Like most professionals, you are wary of making decisions or offering advice when uncertainty is high, when you are likely to be wrong, and when the blame for failure will be yours. So, you err on the side of caution and pause to collect additional information in the search for clarity and certainty.

But the situation is complex, dynamic, and unique, so further information is unlikely to help, and you get stuck in analysis-paralysis. That means you’ve delayed the decision, which means you’ve allowed the status quo to continue, which means you’ve probably enabled worse outcomes than if you had acted and failed. Moreover, by not acting, you missed the opportunity to learn how the system responds to interventions, which is one of the critical tenets of learning-by-doing and what you need to do to make sense of the situation. 

But you know that if you rush into a decision, you may misinterpret it because you’ve seen research showing that experts don’t do well in ambiguous and uncertain situations: experts tend to fall victim to the confirmation bias that selectively identifies observations that fit their theories and past experiences. You’ve also read that people make poor decisions about unique situations when stressed, hurried, and have limited information. In such cases, most people instead invoke stereotypes, see patterns where none exist, and ignore anomalies. So you pause, ponder, and analyze.

And, importantly, you are aware of the sunk-cost fallacy: once a decision gets made, people tend to defend and repeat the same or similar decision, regardless of whether it is working, because to stop and try something different is to suggest that the time, resources, and people who supported previous efforts were wasted. So, if you commit to an action, you worry that changing direction will be difficult. Knowing this, you are cautious about making quick decisions, trapped in analysis-paralysis, and supporting the status quo, which you know is bad and what to avoid. The cycle repeats, and you are trapped in analysis paralysis. 

If you find yourself in such situations, then sensemaking provides a way forward. Sensemaking has two aspects: mindset and practice. 

Sensemaking as a mindset requires being flexible, taking time to consult others, broadening your perspective, and searching for the next decision without getting trapped in searching for the right decision. When things are highly uncertain, better decisions emerge when ideas are proposed, tested, rejected, and replaced with new ideas to retest, again and again, and again. That means you must be courageous enough to propose and make decisions while being humble enough to abandon what does not work, following the vital sensemaking principle of strong ideas weakly held. A sensemaking mindset encourages course corrections rather than rigidly following a planned path toward a predetermined solution. It promotes tolerance for results that differ from those that were predicted. It views failure as an opportunity to learn rather than an opportunity to cast blame.

Sensemaking as a practice can be equally powerful. When confronted with ambiguity and overwhelming complexity, sensemaking provides a place to engage the problem. Here are several tools you are probably familiar with:

– sSWOT: The Sustainability Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats analysis helps organizations take action on environmental challenges by exploring collaboration with internal departments, as well as suppliers, customers, or other stakeholders on strategies to create and sustain long-term value. Most importantly, it can help identify and communicate possible decisions.

– 3SO: Every sustainability situation has four dimensions: Stakeholders, Strategies, System, and Outcomes. Stakeholders use Strategies to change Systems to produce desired Outcomes. To quickly make sense of a situation, iteratively work through each of these four dimensions. What you learn from one dimension (i.e., stakeholders) can inform and help you more effectively see relevant information in another dimension (i.e., strategies the stakeholders are using and the outcomes they seek).

– Cynefin: The framework sorts the issues facing leaders into five contexts—simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder. It helps leaders diagnose situations, so they respond in contextually appropriate ways, make better decisions, and avoid the problems that arise when they otherwise respond with their preferred/default management style.

– PEST/PESTLE/STEEPLE: Helps analyze the Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural, and Technological challenges you face. It helps understand the “big picture” forces of change you’re exposed to and take advantage of the opportunities that they present.

– Natural Step’s 5-Level Framework: Most every situation has five levels: (1) the System in which it is embedded, 2) what counts as success, 3) the strategies that produce success, 4) the concrete actions or tactics associated with those strategies, and 5) the tools those actions use such as life cycle analysis or ISO 14001.

– VISSI.  The Vision and goals describe what success looks like. The indicators help gauge progress towards those goals. The System maps the causes, effects, and leverage points where Innovation is needed to create change, and the Strategies produce the required change. 

The scale, complexity, and uncertainty of sustainable challenges can be daunting. Where do you start? Who should you talk to? What can you do? The familiar parable about blind men encountering their first elephant illustrates how easy it is to misinterpret complex situations and how easy it is to become stuck in analysis paralysis.

Six blind men encountered an elephant. Not knowing what it was, they decided to explore it. “It’s a pillar,” said the man who touched a leg. “No! It is a rope,” said the man who touched the tail. “It is a tree,” said the man who touched the trunk. “It is a hand fan,” said the man who touched the ear. “It a wall,” said the man who touched the belly. “How can that be. What I feel is a solid pipe,” said the man who touched the tusk. 

Because the six could not make sense of the situation, they could not respond to the risks and opportunities it presented. We can only hope they are well and did not extend the analysis of the elephant much further.  

The 2020 national election seems to have solidified the gulf between “us” and “them.” We’re polarized and paralyzed: collaboration is working with the enemy, and, worse, compromise is seen as losing to the enemy.

The traditional leadership style—where someone or some political party creates the vision and has the positional authority to lead us towards the future—can’t solve the large-scale collective problems that require systems change such as climate change, inequality, and the circular economy. We need different strategies for coordinating stakeholders.

Fortunately, many such strategies have been developed and tested by people working on the frontlines of sustainability in the cross-sector space where business, government, and civil society intersect. I’ve summarized them in a new book and provide two examples below: one uses identity management to change diets, the other uses accountability to change investing. Both can transform whole systems.        

Few sustainability challenges are more contentious than meat-centric diets: if cattle were a nation, they’d be the third-largest CO2 emitter behind China and the US. Yet few people will change what they eat because of the traditional assumptions around meat’s benefits. An alternative strategy would be to target food professionals. 

Most of us eat in restaurants, order take-out, and pick up ready-to-eat food from grocery stores. When we cook at home, we use premixed items and follow recipes promoted by chefs we admire. Thus, our food system is dominated by meals that food professionals design, prepare, and promote. Coordinating food professionals to advance plant-based diets could change the whole food system. The founder of Changing Tastes, Arlin Wasserman, explains: “The culinary profession and the restaurant industry decide what goes on the menu and provide the choices before us. Changing those choices gives consumers a safe way to try new things and decide to change their tastes, with a dash of sustainability and a smaller serving of carbon and water.”  

But foodservice professionals are poorly organized and widely distributed across restaurants, media, and multinational corporations. Wasserman realized that identity management might help enlist them to this cause. As the name implies, identity management appeals to the human desire to identify with a group, movement, or cause. Humans are social creatures, motivated by status, and want to be respected by members of our communities. We therefore defend, rationalize, and become advocates for the communities we join. 

One identity management technique is to recruit “celebrity” chefs to promote plant-forward diets. Other chefs and foodies then aspire to join the “in” group and promote similar plant-forward entrees, recipes, and ingredients. Another technique is to use awards and recognitions to build a sense of membership and community. The Plant Forward Global 50 list, for example, “recognizes significant achievement in rethinking menus and traditional restaurant concepts that reflect the critical role that culinary insight and the relentless pursuit of deliciousness play in advancing health and sustainability concerns.” Another technique is to organize competitions for the most plant-forward cuisine because competitions clarify goals and celebrate winners. 

Another strategy for coordinating the actions of diverse and dispersed stakeholders is accountability. The following example is used to reduce carbon emissions and water use in the hotel industry by coordinating investors, the companies they invest in, and the engineers and managers of the companies’ buildings. Accountability works by making the consequences of people’s actions visible to others. Actors causing harmful impacts are motivated to improve their practices to avoid shame and blame. As the famed judge Louis Brandeis reportedly remarked, “Sunshine is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Actors producing good outcomes, in contrast, are encouraged by boosts to reputation. As a result, best practices for creating more sustainable outcomes are distributed through the system, and worst practices get sanctioned. 

Host Hotels & Resorts is the world’s largest real estate investment trust and one of the largest owners of luxury and upper-upscale hotels. As part of its commitment to quality, Host has embraced sustainability as a core aspect of its business and is regularly recognized as an industry leader. Host began working with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) in 2017. SASB differs from other platforms that assess environmental, social, and governance indicators by devising indicators material to investment decisions.

Brian Macnamara, the Senior Vice President and Controller explains Host’s motivations: “We wanted to brag about all the smart sustainability money being spent on infrastructure at our hotels and prove to investors that it was making a difference to the bottom line.” Host already reports on common sustainability metrics such as the Carbon Disclosure Project and Global Reporting Initiative, but were attracted to indicators directly material to investment outcomes. Brian explains: “Host’s environmental engineers may be delighted with building retrofits that reduce long-term energy and water use and lower long-term operating costs. However, year-over-year savings may be relatively small, so every project must meet a return on investment threshold as well as create sustainable benefits.”           

SASB reporting efforts have already paid off for Host. The company recently issued the first green bond in the lodging industry, raising $650 million from investors. Other companies have adopted features of Host’s 10-K reporting. SASB accounting created a common language within Host that led to cross-department synergies that improved management efficiency and return on investment. 

We live at a time when our systems need to change, but traditional leadership by those with positional authority no longer seems up to the task. Fortunately, other strategies exist. Career success and professional impact, and the hope and promise of sustainable development increasingly depend on these strategies.

R Bruce Hull’s book is Leadership for Sustainability: Strategies for Tackling Wicked Problems