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 living maps – plus an interaction-spaces overlay.
No single method produces the whole read. Select a map to see what it makes visible and 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.
| Baseline evidence | Sensing |
|---|---|
| Provides an agreed reference point near the beginning. | Continues throughout design, implementation and adjustment. |
| Provides structured evidence against agreed questions and indicators. | Produces an evolving read of the system and a sequence of better decisions. |
| Can draw on specialist or consultant input. | Depends on relationships, presence and cumulative contextual intelligence. |
| Tracks agreed indicators and conditions selected in advance. | Also detects weak signals, surprise, absence and changes in relationships or language. |
| Often aims to provide an external reference point. | 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 edition carries the complete argument, examples, references and methodological detail behind this page.
