There is a significant body of work highlighting the vital contribution of middle management sensemaking during strategic change. However, the cognitive, discursive and interpretive processes involved are difficult to research, and even harder to translate into clear concepts which can be applied to management practice. Informed by the perspective that the complex and dynamic work of strategizing can be simplified, this paper seeks to make the process of middle management sensemaking more visible for organisations. Using an inductive, multiple case study approach of middle managers trying to make sense of strategic change over a period of 12 weeks, the diaries employed in this study bring to the surface the practices in which organisations engage that can either enable or constrain the role of the middle manager as sensemaker. In so doing, we conclude that sensemaking can indeed be made visible in organisations. When it is visible it is seen as a vital organisational capability. However, there is also significant evidence that, for some organisations, middle manager sensemaking is neither visible nor valued. In these cases, it continues below the surface of the organisation without adding any sustainable value to the strategic change process.