Knowledge Application Processes

Knowledge application processes relate to the actual use of the knowledge and the mechanisms to support its effective storage and retrieval. It also concerns the sharing of knowledge and expertise in order to promote competitive advantage (Gold et al., 2001).

The earlier examples illustrated many of the knowledge repositories that exist within the organisation such as shared networked drives and the intranet. There were mixed opinions on how effective the current processes were, with several respondents describing improvements they had implemented.

Respondent #10 mentioned that

‘In terms of knowledge retention, I think the bank has the tools in place, for example, we have a very strong collaboration tool, which is SharePoint. I don’t

think it’s utilised as much as it should be. People think SharePoint is just a document storing tool. It’s actually very much more than that! You can have, actually which I do with my teams, we have created our own Blog…’

Another respondent (#14) described how one of their earlier departments was using a formal project methodology based on Six Sigma processes to run their projects. No major issues were highlighted but the respondent tells:

‘It was optional for me to use it. I have used it before, but I think adding my own flavour, additional items, helped… I work on so many projects; I can see the different styles and methodologies, at different projects… So I always pinch the best of…things from theirs and create my own best of breed.’

Respondent #5 described how when they first joined the bank ‘…things were not streamlined’. Using a combination of knowledge obtained through their previous consultancy work and the knowledge of the organisational domain ‘experts’, the processes were refined to enable ‘a single version in all those project management things… (and) …have single source of document’.

Such combination of knowledge was also integrated externally as described by respondent #16 in the development of a sales solution product:

‘We actually developed this system from scratch…it was something new to me…so we have to find out a lot of information for ourselves from Internet, reading manuals and, yes, just talking to different people, and especially the consultant has given us a lot of guidance and help in this area…We learn a lot through the process. The engagement with the different teams, direct engagement with the business...we learn from them, and they learn from us as well.’

The importance of networking was also emphasised by respondents.

‘The networking is really important, if you want to obtain knowledge. Some people will not have formal way to communicate. I think there is still room for improvement for a formal way of centralising knowledge. Make sure it’s cascaded down to the next project or …It seems contained within people. You may need to connect people to ask for help, to share.’ (#9)

Respondents also spoke of various aspects regarding documentation with both positive and negative experiences. There were difficulties in locating and interpreting documentation due to non-standard filing conventions and templates. Conversely some respondents believed there was sufficient documentation available, but lack of time to review it all.

Lack of documentation was highlighted by some respondents. However it has been acknowledged in the literature that knowledge transfer from past projects is a widespread issue which incurs numerous issues (Hanisch et al., 2009; Todorović et al., 2015).

Recognising that learning from projects provides potentially valuable experiences which can be applied to future projects or generate new knowledge (Bartsch et al., 2013), there are many challenges, e.g. emphasis on meeting deadlines, dissolution of the project team, which normally limit resources to reflect on previous assignments (Grabher, 2004; Hobday, 2000). Even if documentation has been retained there may be an issue whereby the format is inconsistent, or may not be suitable for the required project (Todorović et al., 2015).

Emotions (Inherent in the Role) 5.3.6.

The review of bricolage as a central phenomenon has taken into account the internal and external environment scenarios which may lead to this activity. Emotions and feelings are fundamental and indispensable in the process of reasoning and decision making (Damasio, 2003) and hence we also take into consideration the role of emotions and influence on bricolage.

As personal experience is accumulated, varied categories of social situation are formed. The knowledge we store regarding those life experiences includes: 1. The facts of the problem presented;

2. The option chosen to solve it;

3. The factual outcome to the solution, and, importantly, 4. The outcome of the solution in terms of emotion and feeling.

As there is much discussion on emotional forms, the author takes a ‘basic’ approach as posited by Izard (2011) whereby ‘positive and negative experiences…are arbitrary in that any emotion might motivate adaptive or maladaptive cognition and action’ (p. 371).

Sensemaking is linked to emotions and past experiences. It is commonly recognised that sensemaking occurs when a flow of activity has been disrupted and brings upon a surprise (Cannon, 1999; Dougherty & Drumheller, 2006; Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010; Weick, 1995). Canon’s (1999, p. 416) study of failure experiences identified that ‘[p]eople’s memories of negative outcomes were found to trigger strong emotions, affecting sense- making and distorting reasoning’.

The reality of flows becomes most apparent when that flow is interrupted. An interruption to a flow typically induces an emotional response, which then paves the way for emotion to influence sensemaking. It is precisely because ongoing flows are subject to interruption that sensemaking is infused with feeling.

(Weick, 1995, p. 45)

From a negative perspective, this concerns ‘pain points’, or descriptions from respondents which may include emotions such as frustration, anger or sadness.

One of the main causes of frustration came from a lack of PM understanding from a stakeholder perspective. As an example, respondent #12 talked about

‘…my previous boss. She’s not a very, how do you say, not really a project management person. She wouldn’t distinguish the different phases of a project so clearly; <laugh-mild> and doesn’t have a timeline of how each of the different phases is going to be carried out. So we don’t really have a clear idea of where we are. But we know there are a lot of tasks! Like, it’s more like firefighting all the time…we don’t have an idea what’s going to happen next, and how we’re going to drive it. So I think it also depends on the manager.’

Respondent #14 told how sometimes stakeholders enforced projects on them with impractical deadlines:

‘…some guys will come up to you, project managers, and just say ‘implement this! Next week!’ Without having any consideration…So those are the projects I’m not keen on. Those are the projects that generally fail; those are the projects that generally need a lot of tidy up and rework later on.’

Another issue concerned the project requirements. Respondent #12 described how

‘…when we gather the requirements from the user, the user may not be able to commit when they can confirm the requirements… And then implementation will just go to slip. And when it slips, it cuts into the UAT [user acceptance test] or testing period…or they may not be able to test everything completely before they provided the sign off…And then when things went live, user finds there are problems, and everything falls into day 2, or BAU [business as usual] issues.’

Another cause of frustration was lack of support. Some examples were provided earlier, and this could involve other departments, own team or own managers. With regards to one’s own team this was mainly due to lack of resources at the time or project phase when the respondent joined the team, e.g. close to a delivery deadline.

Frustration due to other departments could be caused because they did not want to be involved, or possibly because it appeared they were trying to cover a flaw in their processes, or a lack of knowledge which may have been expected of them. There were also several examples whereby lack of support was due to the head office directive or organisational restructuring which caused a lack or loss of knowledge:

‘…from GLTi perspective, they structure themselves as regional and global. So …it’s been quite difficult for us now because sometimes a complicated project we have to engage more expertise, which is from Global. And then our direction is still to give the priorities of the work to the regional GLTi. So we struggle and sometimes we also compare the costs between these two teams, and choose the best team, so it’s a lot of overhead, a lot of struggling.’ (#18)

‘That funding thing took me a short amount of time…a project manager left, and I was given their project.’ (#17)

Another theme of frustration was due to the availability of appropriate tools. Respondent #2 described when

‘…they were trying to stop us using MS Project to write, run this project, and they tried to force us to use Clarity…there was a lot of people crying out on how difficult it is to use Clarity, don’t know how to use it even though they had learned it…is so slow, and it’s not standardised.’

Concerned stakeholders also refused to use the tool which was ‘mandated’:

‘Even though we give them logins, they say: What’s the point? I’m a business owner, I’m a trader, I don’t care! All I want to do is tell you my problem and that’s it!…I don’t need to use it…It’s not benefitting me!’

Despite there being many examples of frustration, difficulties or challenges which have been portrayed by the respondents, many view it as part and parcel of the role.

Respondent #12 highlighted:

‘It can be business PM or IT PM, they’re really helping to fight over the problem, and help everything to restore in line…sometimes when there are problems coming up, it can be…it can be a show stopper, but if you can demonstrate the skills to turn around and put everything back on track, that would be something like, yes, that would be something that would be considered as a bonus point. But of course the problems shouldn’t be caused by you? Right! <laugh>’

Resources 5.3.7.

A resource may be regarded as ‘anything which could be thought of as a strength or weakness of a given firm…[and]…at a given time could be defined as those (tangible and intangible) assets which are tied semi-permanently to the firm’ (Wernerfelt, 1984, p. 172). It may include ‘all assets, capabilities, organizational processes, firm attributes, information, knowledge, etc. controlled by a firm that enable the firm to conceive of and implement strategies that improve its efficiency and effectiveness’ (Barney, 1991, p. 101).

Lévi-Strauss (1966, p. 17) describes the bricoleur as a ‘[j]ack of all trades or a kind of professional do-it-yourself man’, that acts on his ‘stock’ of material and immaterial resource elements collected independently of any particular project with the central

principle that they may be useful at any point in time. Freeman (2007, p. 486) describes the bricoleur as someone who ‘acquires and assembles tools and materials as he or she goes, keeping them until they might be used…open for manipulation for whatever purpose is at hand’.

As originally presented by Lévi-Strauss (1966) not much definition is provided with respect to what constitutes resources except to state ‘[h]is universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with “whatever is at hand”… the remains of previous constructions or destructions’ (p. 17). Subsequently, Baker and Nelson (2005, p. 336) define the resources at hand as those ‘that are available very cheaply or for free, often because others judge them to be useless or substandard’.

With regards to the bricolage concept, the resource dimensions of materials, labour and skills are presented by Baker et al. (2003); Baker and Nelson (2005); Desa (2012). This is outlined below with some examples:

• Materials – technology, machinery, hardware and software, presumed ‘single- application’ with new use;

• Labour – employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, volunteers, friends and family;

• Skills – knowledge of efficient processes or new technologies, self-taught skills.

With respect to the organisation, respondents spoke of a variety of ‘cheap or free’ resources they had utilised in the delivery of their projects. Some examples are provided below.

Material resources include software which may be presumed to be ‘single-application’:

• ‘I’ve managed to create my own project management tools, using Excel’ (#10); • ‘Because we don’t want to use, spend any more money on buying…we found

something called PerfectForm (#6);

• ‘Tools wise, we usually follow the bank’s practices…and sometimes we also develop it ourselves’ (#9).

Labour resources include acquiring or working with other parties in order to gain ‘free’ resources:

• Respondent #3 learnt about PM by ‘partnering with IT’ and gained resources working with the vendor in order to obtain a ‘demo site’ and attend ‘some free courses’;

• Respondent #1 obtained access to ‘two [project management] tools that was mainly provided by third party, not by the bank… they own the license and they give us access’;

• Respondent #6 utilised the knowledge of ‘an ex-IT auditor working for me, an ex- IT person. So it’s a perfect combination’;

• Respondent #20 spoke of working with a vendor because ‘they are eager to work, make a contract with our bank, so that means they are quite helpful and deliver the knowledge’.

Skills resources include self-taught skills:

• ‘I learned my project management without any frameworks... and then I think I’m pretty good at delivering projects on time’ (#8);

• ‘I work on so many projects; I can see the different styles and methodologies, at different projects… So I always pinch the best of…things from theirs and create my own best of breed’ (#14);

• ‘Twenty years in projects…I’ve not gone for any formal training in projects. It’s all through experience’ (#11).

Many of the respondents described multiple incidents of utilising bricolage resources. For example respondent #16 described how she ‘just learn on the job’ and how they worked with the vendor ‘although we have not implemented this system, they do have some ideas’.

This example illustrates how some of the respondent undertook bricolage activities individually, or collaboratively with other parties – internal or externally.

The author regards the above resource dimensions of materials, labour and skills as being limiting and does not attempt to fit all bricolage activities under such categorisation. Further examples follow throughout this paper and are later discussed.

Sensemaking 5.3.8.

During the conversations and interviews, respondents spoke of ‘the lack of communication, or clarity’ (#12) and the need ‘to understand the situation… one has to get their hands dirty’ (#15). There were also themes concerning stakeholders where ‘everyone’s still learning and understanding there are issues’ (#9), and the need ‘to understand what people do, and what people understand, don’t understand’ (#21).

These themes highlight some of the attempts by respondents to combine their experiences with information from the field in order to ‘make sense of an uncertain situation that initially makes no sense’ (Weick, 1995, p. 9) and to understand novel, unexpected or confusing scenarios (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014). This process of social construction (Berger & Luckmann, 1967) by which people notice, attempt to interpret and explain meaningful stimuli from their environment is known as sensemaking (Maitlis, 2005; Weick, 1979).

5.3.8.1. Introduction

Sensemaking can be defined as ‘the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing’ (Weick, 2005, p. 397) and has been depicted in terms of the individual, group and organisational level (Harris, 1994; Louis, 1980; Weick, 1993, 1995). This segregation of levels has been opposed by many (Brown et al., 2015; Dervin, 2003; Drazin et al., 1999; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991) where Dervin (2003, p. 139) posits that there is complex interaction between the levels where there would be an ‘impossibility of separating them’.

Sensemaking concerns the processes by which individuals and organisations continuously interact with their environment and seek to understand the ambiguous, equivocal or confusing issues or events which they find themselves affected by (Brown et al., 2015; Mills et al., 2010; Weick, 1995).

These sensemaking processes can generally be described as encompassing the elements of: 1) scanning – for information gathering; 2) interpreting – entailing matching

information for structure and understanding; and 3) action – based on the scanning strategy and interpretation (Daft & Weick, 1984; Thomas et al., 1993; Weber & Glynn, 2006).

In normal, everyday situations individuals are guided by scripts, i.e. ‘a coherent sequence of events expected by the individual’ (Abelson, 1976, p. 33) which ‘provide the individual with predictions of event sequences and outcomes’ (Louis, 1980, p. 240). When the script does not appear to match the situation and the reason for the outcome, the sensemaking process is activated to identify a retrospective explanation and creates insights to determine a knowledge-based course of action (Louis, 1980; Shariq, 1998).

Sensemaking provides a ‘framework for explaining observed reality, and for determining saliency and appropriateness’ (Choo, 2001, p. 200). Its central focus is the ongoing construction of reality and consequences through the influence of seven interrelated properties (Mills et al., 2010; Weick, 1995). These properties which act as ‘sensitizing concepts’ (Blumer, 1954, p. 7) as outlined by Weick (1995, p. 17) are: 1) grounded in identity construction; 2) retrospective; 3) enactive of sensible environments; 4) social; 5) ongoing; 6) focused on and by extracted cues; and 7) driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. These properties and how they relate to the research will be covered in more detail later in this chapter. Prior to that we discuss how sensemaking is regarded with respect to the practice of project professionals.