Notice and Reflect · 20–25 min planning
Facilitator Pathway and Session Planner
Select a coherent sequence of tools based on the group’s purpose, available time, evidence, participation needs, and intended decision.
Resource Hub
Sensemaking Toolkit: Getting Started
This toolkit offers faculty, staff, and campus partners practical ways to understand complex challenges, work across roles and perspectives, develop ideas, and learn through small-scale action. Begin with the pathway that best fits the work in front of you.
Getting started
Choose a pathway.
Select the pathway closest to your current work to see its suggested sequence.
The seven-phase journey
Use the phases as flexible orientation.
Evidence, feedback, or changing conditions may send a team back to an earlier phase.
- 1Notice and ReflectGround and notice
What are we noticing, and what will support honest participation?
- 2UnderstandUnderstand the system
Whose experience, knowledge, and evidence must shape our understanding?
- 3FrameFrame the challenge
What condition and desired change can we describe while keeping several responses possible?
- 4Generate IdeasGenerate possibilities
What different responses might address the framed challenge?
- 5PrototypeDesign a test
What is the smallest responsible action that will help us learn?
- 6Test and IterateLearn and revise
What happened, what changed, and what must be reconsidered?
- 7Implement and EvaluateImplement and sustain
What support, ownership, evidence, and adaptation will continued work require?
Common starting points
Six tools that help teams begin or regain direction.
Use the full Tools and Activities collection when you need a different phase, output, or facilitation format.
Notice and Reflect · 40–45 min; 10–15 min revisit
Community Agreement and Participation Design Kit
Design the access conditions, shared commitments, participation choices, facilitation roles, and repair practices that support meaningful collective work.
Understand · 30–35 min
Power, Knowledge, and Influence Map
Map strategic authority, tactical influence, lived and experiential knowledge, implementation knowledge, coordination responsibility, and exposure to consequences before planning engagement.
Frame · 25–30 min first pass; revisit after inquiry
Focusing Statement and HMW Reframer
Move from a broad concern to an evidence-grounded, bounded, and revisable How Might We question without prematurely selecting a solution.
Prototype · 30–35 min planning; test and review separately
Prototype Learning Canvas
Make an idea concrete enough to test one important assumption, gather useful feedback, and choose an evidence-linked next move without treating the prototype as a finished solution.
- Tool
- Prototype · Try · Test & Iterate
- Test assumptions
- Gather feedback
- Learn through action
- Take Action to Learn
- Embrace Complexity
- Build Relational Trust
Understand · 30–35 min
Evidence-to-Decision Canvas
Synthesize direct inquiry, observations, records, research, and prototype feedback across affected people and relevant roles into a transparent, proportionate next decision.
Ready to go deeper?
Search the full evidence-aware resource collection.
Combine process stage, Collaboratory relationship, evidence or knowledge type, and format. The initial view places the closest Collaboratory relationships first.