The Sensemaker’s Guide to Return on Investment

The difference between good sensemaking and great sensemaking isn’t just about having the right answer. It’s about understanding what return you’re getting from the time, energy, and resources you put into making sense of complex problems.

This article covers:

What is Return on Investment in Sensemaking?

Return on Investment (ROI) in sensemaking is the measurable value you get back from the time and resources you put into it.

Unlike traditional ROI calculations that focus purely on money, sensemaking ROI includes things like reduced confusion, faster decision-making, better team alignment, and fewer costly mistakes down the road.

Think of it this way: every hour you spend creating clear frameworks, consistent language, and logical structures either pays dividends later or it doesn’t. The question is whether you’re tracking which investments actually work. If you can’t figure out what was better when you were done, you might have made things worse.

Reasons to Focus on a Return on Investment

You’re drowning in requests for your opinion. When everyone sees you as the person with answers, demand can quickly outpace your ability to give thoughtful responses. Focusing on ROI helps you prioritize which sensemaking work will have the biggest impact.

Your past decisions are creating problems. Quick decisions made without considering the whole system can add up to a confusing mess. ROI thinking forces you to consider long-term consequences, not just immediate solutions.

You need to justify sensemaking work to others. Stakeholders often see sensemaking as “soft” work that’s hard to measure. Having clear ROI helps you make the case for investing in better structures and processes.

You want to prevent burnout. Constantly being the go-to person for answers is exhausting. Strategic thinking about ROI helps you build systems that reduce the need for your constant input.

Your organization is scaling. What works with 10 people breaks down with 100. ROI-focused sensemaking creates scalable foundations instead of person-dependent solutions.

Common Use Cases for Return on Investment

Based on patterns I’ve seen across organizations, these are the areas where ROI questions come up most often. Each can create huge value when done well, or quietly drain resources when overdone, misplaced, or misaligned with goals.

Naming and Language Consistency

Shared language can clarify work, build trust, and prevent costly confusion, but teams can also lose months debating names that never reach users. The return depends on knowing when “good enough” is good enough.

Information Organization

Organizing information helps teams find, reuse, and act faster, until the structure itself becomes a maze. Over-modeling or premature taxonomy work can slow things down as much as chaos does.

Process Documentation

Documenting reality saves time and reduces errors. Unless it turns into performative paperwork. The return shows up when documentation reflects living systems, not when it becomes a graveyard of outdated steps.

Framework Creation

Frameworks can accelerate alignment and decision-making or paralyze teams if they’re treated as gospel. The best ones evolve with context; the worst ones outlive the problem they were meant to solve.

Types of Return on Investment

As you start to work through defining the expected return on your next investment, here are a few types of returns that I have seen repeatedly working on information architectures in all sorts of contexts.

Time Savings

When structures, language, and processes are clear, people spend less time searching, aligning, and repeating work. These savings can compound over time as the organization gains efficiency in how it learns and decides.

Cost Reduction

Cost-based returns emerge when better understanding prevents expensive mistakes. Clearer systems reduce duplication, unnecessary complexity, and the need for manual intervention. The fewer surprises and do-overs there are, the more sustainable the organization’s operations become.

Capability Building

Capability-based returns come from improving the organization’s capacity to handle complexity. Each time a framework, model, or shared practice is created, the team becomes more adaptable and independent. These returns grow slowly but can provide lasting resilience.

Risk Mitigation

Risk-based returns show up as fewer crises and less uncertainty. When roles, processes, and information are well-structured, the organization becomes better at preventing problems and faster at recovering when they happen.

Profit Growth

Profit-based returns are the most visible to leadership and investors. They result when time, cost, quality, capability, and risk improvements combine to create more capacity for innovation, stronger customer relationships, and higher margins. Profit is often the byproduct of better sensemaking across the system, not just the goal itself.

Reputation and Perception

Reputation-based returns come from being understood and trusted. When an organization communicates clearly, acts consistently, and delivers on its promises, public perception improves. This strengthens relationships with customers, employees, and partners, creating a lasting form of goodwill that can’t easily be bought or rebuilt once lost.

Approaches to Return on Investment

There’s no single way to approach sensemaking ROI, but here are some things I would recommend:

The Pilot Project Approach Pick one small, messy area and invest in making sense of it. Measure before and after. Use those results to make the case for broader investment. This works well when you need to prove value before getting resources.

The Pain Point Method Start with the most expensive confusion in your organization. What’s causing the most rework, delays, or frustration? Target your sensemaking efforts there first. The ROI is often immediately visible.

The Systems Thinking Strategy Map out how your current sensemaking decisions connect to each other. Look for places where better structure in one area could improve multiple other areas. This strategy works well when you are able to have a high level view of a broad structural issue.

The User Journey Focus Follow a specific path from start to finish and note every point where confusion slows things down. Then develop solutions that smooth the most friction-heavy parts of the journey.

Tips for Getting Started with Return on Investment

Start with “How will we know if this works?”
Before diving into any sensemaking project, get specific about what success looks like. Will it save time? Reduce errors? Improve satisfaction? Make sure you can actually measure whatever you choose.

Track your current state
You can’t measure improvement without knowing where you started. Document how long things currently take, what mistakes happen regularly, and where people get confused most often.

Pick battles you can win
Your first ROI-focused project should be something where you can show clear results quickly. Success builds credibility for bigger investments later.

Get friendly with data people
The people who manage your organization’s data know where the measurement gold is buried. They can also tell you what’s actually possible to track versus what sounds good in theory.

Document your process, not just your outcomes
Future you (and your teammates) will want to know how you got your results, not just what they were. This makes your sensemaking ROI repeatable and teachable.

Expect resistance to structure
People often resist new frameworks or processes, even when they’ll ultimately help. Plan for this resistance and have a strategy for getting buy-in.

Ask “What Keeps You Up at Night About This?”
This question disarms stakeholders enough to tell you the truth about what’s really at stake in your work. In my experience time and time again, this has been the question that unlocks the problem set.

Return on Investment Hot Takes

Most sensemaking work has terrible ROI because it’s reactive instead of strategic. Answering individual questions as they come up feels productive, but building systems that prevent those questions has much better returns.

The best sensemaking ROI comes from reducing your own workload. If your sensemaking work doesn’t eventually make you less necessary for day-to-day decisions, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Perfect frameworks have worse ROI than good-enough frameworks that people actually use. Don’t let the pursuit of the ideal prevent you from implementing something that works.

Teaching others to think like sensemakers has better long-term ROI than doing all the sensemaking yourself. Your goal should be to work yourself out of being the bottleneck.

The highest ROI sensemaking work often looks boring. Consistent naming conventions and clear documentation aren’t sexy, but they pay dividends for years.

Return on Investment Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I measure ROI when the benefits are mostly qualitative?
A: Look for proxy metrics. If something “improves clarity,” that might show up as reduced email back-and-forth, fewer revision cycles, or higher confidence scores in surveys. The key is finding measurable outcomes that connect to your qualitative goals.

Q: What if I can’t get data on current performance?
A: Start tracking now, even if it’s imperfect. You can estimate baselines through surveys, time-tracking exercises, or small observational studies. Having rough numbers is better than having no numbers.

Q: How long should I wait to measure ROI?
A: It depends on what you’re measuring. Time savings might be visible within weeks, while culture changes could take months. Set both short-term and long-term measurement points.

Q: What if my sensemaking investment doesn’t show positive ROI?
A: Learn from it. Understanding what doesn’t work is valuable data for future investments. Also consider whether you’re measuring the right things or if the benefits are showing up somewhere unexpected.

Q: Should I focus on easy wins or big transformations?
A: Start with easy wins to build credibility and learn your measurement process. Once you’ve proven your approach, you can tackle bigger challenges with more confidence and support.

Q: How do I balance ROI thinking with intuitive sensemaking?
A: Good sensemaking combines both. Use your intuition to identify opportunities and design solutions, then use ROI thinking to prioritize investments and measure success. They’re complementary, not competing approaches.

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Understanding the return on investment in your sensemaking work isn’t just about justifying your time—it’s about making sure your efforts actually create the clarity and understanding your organization needs. By thinking strategically about which confusion to tackle first and how to measure your impact, you can transform from someone who gives good answers to someone who builds systems that help everyone find their own answers.

The goal isn’t to turn sensemaking into a purely numbers-driven practice, but to make sure your ability to create clarity is focused where it can do the most good.

If you want to learn more about my approach to strategic sensemaking, consider attending my workshop on 10/25/25 from 12 PM to 2 PM ET. A Return on Investment Matters: Building a Business Case for IA – this workshop is free to premium members of the Sensemakers Club along with a new workshop each month.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for our focus area in November – Collaboration in IA