Sensemaking leaders begin by admitting: “I don’t know.” According to social psychologist Karl Weick:

The effective leader is someone who searches for the better question, accepts inexperience, stays in motion, channels decisions to those with the best knowledge of the matter at hand, crafts good stories, is obsessed with updating, encourages improvisation, and is deeply aware of personal igno- rance. People who act this way help others make sense of what they are fac- ing. Sensemaking is not about rules and options and decisions. . . . Instead, sensemaking is about how to stay in touch with context.38

A vivid example of sensemaking comes from fighting wildfires. Forest fire crew chief Paul Gleason, considered one of the world’s best firefighters, puts a

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premium on staying in touch with the environment. If the danger level appears high, he might assign as many as 16 members of his team as look- outs, leaving only four individuals to actually fight the fire. At one fire Glea- son worked without gloves to keep in better touch with weather conditions. When he felt a few drops of rain on the back of his hands, he knew he was feeling condensation from a huge column of smoke that was about to col- lapse. He quickly moved his firefighters to safety. Unfortunately, six people from another crew that didn’t anticipate the danger were killed when the col- umn collapsed

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