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A Practice for Finding Orientation in Complexity
Satirical Sensemaking ™ is a practice for navigating complexity by treating absurdity, irony, and lived organizational stories as data.
Rather than dismissing humor, contradictions, or “this makes no sense” moments as noise, the practice reads them as signals
about system conditions that are difficult to name directly.
Satirical Sensemaking operates upstream of formal sensemaking and narrative capture. It surfaces early, socially compressed signals
that often appear before people are able or willing to articulate experiences as stories or data.
This work does not aim to entertain, diagnose, or fix organizations. It supports orientation by helping people see what
is shaping behavior, judgment, and decision-making before formal indicators make it visible.
This practice also informs a forthcoming book on satirical sense-making and orientation in complex systems.
Why It Exists
In complex environments, coherence is often demanded faster than shared understanding can form. When this happens, systems do not simply fail. They produce signals.
Those signals frequently show up as:
- Repeated jokes or ironic commentary
- Absurd workarounds that quietly become normal
- Stories people tell to make sense of contradictory demands
- Performative alignment that masks uncertainty
Satirical Sensemaking exists to make these signals visible and usable, without collapsing complexity into simplified explanations or rushing toward action.
What This Practice Focuses On
Satirical Sensemaking examines patterns such as:
- Recurring absurdities across organizations and leadership contexts
- Humor and irony as early indicators of sensemaking strain
- Decision load and fatigue at the system level
- Gaps between formal intent and lived experience
- Moments where action is demanded ahead of understanding
The practice pays particular attention to socially compressed language: jokes, irony, shorthand, and recurring humor that function as rapid sense-checks inside groups.
These patterns are explored as qualitative data about system conditions, not as individual shortcomings or culture problems.
How Satirical Sensemaking Works
The Facilitator Role & The 4 Key Moves
In satirical sense-making sessions, stories, humor, irony, and contradictions are shared within the group to slow the sense-making process long enough for signals to become visible. The facilitator’s role is not to interpret on behalf of participants, diagnose problems, or offer solutions.
Instead, the facilitator:
- holds the conditions that allow patterns to surface
- supports the group in noticing what stories and reactions may be indicating about system dynamics
- helps make contradictions visible without resolving them prematurely
By doing this, shared orientation begins to form. As patterns become clearer, judgment stabilizes.
From that shared orientation, groups are better able to make decisions, navigate trade-offs, and move forward with
greater coherence after the session. The work is not about arriving at agreement in the room. It is about creating enough clarity
that participants can carry better judgment and decision-making back into their real contexts.
The practice follows a small number of consistent moves:
- Observe lived experience
Attention is paid to stories, behaviors, jokes, and contradictions that persist across contexts. - Name the absurdity
What feels off, ironic, or nonsensical is surfaced without ridicule or blame. - Interpret the signal
Absurdity is examined as information about coherence, pressure, pace, and constraint within the system. - Support collective orientation
Shared understanding is strengthened so judgment and decision-making can travel further.
This work stops at orientation. It does not prescribe solutions, interventions, or operating models.
What This Enables
Through Satirical Sensemaking, individuals, teams, and institutions gain:
- Clearer orientation within complex conditions
- Language to name what is difficult to say directly
- Greater confidence distinguishing signal from noise
- More grounded judgment about timing, trade-offs, and next steps
The impact is often subtle but durable. Conversations shift. Decisions stabilize. Pressure decreases without lowering standards.
How This Work is Used
Satirical Sensemaking may be applied through:
- Upstream orientation and sensemaking conversations, often preceding formal narrative capture or analysis
- Institutional or executive briefings on observed patterns
- Field reports and synthesis of recurring signals
- Inquiry partnerships with institutions, associations, and leadership communities
The structure follows the conditions under examination, not a predefined format.
How This Relates to Reclaim
Satirical Sensemaking is a foundational practice.
Reclaim is a broader orientation practice currently in development, focused on how individuals and leaders sustain integrity, capacity, and judgment over time in complex conditions.
Insights generated through Satirical Sensemaking inform and feed the Reclaim work, but the two are distinct. Satirical Sensemaking helps people see. Reclaim supports how people live with what they see over time.
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