MIT Sloan Management Review Article on The Overlooked Key to Leading Through Chaos

Managers who focus on developing sense making capabilities can make better decisions in a complex and unpredictable world. Ask executives to list traits of great leaders and they will probably name vision, honesty, or the ability to execute change. Rarely mentioned is one critical capability that leaders need most in turbulent times: sense making, the ability to create and update maps of a complex environment in order to act more effectively in it. Sense making involves pulling together disparate views to create a plausible understanding of the complexity around us and then testing that understanding to refine it. Leaders need to know what’s happening around them in order to drive organizations forward.

About the Author

Deborah Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management and founder of the MIT Leadership Center at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Michele Williams (@michelewilliamz) is an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship and the John L. Miclot Fellow in Entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa. Gisela Gerlach is a professor of business administration, human resource management, and organization at the Universität Koblenz-Landau.

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