Retrospective Sense Making

Ch. 4, #2, pg. 115

In this chapter, Weick argues that "people act first and later examine their actions in an attempt to explain their meaning."

Inspired by the box 'Everyday Organizational Communication' on pg. 117, I have decided to make sense of my equivocal past and analyze retrospectively how I ended up on the career path I am now. Since my dad is an orthodontist and I excelled at science in high school, I though majoring in biology and becoming some kind of doctor was the path for me. Unfortunately, I am not the biggest lover of school as I feel constantly stressed out all the time so after a year of biology, physics, and chemistry classes at the community college, I decided it was not for me.

At this point I was feeling rather lost in what I wanted to do so I bought myself some time by finishing my lower division GE classes and ultimately decided on business since it was a pretty general major that I could do a lot from. From there I went to SJSU where I was planning to major in business but after I took a performance communication class just for fun, I was totally hooked on communication studies. Although I finally felt at ease with my major choice, I still had to decide where I wanted my career path to take me.

In high school I had looked into the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising but was deterred when I learned you got an A.A. instead of a B.A. However, upon further inspection four years later, I found that if I already had my Bachelor's from San Jose State, I could enroll in a professional designation program that would only take a year to complete and then I would be a graduate of one of the most prestigious fashion schools on the west coast!

Looking back on my decision to become a fashion merchandiser makes a lot of sense for me seeing as I spent most of childhood in the mall with my mom and sister. Fashion is something that has always appealed to me and now I'm working toward a career where I get to do something I love, but also get to employ the things I've learned in my communication and business classes.

Within the underlying of assumption that decision making is largely retrospective sense making, Weick also goes as far to say that "random decision-making processes may be superior to rational methods of decision making and planning." Although this seems pretty far out to me, I can see how random decision making in my history has led to me to a career path that I might now have been on if I had stuck to rational methods of decision making and planning. As far as organizations go, I think some random decision-making could be beneficial in the sense that it may lead them to take risks they wouldn't have otherwise taken that could lead to great success.