Sensemaking as the Heart of Expertise - Commoncog

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A few weeks ago I wrapped up a short series on sensemaking. The explicit goal of that series was to give you better methods to make sense of a potentially disruptive new technology — which at the time of publication (and probably for a few more years yet) will be about AI. But the series was about sensemaking in general, and the ideas we explored together are applicable whenever you have to make sense of new developments in investing or business. This means that the methods may be adapted to make sense of politics, or social change, or — god forbid — war.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://commoncog.com/sensemaking-heart-of-expertise/
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Btw, if you want a concrete example of how this feedback might look like in a military context, there’s a brilliant anecdote from @Latham_Turner here:

https://substack.com/@lathamturner/note/c-250572755

All Navy aircraft train at NAS Fallon — where Top Gun really is. For months we train every mission. The whole air wing in the air at once. 20 to 30 aircraft, each flying its piece of the plan. Usually a strike package going in-country to hit a target and come home. Simulated enemy aircraft. Real bombs.

The real training is the debrief. Every pilot who flew, in one room, for three hours. Sometimes until 1 AM. Often times over a beer or two.

There’s a giant screen showing every airplane and missile in the sky. The replay runs minute by minute.

“Stop frame. Eagle 13, what was the call you made here? What did you see?”

The pilot stands up in front of everybody and repeats the call. Even if it was wrong. Even if it got a plane killed. He says what he saw. Then the weapons tactic instructor walks through what he saw. No judgment, just the expert explaining what he was looking at.

It’s brutal. Every mistake, every missed recognition, every bomb dropped is critiqued in front of all your best friends.

But this is what learning from expertise actually requires.

State what you saw. See the outcome. See what an expert saw that you missed. Update your model.

I’m looking for ways to teach this to my kids. It’s applicable to investing, business, art, music, science. Our education system offers no opportunities to learn it.

Which seems like a miss.

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Great training technique. Very NDM

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Thanks for the shout out. I think it was the best training I’ve ever had (and that includes SERE school, which is it’s own kind of training). I assume that training style was probably learned from some of the NDM literature Jared. I don’t think Naval Aviation built that on its own.

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