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The Sensemakers Club

@thesensemakersclub.bsky.social

170 followers 260 following 590 posts

Curiosity leads to clarity. We host a small group discussion every weekday covering 20+ topics relating to sensemaking, design, content and data every month. Operated by Abby Covert.

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The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · Dec 5

Hey Bluesky! 👋

We're The Sensemakers Club - where overthinking is a superpower and clarity comes through connection.

We run daily discussions on 20+ topics and our hosts have been trained to create intentionally inclusive spaces.

www.thesensemakersclub.com

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The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 19h

Noticing what's hidden in plain sight isn't about superior perception—it's about having a better question toolkit. The person who spots the critical detail has usually trained themselves to interrogate situations from multiple angles. Their edge comes from curious discipline, not enhanced vision.

The ability to see what others miss isn't a superpower—it's the result of asking better questions more consistently.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 22h

Beginner’s Meeting, Our Bodies are Wild, Making Sense of Ethics, Making Sense of Relationship Building, and Making Sense of Complexity & Chaos all next week at The Sensemakers Club.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 23h

Overheard in Making Sense of Complexity & Chaos

"I think of it as like portrait versus landscape mode. So if I can write something down in a list, then it's complicated maybe because there's tons of things. But if it's a landscape where I'm putting things down in no specific order, I'm drawing arrows, there's stuff that's interrelated there's interdependency...then I look at it as a complex thing.”

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 1d

"Having a knack for it" vs. "has practiced this repeatedly" - a reminder that expertise isn't magic, it's built through deliberate practice.

We call it "having a knack for it" when we should call it "has practiced this repeatedly.”

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The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 1d

Complexity doesn't announce itself—it reveals by multiplying questions and competing mental models. The group explored tools like reading the room, trusting your gut, and recognizing that chaos is subjective. Sometimes the hardest part is pausing to understand what problem you're actually facing.

How do we navigate shifting ground when our mental models stop working?

When questions raise more questions instead of answers, you've moved into complex territory. The group explored using clarifying questions, reading the room, trusting your gut, and recognizing that complexity lives in the eye of the beholder—what feels chaotic to you might be routine for someone else.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 2d

"Your job as the facilitator isn't to have an answer for them. It's to help them get to the answer.”

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 2d

When someone spots connections others miss, we assume they have a special gift. But breakthroughs emerge from learnable techniques applied consistently. The frameworks exist. The steps are knowable. What separates clarity from confusion is practice, not providence.

The ability to find patterns in chaos isn't magic—it's methodology you can learn.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 2d

You might meet… Facilitators who know the best explanations require a client to get in the head of their customer. What works, what doesn’t?

Facilitators who know the magic happens when people experience the problem for themselves and discover their own solutions.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 3d

What looks like gut instinct is often just pattern-matching you've practiced so many times it became automatic. When you pause and examine how you arrived at an insight, you'll usually find specific steps you can teach, replicate, and improve. The "magic" dissolves into method.

Pattern recognition feels like intuition until you slow down and realize it's actually a repeatable process.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 3d

Now reaching a human means navigating bot mazes only to hear "I'm the last person you can talk to" from someone who admits they're not actually empowered to help. Even longtime customers with legitimate issues hit walls designed to exhaust rather than resolve.

Customer service used to mean talking to humans who could actually help. Now it means battling bots to reach someone who'll tell you they're the last person you can talk to—and there's nobody above them.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 3d

AI research analysis skips nuance, overlooks key themes, and won't tell you what it ignored. You'll spend more time verifying its work than doing the analysis yourself—then end up redoing it anyway because there's no substitute for actually understanding what you heard.

AI can summarize your research—it just can't tell you which half it ignored or why it missed the actual insights.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 4d

Some people seem to naturally untangle complexity while others struggle. But that gap isn't about genetics—it's about repetition. The ability to find clarity in chaos is built through consistent practice, not inherited at birth. Anyone willing to do the work can develop it.

Sensemaking isn't a gift you're born with—it's a practice you commit to.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 4d

Making Sense of Content + Design, Mindfulness & Modeling, Making Sense of Research, Making Sense of Facilitation, and Independent Sensemakers all this week at The Sensemakers Club.

Our community knows that design and aesthetic aren’t exactly the same thing.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 5d

Sometimes we ask questions thinking we need the answer, but the real value lies in what the question itself reveals. The moment we pause to clarify what someone needs—advice versus simply being heard—we create space for truth to surface, regardless of what they say next.

The question 'do you want advice or just to vent?' often surfaces what someone needs before they realize it themselves. The act of asking does more work than the answer that follows.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 7d

Being in charge is about authority and control. Being of service is about support and empowerment. The most effective leaders understand that real power comes from helping others succeed, not from holding power over them.

The most powerful leaders know the difference between being in charge and being of service.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 7d

Making Sense of Content + Design, Mindfulness & Modeling, Making Sense of Research, Making Sense of Facilitation, and Independent Sensemakers all next week at The Sensemakers Club.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 7d

Overheard in Career Transitions

"Sometimes just trying to keep having hope and know that this is not going to be forever, even if it feels like it is. It's going to. Something will happen. If things always have in the past, they will now.”

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 8d

The view from the corner office shows spreadsheets and metrics. The view from ground level shows the human reality behind those numbers. Real leadership happens when you leave the executive suite to understand what's actually happening.

Real leadership means trading the corner office view for the ground-level truth.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 8d

"I think what struck me and is the the coffee chat with no agenda that for some reason made me feel so uncomfortable and why does that make me feel uncomfortable and I think it's probably because I have to justify time."

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 8d

Career change brings contradictory emotions—hope and cynicism, confidence and fear. The group explored how sitting with these opposing forces, rather than fighting them, can become a source of strength. Sometimes progress looks like basic self-care, not job applications.

How do we sit with opposing feelings during career transition—the hope that comes with each application paired with the cynicism of expecting to be ghosted?

Sometimes the smallest step forward isn't applying for jobs—it's making breakfast, taking a shower, or simply sitting with grief before taking the next breath.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 9d

The shift from interrogation to investigation changes everything. When leaders ask what their team needs instead of why something isn't finished, they move from blame to support—creating space for honest answers and real solutions.

True leadership that gets on the team's level asks "What do you need?" not "Why isn't this done?”

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 9d

You Might Meet… The people behind every well-organized system, someone who understands that good information design isn't just about technology— that it's about knowing how people actually think and search. They bridge the gap between messy human behavior and clean, findable solutions.

Knowledge organizers who turn chaos into systems and help others find what they're looking for.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 10d

Leadership isn't about climbing higher, it's about lifting others up. When leaders focus on elevating their teams above challenges instead of positioning themselves above people, they create environments where everyone can see solutions more clearly.

The best leaders don't elevate themselves above their teams; they elevate their teams above the problems.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 10d

You can build the most elegant design system in the world, but without cross-team collaboration and buy-in, it becomes expensive digital decoration. The best systems succeed because people want to use them, not because they have to.

Design systems fail when teams don't talk to each other.

The Sensemakers Club @thesensemakersclub.bsky.social · 10d

The hustle culture tells us to work harder, but breakthrough insights often require the opposite approach. When we create space for stillness and stop forcing solutions, our minds can make connections that all the grinding in the world can't produce.

We've convinced ourselves that 'doing the work' means grinding through details, but the real breakthrough happens when you stop efforting and start allowing - most innovation comes from strategic stillness, not strategic planning.