From Matter to Mind – From Individual Values to Organisational Purpose: A Design Approach with a Focus on Sensory Sensemaking

This pictorial is intended to show the potential of a sensory sensemaking approach in the process of forming and reforming visions for a mutual purpose in organisations. Building on existing theories in various relevant areas such as embodied cognition, organisational sensemaking, tacit and aesthetic knowledge, material engagement and knowledge transfer, the author has developed a set of objects and an associated method that brings mindfulness and learning into a sensemaking process through distinct material-immanent qualities and aesthetic experiences. The conceived Sensory Sensemaking Set consists of a series of objects designed with the aim of stimulating associative thinking with and through the physical experience of material objects to promote individual and collective knowledge construction and transfer. The Sensory Sensemaking Set and its associated method were tested with participants in a purpose and strategy workshop. Considering that the enthnographic study was solely exploratory and limited in scope, the research conducted cannot be expected to provide sufficient and valid data to derive robust conclusions and theories. However, the results are promising and show that the majority of participants felt inspired, motivated and enabled by thinking about and thinking through materiality as part of the Sensory Sensemaking approach in an organisational purpose context.