You cannot shift what you have not read.
Sensing is the continuous, deliberate and relational practice of reading a system you are embedded in. It complements a baseline by continuing through design, implementation and adjustment as relationships and conditions change.
Sensing is a disposition as well as a set of methods.
Watch what people do, where patterns differ and how presence changes interaction.
Attend to stories, casual remarks, repeated language and conspicuous silence.
Use every encounter to refine who is doing what, why, how – and to whom.
Externalize what the team is learning so assumptions, gaps and relationships become discussable.
Return from the field and ask: what did we see, what does it mean and what changes next?
Use bounded action to learn how the system responds rather than waiting for complete knowledge.
Who is missing, what is not said and which relationships should exist but do not?
Read how the team’s identity, alliances and resources shape what people reveal and how they respond.
Three views of the landscape – plus an interaction-spaces overlay.
No single method produces the whole read. The strandStrand: An actor group and the practices through which it shapes the landscape over time. map shows actors and practices; the Power Vista reads that map through influence; the practice map examines meanings, materials and competencies. Select a view to see how it is assembled.
How it is built
The strand map is assembled cumulatively. Repeated bilateral engagement, seasonal calendars, stories and team sensemaking reveal how practices persist and change over time. No single workshop can produce it.
Which strands are heavy, which are light and which trajectories are strengthening?
Baseline evidence and sensing work together.
An agreed reference point
Baseline evidence
- Records initial conditions against which later change can be assessed.
- Provides structured evidence against agreed questions and indicators.
- Can draw on specialist or consultant input.
- Tracks agreed indicators and conditions selected in advance.
- Uses defined measures and methods to support comparison over time.
An evolving read
Sensing
- Continues throughout design, implementation and adjustment.
- Produces an evolving read of the system and a sequence of better decisions.
- Depends on relationships, presence and cumulative contextual intelligence.
- Also detects weak signals, surprise, absence and changes in relationships or language.
- Requires reflexivity about how the team’s presence changes what it can know.
Review the maps periodically. Stability can itself be meaningful, but it should be interpreted rather than assumed.
Choose methods for the map and decision you need.
Maps actors, links and influence towers. Particularly useful for the Power Vista.
Traces a practice through proximate, intermediary, structural and global regulatory ranges.
Unpacks meanings, materials and competencies to produce the practice map.
Uses everyday stories and participant interpretation to surface patterns, tensions and possibilities.
Supports distributed team sensemaking, including What, So What, Now What?
Sketch relationships after a field day, pin evidence to a wall and update trajectories as a team.
Who is doing what, when, where, why, how – and to whom?
Carry this as a disposition rather than a survey. The “and to whom” directs attention to regulation: whose action changes the conditions under which someone else acts?
Use sensing to navigate.
Read the full Sensing chapter.
The full reading provides the conceptual foundations, examples, sources and methodological detail behind this page.
Terms used on this page
- Strand
- An actor group and the practices through which it shapes the landscape over time.
- Regulation
- Any way actors shape what others can or cannot do, including rules, money, prices, custom and persuasion. It is broader than government regulation.
- Power Vista and strand map
- A map of who influences whom, through which practices and with what weight. The full reading treats the Power Vista as a strand map read through power relations.
- Practice map
- A map of the meanings, materials and competencies that sustain a practice, and the relationships that shape them.
