulled” and “pushed” from the thoughts
of the individual. Sometimes we find ourselves shoe-horning CTs into a situation, where they have only marginal relevance.
At other times it may take “too long” for us to finally get around to telling a CT that clearly applies. Second, the richness of
the CT will depend on both the significance of the GN-SE connection within the field, and the story-telling abilities of the
individual involved. CTs on the tongues of the inarticulate or unpersuasive, never realize their potential for impacting
collective sensemaking (Kelly and Zak, 1999). Third, CTs can affect the thinking of the individual involved, whether or not
she or he relates the story to someone else, but each time the story is revisited or told the meaning of the GN-SE connection is
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further clarified. Life after GN-SE-CT connections is not always a straight line toward increasing clarity. The clarity of our
understanding can be assumed to wax and wane, but revisiting it with a little focused attention, focus required more by telling
than by quiet reflection, will tend to improve our clarity and even our conviction of understanding. Fourth, if we tell our CT to
someone experienced in the field to which the connection applies, we are more likely to get feedback relevant to validity of the
GN-SE connection. Communities of practice (Liedtka, 1999), manufacturing cells (Grznar, 1994), like-minded people
wherever they may be found, can be valuable to one another as sources of feedback about GN-SE connections. The value of
within-group exchanges is likely to be enhanced by the variety of extra-group experiences held by members of the group.
Fifth, relating the story to someone experienced in a field other than the one to which the connection applies, will offer
feedback relevant to the generalizability of the GN-SE connection contained in the story. Sixth, it stands to reason that some
atmospheres are more likely to elicit CTs from individuals than others, and that these atmospheres (cultures?) and personality
characteristics of those involved, will interact.
This sequence of GN-SE-CT will likely serve as the foundation for learning in a thinking-to-doing, back-to-thinking, back-todoing situation. Kolb (1984) proposed a model of experiential learning that served as an inspiration for some of my ideas on
the subject, but my interest is more specific to how we ultimately come to compose the stories we hold or tell, in whatever
context we might find ourselves.
A poet who studied organizational theory for six months, then worked in a stimulating organizational environment for the next
six months, and kept this iteration going for several cycles, would be most likely to make GN-SE-CT connections (Schipper,
1999, Schon, 1983, Husserl, 1989). This would be the case because the poet – already predisposed to make GN-SE
connections- would have ample time and material for making GN-SE connections and the weaving of CTs. Of course the
norms of the cultures where the doing was done and where the telling was told, will also strongly influence what the poet
comes out of these experiences talking about. Based on this reasoning, might it not be said that leaders such as Martin Luther
King, are poets of the public realm? This ability to combine linguistic and semantic depth is no doubt essential to one aspect of
charisma, specifically as it relies on verbal flair.
It may well also be the case that those who migrate from one stimulus field to another (classroom to real world, or one “real
world situation” to another “real world situation”) will be more likely to develop CTs from GN-SE connections. A rich job
experience in company A may well set the person up for an interesting set of GN-SE connections in her next life at company B.
These connections, since they are from different fields are likely to seem “weightier”, more vivid, since the understanding
holds across at least two fields, making the wisdom appear to be at least in the direction of a universal concept.
I carry with me these potential bits of insights, Gold Nuggets (GN), we all do to a certain extent. Of course, compared to a
fiction writer or a professional poet, or even a charismatic leader, your GN collection and mine may seem quite limited.
However, it seems likely that the longer I live, the more GNs I collect. Over time some of them fade away, but a few remain
throughout the years. The GNs I have collected most recently have the advantage of being fresher in memory, but often the
disadvantage of not having been proven valuable in as many settings.
Notice that I do not necessarily, consciously, live in search of places to use GN, but rather they lie dormant until a
circumstance arises that invokes them, situations we have agreed to call Signal Events (SE). For an event to be signal, all that
need happen is for me to be reminded of a GN. I may not even note the connection at first, if ever, but these connections are
part of what make me viable as a sensemaker (Weick, 1995). These connections help make my contribution to organizational
sensemaking totally unique. If I am part of a group discussion, no other member of the group brings to bear the GN-SE
connections I do. These connections make me uniquely qualified to contribute to the sensemaking process. Most often my
contribution may come from telling a Cautionary Tale (CT) or it may come from simply throwing out GNs or making GN-SE
connections for the others in the group. It may happen that some event signals the relevance of a GN and at that moment a CT
begins to form in my mind. For many reasons, perhaps no scene better represents the process of making meaning than when
members of a community assemble and share CTs. One person’s CT serves as a SE for the invocation of another’s GN, which
in turn may lead to yet another CT.
We do not always share CTs that come into our mind. Sometimes CTs are inappropriate for the moment, but nonetheless they
may influence what we say and how we say it. For example, on more than one occasion when I have perceived either myself
or some other male to be bullying a female, I am reminded of this one acquaintance I have, who often talked in most degrading
tones to his wife. No matter who was present, if he was inclined to do so, he would demean her in front of everyone present.
This GN often comes to mind when I see another male colleague of mine – or even myself- treating women the way my GNconveying friend does. The GN in this case is an image I carry that serves as an icon for “male chauvinism”. I may not dwell
on the invocation of the GN by the SE, but at some level I tell myself a CT based on this iconic memory and this private story
has a way of influencing my demeanor, since the GN has strong negative connotations for me. Although I may tell a CT that
relates my memory of my friend’s rudeness, seldom will I be able to tell it well enough so those with whom I share it can make
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a GN-SE connection as solid as the one I have in mind. Nevertheless, we repeatedly accept the challenge of fashioning our
stories well enough to inspire insight in others.
If the occasion seems to warrant doing so, I will share my story with my colleagues, but some situations will not warrant my
doing so. One reason I may not share the story is that the telling of it may require me to provide too many details for it to
“make sense” to them. In general, I will only tell the story if I believe the story to be inherently interesting and the point I am
trying to make requires the telling of the story. Otherwise, my contribution to the sensemaking process will be implicitly
directed by my GN-SE-CT connections, rather than explicitly so. Some people tell more CTs than others, and some of us tell
our CTs in certain situations but not in others. We are continuously composing, editing and even censoring our stories in the
company of others.
I believe this GN to SE to CT sequence is fundamental to individual efforts to contribute to sensemaking. Weick (1995) argues
persuasively that sensemaking is something individuals do with other people. He further implies that, Orr’s (1987, 1990)
research on stories told by Xerox service people, indicates that the stories people tell to members of their group become frames
for the interpretation of subsequently shared cues. I would maintain that not only do the stories provide frames, but in some
cases they offer insight that will cause others to see subsequent SEs and to make a connection back to the GN which they
obtained from the CT of another person. To me, there is more going on than framing, cue-extracting, and connection-making,
as has been suggested by most authors on the subject of sensemaking.
What I believe I am adding to this effort to make sense of sensemaking, is that cues are understood as they are, not only
because of framing efforts (attempts to cause people to perceive cues the way you do) but also because of private GN. No
insight is ever passed from one person to another without some interpretation or translation. The result of this interface is that
the GN is new for the receiving person. In fact, you could argue that what framing does is to provide GN that are invoked by
SE and cause the development of a CT. Persuasion may start with one person’s CT (effort to frame event perception of other
group members), but it also requires those individuals who are finally persuaded to adopt the persuader’s CT as a GN. Then
when the SE occurs, their GN is invoked and they fashion their own CT, which means they have been persuaded and are now
apt to process subsequent cues as SE related to their GN, from which they can continue to fashion their own CT.
This helps explain how changing the membership of a group by one person, might completely alter the sense made by that
group. Individual members of the group do influence, in some cases quite significantly, the direction of the sensemaking effort
from what it would have been without that member being present. So while sensemaking is fundamentally a social process,
like other social processes, it is dependent on individual contributions.
What happens socially is that the meaning “made” by group members upon confronting particular cues is the result of a
framing process carried out by individual group members. Weick (1995) said that frames guide cue perception which leads to
connections that could only have been made given the particular frame of reference shaped by certain influential group
members. This is what happens at the collective level. I would maintain that what is going on at the private level is this GNSE-CT process, where the stories of influential people (their efforts to frame) become GN for individuals who then make
connections because these framed events acted as signals. Finally the individual puts together his or her own CT that relates to
his or her GN-SE connections, and this new understanding belongs to him or her. The influence process is complete.
Thinking of individual contributions to the sensemaking process this way (GN-SE-CT) also permits us to understand how
individuals attempt to make sense of situations privately. Weick and others may be correct that in organizations and groups,
sense tends to be made socially, but the fact remains that individuals interact with the sense that is made, which implies that for
every individual there is a private process going on, which might be called meaning making. Using this language then, we
might say that the social process of sensemaking is driven by the private process of meaning making, with sensemaking being
highlighted by frames, cues and connections and meaning making being highlighted by GN, SE & CT.
What this means is that each person brings to the (social) sensemaking process a type of (private) meaning-making momentum.
It is this prior and concurrent meaning making that makes sensemaking more dynamic and in some cases, more difficult.
Ultimately, social sense made from private meaning depends on the quality of communication among those trying to make
sense. The quality of the communication depends on the quality of CT derived from various and relevant GN-SE connections
made by individuals, and how these CTs are used to frame cues from which sensible connections are derived.
Understanding the dynamics between individuals within groups in this way helps explain how diversity within a group can be
beneficial to that group’s sensemaking efforts. The more disparate the individual group member’s GN, the greater the variety
of SEs invoked, and ultimately, the more unique the array of CT produced by the individuals will be. This would imply that
the sense made by a diverse group of individuals will take into account a greater variety of GN-SE connections, yield a richer
collection of CT and ultimately reduce the influence of a notorious enemy of sensibility, namely a narrow-mindedness or
provincial bias.
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Malan and Kriger (1998) argue for the importance of managers being able to identify outliers in the data they perceive. The
point I am making is not so much the importance of outliers in data, but rather making current connections with former
meaningful experience. Perhaps another example is in order. For me, when the SE has to do with longsuffering, I think of my
best friend’s mother who, for nearly thirty years waited hand and foot on his father who was slowly taken away by multiple
sclerosis. Her story is most likely the one I will pull out if you and I are talking and the discussion turns to extreme endurance
of hardship or longsuffering. Someone else who knew her may not have made the same GN connection to long-suffering that I
made, even though they knew her well. They may have perceived her motives or actions in the light of other variables, perhaps
variables of which I was unaware.
Suppose the conversation turns to boundless energy. I have an GN icon for that too. In this case it is a wonderful lady with
whom I once shared an office. Sort of like the cluster of images that stay with me when I remember the time I first saw the city
of Vancouver, Canada, the GN-memory I have of this marvelously energetic lady is large and multifaceted, but nonetheless, it
can be retrieved in summary form as one whole GN connection. For yet another example, the GN image I have for the type of
caring that produces high-quality customer service, is that of my friend Mike Papaglia, the emergent hero from my
Cooperstown story. My understanding of what is being said around me is constantly dependent on such connections, to say
nothing of my contributions to the ongoing discussion.
If our talk turns to “righteous indignation”, justifiable anger if you will, I think of a guy I know whom, as a corporate vice
president with an oil production firm, was asked to go check out a refinery in another state. He had been tipped off as to some
of the problems, so he arrived unannounced early on a Monday morning, before the first shift came on. He walked through the
facility and noted how hot (despite it being early morning) and filthy the area was where the first-line supervisors and rank and
file employees worked, and how cool and clean the manager’s areas were. He proceeded to pick up the upside down five
gallon can a foreman used as a chair to sit on while he did his necessary paperwork, and delivered it to the office of the plant
manager. He then rolled the plush leather chair used by the plant manager out to the dirtier, sparse, foreman’s area.
He then hid and waited just outside the plant manager’s office. The plant manager and he had never met, so the plant manager
walked by him, into the office and seeing the upside down five gallon can behind his Mahogany desk, let go an angry string of
curse words, wondering what no-good person had played this little trick on him. Our vice president walks in and calmly tells
the plant manager who he is, and why he made the switch. The vice president then made a number of demands on the plant
manager, which included cleaning up the filthy and unsafe working conditions and extending the air conditioning outside the
management offices to the shop floor. Due to SE that causes me to think of “righteous indignation”, I go back to my GN-SE
connection and then I launch into my account of a CT on the subject.
What if a SE causes me to think of a GN, one I will call, “the sometimes surprising way organizational cultures develop”? In
that case, I might well turn to a GN-SE-CT connection already made, ready to pull off the shelf, for just such an occasion, if
you will (somewhat reminiscent of the Garbage Can model of decision making, Cohen, March & Olsen, 1972) . I will share it
with you in the form of a cautionary tale. I heard this story from a speaker and it has become part of my GN collection under
how predicting the nature of organizational cultures can turn on surprising events. It seems there is a grocery store in an
upscale U.S. urban neighborhood that hired a young teenage boy with Downs Syndrome. The boy was most friendly and
unusually kind to the store’s customers. The store, on the other hand, had a reputation of being just the opposite. Those who
shopped and worked there seldom spoke to one another more than was absolutely necessary. The boy, who served the store as
a grocery bagger, liked to collect little sayings and he even took to entering them into the computer at home, printing them out,
cutting them into strips and then slipping one of these slips with a saying on it into one of each customer’s shopping bags. His
sayings were sort of like what you might get in a fortune cookie and they always sent hopeful messages, such as “A journey of
a thousand miles begins with the first step”. Customers would thank him, and many even began holding extended
conversations with the young man.
Pretty soon customers were making it a point to just happen to wind up in the line where the boy with the sayings strips was
bagging. Store management noticed this and started giving little sayings strips to all the baggers. Then the folks back in the
meat department began putting smiley faces and other stickers on their meat packages. The store culture soon became so
friendly and relaxed that management took out the center aisles, put in a white grand piano, and hired a pianist to play live
music for the shoppers. Eventually a coffee bar was put in, and at that point it became clear that what had begun as a cold,
sterile grocery store, was now a place to come and spend a little time in a warm, social atmosphere. All of this occurred
because of the personality of one little bag boy.
You see, I need not even share that story with others for it to affect the way I look at organizational culture. But once I share it,
the GN that is at the heart of it, is adapted anew each time the story is shared. You might even say the story is an illustration of
the butterfly effect, where a small event with seemingly small consequence, ultimately results in great consequences (Gleick,
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1996). The GN that is transmitted from person to person is in a constant state of evolution, one person seeing it as being about
chaos, another about culture and so on.
It is in this fashion that cultures form and develop, from person to person, from GN to SE to CT with the CT offering a new
GN for those exposed to it, and the consequences growing from there. The GNs remain of no consequence until the possessor
is confronted with a relevant SE, which then leads to an understanding of that event in terms of the GN. The GNs, ultimately
shared as CTs, that are most frequently told in the organization, come to shape and symbolize that culture.
An organization’s culture can be characterized as a moving set of gold nuggets in search of signal events, the finding of which
leads to cautionary tales from the imaginations of those active in the dialogue of the organization. The three metaphors
represent three separate processes, the process of meaning distillation, meaning attachment and meaning conveyance. Each
participant in the culture is continuously engaged in these three activities, reducing too much information to gold nuggets of
meaning, applying this meaning to signal events and spreading the meaning by telling relevant stories or cautionary tales.
Implications of GN-SE-CT logic for management and organizations
What are the implications of this line of reasoning for those who spend their lives making sense in organizations? The
following discussion address how GN-SE-CT sequences are apt to show up in an organizational setting as well as how
considering narratives in terms of GNs-SEs-CTs can clarify the organizational learning research process.
Experiences within teams or departments. First, it follows from the above discussion that cross-training, or broad-based
experience may have a positive effect beyond increasing the person’s breadth of knowledge. The person may also increase in
what might be called depth, since moving from one field to another may enhance GN-SE connections across them. The
individual may be more likely to fashion CTs from GN-SE connections due to the “power” of moving across contexts.
Evidence already exists that cross-training enhances team performance through increased inter-positional knowledge (Entin
and Serfaty, 1999), the knowledge that before might have been “in the cracks”. Considering the matter of cross training from
the perspective of GN-SE-CT sequences adds the perspective of increased depth-of-knowledge possibilities, a perspective that
might not otherwise be investigated.
A second “safe” statement would appear to be that when teams or departments are heterogeneous with respect to the
backgrounds of the individuals comprising the team or department, the opportunity for the testing of CTs for generalizability
will be enhanced. In a fashion analogous to the multi-trait-multi-method procedure of Campbell and Fiske (1959), diverse
individuals (multi-methods) can cast doubt on or support the explanatory power of the stories (multi-traits) shared, outside their
field of origin. Understanding the process of communication among diverse individuals as involving GN-SE-CT connections
offers an audit trail, a type of data to be collected by qualitative research methods and analyzed for the flow of GNs, SEs, CTs
and the interactions among them, as they are revealed by transcripts of conversations.
Third, when teams or departments are heterogeneous with respect to extent of experience within the same field (tenure,
knowledge acquired) opportunities for testing the validity of CTs will be enhanced. Kleiner and Roth (1997) discuss a tool
they call learning histories, which is essentially the organization’s narrative as agreed upon after the sharing of stories from
those who have lived in the organization for some time. Understanding the various narrative accounts in GN-SE-CT terms
could be a way to facilitate deriving a consensus from otherwise unwieldy and difficult to compare, accounts. If GNs and SEs
could be isolated as a type of skeleton for the CTs running through history accounts given by organizational veterans, the
qualitative researcher has more to go on that just brute judgment about how the stories fit together.
Fourth, when the level of anxiety across members of a sensemaking unit such as a team or department, is lower, it seems
reasonable to expect that GN-SE-CT connections will be more plentiful and the sharing of CTs more likely. Schein (1993)
maintains that anxiety can act as a block to organizational learning. Certain “atmospheres or climates” will elicit more CTs
than others due to the relationships among the individuals. GNs, SEs and CTs will be influenced by organizational power,
intra- and inter-personal processes and structure. Let us consider the issue of power next. Furthermore, other emotions - such
as fear and helplessness, excitement and hopefulness – may play an important role in the GN-SE-CT process.
The effect of power on GN-SE connections. According to French and Raven (1965) there are five basic sources of power in
organizations: legitimate, reward, coercive, expert and referent. It stands to reason that individuals possessing any one or all
of these forms of power will influence the GN-SE connections identified by other individuals. Our experience never occurs in
a vacuum. Our attention to, perception of, and understanding in a given situation, is influenced by those who frame the events
that occur (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1977).
8
The effect of power on CTs. Power influences CTs in at least three ways, by affecting our felt freedom to share our story, the
strength of our own belief in the validity of our story, and the extent to which we can convince others of the validity of our
story. In organizational communities, as well as in research communities having to do with the study of organizations we
might do well to attend to the advice of Zhu (1999), who advocates the metaphor of Pierce’s fiber-cable rather than a chain
metaphor. He says that when all our stories, our versions of truth, are considered in the best possible light, together our
understanding comes to be the “strongest possible cable”, rather than the more cynical approach of looking for the “weakest
link in the chain”.
The effect of intra-personal processes on GN-SE connections. Individuals are considered to vary in numerous ways and
thus relationships among groups of people can become quite complex. Considering the individuals independently, and
assuming a classic breakdown of personality characteristics, we could locate individuals on a scale from introverted to
extroverted, sensing to intuiting, thinking to feeling, and judging to perceiving ( Myers and McCaulley, 1985). This 2 x 2 x 2 x
2 framework yields sixteen separate categories. We will not investigate each one, but rather speak in general terms about two
sides of each dimension.
Those who are introverted might well be more likely to make GN-SE connections based on private interpretation of
experience, whereas those who are more extroverted might be more likely to base GN-SE connections on conversations they
have with others. This might well mean that introverts will make sense differently from the way extroverts do. Introverts may
drive a harder bargain, so to speak, when it comes to yielding belief in their GN-SE connections to those of others, whereas the
extrovert may be more likely to develop and maintain GN-SE insight derived from compromises resulting from conversations
with others. Sensers may be more likely to develop their GN-SE beliefs from their understanding of literal events, behaviors or
activities, whereas the intuitor may be more likely to develop GN-SE understanding from mental events (vicarious learning)
more often than from actual events (experiential learning).
Thinkers may be more apt to hold GN-SE connections based on rational thought and be more likely to require logical
persuasion to alter this connection, whereas feelers may be more apt to accumulate GN-SE connections more grounded in their
feelings and require more emotional appeals to accommodate their GN-SE connections to those of others. Judgers may be
more likely to restrict their GN-SE connections so that when taken together they reveal a pattern of conservative, convergent
thought, versus the more varied pattern of the perceivers. Perceivers might be said to be more divergent in the pattern revealed
by a collection of their GN-SE connections.
The effect of interpersonal processes on GN-SE connections. Griffin and Patton, 1974 found the following three variables
to be important to communication among people: first, the complexity of the subject, secondly, the importance of the subject,
and three the feelings aroused by the subject. When the subject is complex, important, and highly emotional, one would
suspect that private GN-SE connections would be held to with greater conviction than might be the case with simple,
unimportant and unemotional subjects.
The interaction of intrapersonal processes, personality, and the sharing of CTs. Those who are introverted may be less
likely to share their CTs. Those who are intuitors may be more likely to share their stories giving off an air of authority
whereas those who are sensers may be more likely to share their stories giving off an air of seeking feedback on their story.
Those who are thinkers may be more likely to concoct and relate their stories in a rational, logical fashion, whereas the CTs of
those who are feelers may tend to be of the more emotional variety. Those who are judgers might be more likely to devise and
tell CTs that are more dogmatic in nature as opposed to perceivers who might well be more likely to tell stories that are less
evaluative in their implications and more descriptive in nature. individual (all else being equal) might well in the telling of his
or her CT, more effort to frame the issue or convince the listener.
The importance of structure to GN-SE connections. In tall structures, where authority is centralized, more formal attempts
to shape the GN-SE connections of others, may be made by those in authority. However, it may often occur that in these same
centralized structures, more informal (unapproved) attempts of a horizontal or bottom-up nature will be made to shape GN-SE
connections. On the other hand, in flatter structures, where authority is decentralized, one might expect fewer formal attempts
to influence GN-SE connections and correspondingly fewer informal lateral attempts to influence GN-SE connections. It
would be expected that under genuine conditions of egalitarianism, individuals will be given greater freedom to make GN-SE
connections for themselves.
The importance of structure to the sharing of CTs. In tall structures, where authority is centralized, it might be expected
that the CTs told by those in authority would be likely to permit the teller to retain his or her authority. However, in flatter
structures, where authority is decentralized, it might be expected that the CTs told will be more likely to be of a knowledgebearing nature than a authority-enhancing nature. Also, in tall structures it may well happen that the CTs told by those at the
bottom of the organization will have themes that reflect issues of authority (pro status quo or against the status quo), whereas
the tales told by those in the flatter organization may have more to do with issues related to problems to be solved.
9
The implications for management of looking at meaning-making this way. If the manager understands that individuals
contribute to organizational sensemaking through the GN-SE and CT process, their understanding of their role might well be
altered. They may come to see themselves as suppliers of GNs, orchestrators of SEs, framers of GN-SE connections and
fashioners of CTs. GN-SE-CT reasoning may offer them a valuable alternative approach to affecting organization’s culture.
Managers as suppliers of GNs. GNs come in several varieties. Some of them have to do with imbuing language with
meaning. I can imagine a manager using Robert Pirsig’s insight about the relationship between caring and quality to great
advantage. In this case the manager would have given increased nuance to his meaning of the term quality. The belief is that
words can be sources of change and not merely matters of semantics.
GNs more related to images. The manager might bear him or herself in a certain way and thus provide a type of iconic model
for the behavior of those in his or her audience. In some cases, the manager may not even do this consciously, but rather his
natural way of being offers a GN to those who observe his style or grace. It might be something as little as a well-timed smile,
an appropriate display emotion, or something as grand as keeping everyone on the payroll after the plant burns down. This
type of GN conveyance is more about actions than language, but has to do with the way actions are carried out more so than
with the nature of the action involved.
A third type of GN conveyance would be where the manager effects decisions or acts in a certain way. This has more to do
with what we would normally call outcomes than with process. The manager announces the decision to empower associates
and then follows through with it. Or she chooses certain people to do certain jobs, which is observed by those in the
organizational audience. You might say this GN has to do with the understanding one gets from studying the choices of
someone else and their outcomes. The manager in this case is leading by example. When managers act or decide they are,
without perhaps being completely aware of it, leaving a trail of GN. Said another way, public action always includes a
component of instruction.
Managers as orchestrators of SEs. Managers can use their position to influence what events occur, the audience that sees
these events, and to varying degrees the meaning of the events that occur. Organizational events include: decisional events,
such as hiring, firing, placement, role changes, expenditures, changes in authority relationships; communication events such as
orders, the delivery of information, and announcements; physical events such as plant closings, groundbreakings, building
projects, spatial reorganization, and so on; and symbolic events such as recognition dinners, alteration of dress code, doing
away with the trappings of rank (parking, office furniture, and so on).
Managers as framers of GN-SE connections. Managers can influence the connections made by associates by deliberately
drawing parallels between words and actions, between associate performance and subsequent reward, between goals and
outcomes, between beliefs and practice. The manager, in some cases, might find it necessary to shed light on situations so that
those in the audience do not draw the “wrong” conclusions.
Managers as tellers of CTs. Successful managers tend to cultivate their ability to tell meaning-bearing stories (Hansen and
Kahnweiler, 1997). These stories are selected, shaped and shared in such a way so as to maximize the conveyance of the
message intended by the manager. CTs told by managers may not necessarily be original to them. The Johnson and Johnson
cyanide-laced capsule disaster is a CT about the importance of a SE (the disaster) being connected back to a GN (the
organization’s credo). Organization studies and management circles are replete with such GN-SE-CT connections. You might
say the results of organizational research and rational analysis of notorious organizational events offer both academicians and
practitioners of management GN insight, which ultimately they develop into their own CTs to suit situational purposes.
What variables influence the value of a GN? The value of GNs has to determined by timing, relevance to something already
considered important, perceived validity, the efforts of someone promoting the GN, and the clarity of the insight contained in
the GN. What variables influence the likelihood of valid, GN-SE connections? GN-SE connections are more likely when the
culture promotes creativity and innovation, more likely when the groups are mixed with people with varying degrees of
experience and bases of experience, when thinking or moving among fields is promoted, in culture where anxiety is low but
performance expectations are high. What variables serve to determine the significance of a CT? The most significant CTs
come from the most significant events, when the GN (extractable meaning) is significant, or when the story is told in an artful
manner.
Conclusion
I maintain that GN-SE-CT process is fundamental to the making of meaning from phenomenological experience. What
scientists do can be summed up in the inductive-deductive hypothetico spiral, whereas what we do in our everyday lives is
closer to GN-SE-CT. The scientist gains theoretical insight from previous research, observes variables with varying degrees of
10
control, analyzes what has been found, and finally makes a declaration as to how what he or she has seen through observations
does or does not agree with what was known before his or her “study”.
In our daily existence, we are immersed in a world of mental and physical phenomena from which we draw inferences. We do
not note everything, we cannot, we are limited information processors. We note and infer meaning from a subset (Gold
Nuggets) of what happens around us. Some of these inferences (GNs) are retained longer than others because events conspired
to cause us to accord a type of naïve validity to the relationship between certain of our prior inferences (GN) and what we saw
in subsequent phenomena (SE). If this GN-SE connection is strong enough we will fashion a story of the meaning we have
carried away (a CT).
How does what we do contrast to what the scientist does? The scientist deliberately attempts to stage a neutral circumstance
that will provide a reliable and valid test for the accuracy of his prior insight. We do not do that. We bring our insight along
with us and then when our experience appears to validate our prior insight, we permit ourselves to further believe in our earlier
insight. This belief becomes strong enough for us to encapsulate it in the form of a story, fable, myth, or to use the term chosen
here a CT. What keeps us from making invalid inferences? What keeps our stories from being lies? The only things we have
to rely on are other people, variety of experience, a tendency to be too conservative to jump to conclusions on small numbers of
phenomenological observation, and a sophisticated understanding of the variables at play in the field of our perception. When
you come right down to it, what we are describing here, is the goal of a traditional liberal arts education. Those who operate
alone, with a narrow base of experience, with a strong tendency to draw strong inferences from small numbers of observations,
and with an unsophisticated understanding of the variables at play in their field of perception, are the ones who are prone to
prejudice, bigotry, and in the end, a superstitious understanding of the world in which they live.
What may the future hold for sensemaking in organizations, taken from the point-of-view offered in this paper? Will virtual
organizations, with their teleconferences, emails and web-page relationships offer as many opportunities for the sharing of
CTs? As people spend more time in front of the computer and less with other people, what will happen to the sensemaking
process? Indeed, if the GN-SE-CT sequence is as fundamental as I maintain here, will the effect of a new, less social way of
doing business dramatically alter our individual and collective understandings of what modern living means? Any answers to
these questions will likely come in the course of future efforts to make sense - efforts that depend heavily on what we are
thinking now.
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