Connections - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 67

It's a powerful metaphor, but all maps are traps. While divergent paths may seem obvious in
hindsight, they aren't easy to see in advance. All of our decisions are made without a complete
understanding of the options and consequences; not that we don't try. Our brains routinely ima-
gine choices and outcomes, and when the possibilities are too fuzzy, we stall.
We muddle around in a state of productive procrastination, and while muddling can be hard to
defend, it's precisely the right thing to do. We must buy time to find our way, because the rela-
tionships between choice, action, and cognition are far messier than we like to admit; and once
we step from the handle to the tine, there's no going back. Perhaps the utensil that affords the
wisest decisions isn't a fork but a spork.
Figure 3-12. Choose your fork carefully.
Nobody understands the trickiness of decisions better than Karl Weick, but in explaining his
perspective, it's hard to know where to begin. Like E.M. Forster, Weick invites us to consider the
effect of action on cognition by asking “how can I know what I think till I see what I say?” He ar-
gues that retrospective sensemaking is more common than we know. We act first, then rational-
ize our aim, but prediction is part of it too. In organizations, the basic unit of sensemaking is the
double interact. An interact exists when an act by Person A evokes a response by Person B. A
double loop is created by A's reaction to B's response. This is how meaning is made.
Figure 3-13. A double interact loop.
The first act is shaped by models we've built to make sense of the past. In Weick's words, our
thoughts are “real-ized” as self-fulfilling prophecies.