When something unexpected hits—sales drop, a key leader quits, a competitor changes the game—most teams react by doing more. Meetings multiply, emails fly, and people rush to “fix it.” The problem is that speed without clarity turns into wasted effort, and that’s exactly why Sense-Making has to come first.
The Progression of Meaningful Response is a simple order of operations that helps teams respond well: Sense-Making, Meaning-Making, Framing, and Solving. It keeps you from jumping to answers before you understand what’s actually going on.
Sense-Making: What’s Happening, Really?
Sense-Making means building a shared picture of reality. It’s the step where you slow down long enough to separate facts from guesses.
You’re looking for what you can actually observe: numbers, customer behavior, timelines, and patterns. You also make space for different viewpoints so the team isn’t trapped in one person’s assumptions. When Sense-Making is missing, teams argue in circles because they’re not working from the same “truth on the table.”
Meaning-Making: Why Does This Matter?
After Sense-Making, you move to Meaning-Making. This is where you connect what’s happening to what matters.
Meaning-Making answers: why is this important, who is affected, and what’s at stake if nothing changes. It turns raw information into shared motivation. Without Meaning-Making, people may do the work, but they won’t pull in the same direction for long. Energy gets thin, and priorities quietly drift.
This is also where Stewardship shows up. Stewardship is taking responsibility for what must endure—values, trust, and legitimacy—so today’s decision doesn’t create tomorrow’s damage.
Framing: What Problem Are We Actually Solving?
Framing is choosing the problem worth solving. It’s the hinge step, because it turns understanding into focus.
Framing names the challenge, sets boundaries, and defines what “success” looks like. It also clarifies what you’re not solving right now. A good frame prevents “solution theater,” where teams work hard on something that looks productive but doesn’t change outcomes.
Solving: What Will We Do, And How Will We Learn?
Solving is designing and delivering an action that matches the problem. This includes testing ideas, choosing a method, and building feedback loops so you can adjust.
Solving works best when the earlier steps were done with care. If your solution keeps failing, it’s often because Sense-Making was incomplete, Meaning-Making was weak, or the frame was off. Strong teams don’t treat this sequence like a one-time march forward. They loop back when reality changes.
Levels Of Work: Why Different Roles Need Different Steps
Not every role should spend the same amount of time in each step.
Teams closer to daily operations often do more Solving because the situation is concrete and time-sensitive. Leaders with bigger scope and longer time horizons have a different job. Their highest value is often Sense-Making and Meaning-Making—watching the outside world, noticing patterns early, and helping the organization stay coherent over time.
That’s why the Progression is also a way to assign the right thinking to the right level of responsibility.
A Real-World Example: A Customer Support “Crisis” That Wasn’t
A software company sees a spike in customer complaints. The first instinct is to hire more support agents and extend support hours. Before acting, the leadership team uses the Progression.
They start with Sense-Making. They pull the last eight weeks of ticket data, tag it by topic, and look for patterns. They listen to a sample of calls. The spike is real, but it isn’t random. Most complaints are about one feature released in the last update.
They move into Meaning-Making. The team clarifies what’s at stake: customer trust is wobbling, renewal risk is rising, and the support team is burning out. They also name a Stewardship concern: if they blame support for a product issue, they’ll break trust internally and train people to hide problems.
Next comes Framing. Instead of framing the problem as “support can’t keep up,” they frame it as “the new feature is creating predictable failures for a specific customer segment.” Success becomes clear: reduce tickets tied to that feature by a measurable amount, and restore customer confidence.
Finally, they enter Solving. Product rolls out a hotfix and improves in-app guidance. Support gets a temporary script and a clear escalation path. The team sets a weekly review to track ticket volume and customer sentiment, then loops back to Sense-Making if patterns shift.
The result is fewer tickets, less burnout, and higher retention—without hiring a large number of new agents for a problem that wasn’t truly a staffing issue.
Key Takeaways
- Sense-Making gets everyone aligned on what’s actually happening.
- Meaning-Making connects facts to stakes so people commit, not just comply.
- Framing stops wasted effort by naming the real problem to solve.
- Solving works when it includes feedback and the courage to loop back upstream.
FAQ/s
What is Sense-Making, in plain language?
Sense-Making is when a team gets on the same page about what’s actually happening before anyone tries to fix it. It’s facts first, assumptions second.
How is Meaning-Making different from Sense-Making?
Sense-Making clarifies reality. Meaning-Making clarifies why that reality matters—what’s at stake, who’s affected, and what the organization should protect as it responds.
What’s the biggest mistake teams make with this progression?
Skipping to Solving too fast. That usually creates rework, frustration, and “busy” activity that doesn’t improve outcomes because the real problem wasn’t framed correctly.
How do we know which step we’re stuck in?
If people disagree on facts, you’re stuck in Sense-Making. If people agree on facts but don’t care or pull in different directions, you’re stuck in Meaning-Making. If everyone is motivated but scattered, you’re stuck in Framing. If you’re focused but not improving results, you’re stuck in Solving.
How do we use this without making it feel like another corporate process?
Keep it lightweight. In meetings, simply name the step you’re in (“We’re in Sense-Making right now”) and don’t allow the group to jump ahead until that step is done well enough to move forward. This turns the progression into a shared habit instead of a heavy framework.
If you want to see the full Progression of Meaningful Response laid out as a repeatable operating system—complete with diagnostics for where your team is stuck—read the full article and share it with your executive team for your next strategy cycle.
