Sharing knowledge at a business level

8.3.1 Cincinnati

One of Cincinnati’s parent companies ensured that there was representation from various sectors within a centralized team to ensure that learning was pulled together from the various sectors. Cincinnati’s leader advised:

“…they are the centralized area which covers nuclear power, water, oil and gas and process within the same building. They’re pulling in the learning from all of them.”

Actively encouraging project discussions at this business level had provided individuals with ideas for technology that could be moved between sectors. Cincinnati had found that this was the best way of getting improvement in ideas over and above the individuals who may have been in one particular industry for twenty years. The centralized team then acted as consultant to the various sectors and Cincinnati’s leaders were expected to liaise with it to find out what new developments there were in the world and how they might be imported into its current service stream. It is interesting to note that Ribiero (2009) recommended the use of key knowledge teams for improving KM in construction organizations.

The centralized team also set knowledge exchange visits with a key learning purpose, such as a team from Cincinnati visiting one of another sector’s key projects to view how it was handling waste management, which included their leader, who commented:

“…they’ve been dealing with waste for fifty years at Sellafield. Granted, it’s radio-active. But if there’s anything we can pick up [we will].”

In addition, the central group issued information and ideas and visited service delivery points to exchange knowledge and help with ideas generation. Cincinnati extended this service to Pittsburgh by inviting it to attend knowledge exchange sessions. These sessions spawned ideas about how what was happening on one customer service stream can be augmented into another.

Cincinnati’s parent companies have offices in other European countries, which allowed it to glean learning from further afield and examine how things were being delivered within completely different cultures. Cincinnati’s leader was particularly impressed

with the different ways of thinking about problems which were demonstrated by these different cultures and vice versa. He stated:

“…you get invited to these cross-network things, so I’ll go to [country] and I’ll meet people from [construction industry sector] in [country]. Those things are quite good for, for learning…”

This type of learning might be the most valuable to Cincinnati as it allowed individuals to change their viewpoint on an issue and thereby come up with an improved solution compared to what it might have with ‘accepted’ thinking. It was clear from the way these inter-country knowledge exchanges were talked about that it was seen as an exciting source of thinking to the Cincinnati team. The team’s enthusiasm suggested an excellent alignment with the multi-cultural JV learning environment described by Berrell et al (2002).

In fact, Cincinnati had been noted by its parent companies as having some good learning which can be taken on board by its wider businesses. This approach was considered to be a good demonstrator of knowledge exchange between a JV and its parent companies. Such exchanges were meant to be one of the competitive advantages of entering into a JV in the first place. The focus group members felt that Cincinnati had been able to bring more learning to the table comparatively than other programmes of works run by its parent companies.

Cincinnati tried to ensure that knowledge was disseminated from its design review process. This was a gateway process whereby designs were reviewed before approval. This system, however, did fall down at the recirculation stage where some lessons had taken two years to circulate. A member of the focus group advised:

“…some of those lessons learned won't get published until two years after they've been learned, which is an issue.”

Cincinnati had found that the best way to overcome this problem was to have continuity of personnel and to ensure that they talked frequently. This failure did, however, suggest an underlying process problem. Gyampoh-Vidogah et al (2003) suggested that slow knowledge circulation in construction organizations was an IT and systems problem, which may be the case in Cincinnati as it was using a people solution to solve the issue.

Cincinnati had initiated the use of document controllers who acted as collators of information as that information arrived into the organization. Thus, when any information was needed, it was easy to approach the controllers with a request and obtain it. There was no such system before and some other contractors working for Pittsburgh still stored information on computer drives. The focus group was clear on their value to knowledge sharing, with one member commenting:

“…in six months time, I go to the doc controller and say "What came in from these people?" They'd give me a print out and show me and that's it.”

The use of document controllers was an example of a relatively simple change which had improved knowledge retention and availability. This change, however, did still require some explaining as to the benefits when it was proposed to Pittsburgh and the other contractors in Pittsburgh’s alliance.

8.3.2 Tennessee

Tennessee acknowledged that the default position for individuals within its organization was not one of wishing to share knowledge. Tennessee’s MD asserted:

“…we need to get employees actually motivated to want to share the knowledge. And it has to be said that is not the default position...”

What Tennessee tried to encourage was a culture of individuals understanding that they were part of something larger than simply the particular office in which they worked. Tennessee’s position and solution was in alignment with De Long & Fahey (2000) who noted the cultural aspect required to align individual knowledge with the organization.

Tennessee continuously looked into ways to motivate employees to make such wider knowledge exchange happen. It had started by ensuring that the central core of the company actively shared knowledge and that this approach was clear to other departments. This ‘lead’ was designed to start the other departments towards seeing the benefits and changing their cultures to follow suit. Such an approach suggested that culture change cannot be enforced; it can only occur through organizations, or in this case departments, wishing to change themselves and doing so voluntarily (following De Long & Fahey, 2000).

8.3.3 Indianapolis

Indianapolis was prepared to share certain ideas with other organizations which might normally be regarded as its competitors. Indianapolis’ team leader for the Miami commission postulated:

“…we as an organization, we don't have a problem with people giving competitors our idea.”

This sharing was particularly the case in the environment with Miami where it was expected that suppliers collaborate with ideas in order to improve the performance of the whole. Indianapolis, however, did make the point that there were some business sensitive ideas which the organization invested in and developed that it was naturally not willing to share. From its own perspective, Indianapolis tried to view the many ideas it generated in a Miami environment as ideas for the Miami contractors’ forum rather than for itself. Such knowledge exchange was viewed as a cultural approach within Indianapolis which helped set it apart from its peer group. Kumar &

Thondikulam (2006) noted that exchanging knowledge with ‘trading partners’ who in another arena might be competitors was a source of competitive advantage.

Indianapolis did seem to understand the power of sharing its ideas at an organizational level in terms of making things better for all within the organization. It pointed to its close knit customer orientated teams as being the best way to encourage knowledge sharing at this level. It had ‘communication days’ which doubled as team building events. The directors noted:

“…we are trying to do a bit more of the, like the relaxed informal day that we are having on Friday….”

The members of the focus group agreed that these were successful forums at which knowledge was shared across the business, with one commenting:

“…that was quite a successful day that we had earlier on in the year….”

Chua (2002) noted the particular usefulness of social interaction for knowledge creation and exchange within an organizational setting.

In addition, Indianapolis held regular open forums and workshops to enable all team members to bring ideas back from their various sites to distribute them amongst the team. The idea here was to give people opportunities to contribute problems and

opportunities in small incremental sessions rather than try to bring all their learning from a particular site in one go. The other intention of these forums was to maintain the team spirit.

The focus group admitted that trying to keep teams of 200 communicating and working as a team was difficult and described communication as:

“…email based and obviously we talk to each other on the phones and stuff and you know, [Miami team leader] gets round and visits people and spends a lot of time out on the sites and stuff. But it is quite hard because you are so split up …”

Keeping a team of 30 working as a unit was easier, so this was why Indianapolis concentrated learning and communication on this customer team level in order to support the whole. Roberts (2000), however, questions the ability of ICT supported knowledge exchange to replace human interaction adequately, particularly for tacit knowledge exchange. This dichotomy suggested that Indianapolis was not as efficient at knowledge exchange as it believed.

In addition, Indianapolis did have an accepted ‘reflection’ time within the year. There was a four month period, usually during the winter, where its workload was lower than the rest of the year (due to its heavy retail based focus). It used this time to think about how it had performed and how it could perform better when the work picked back up. Goddard (2001) noted the importance of reflection time within the organization for improving performance. Indianapolis directors clarified its approach, with one stating:

“…we do all the systems, all the things that we should be doing. Think about the jobs, how we've done, how we're doing better, so it's a real sort of time for reflection…”

Clearly knowledge exchange during busy periods was very difficult for Indianapolis and reflection time was an important tool.

8.3.4 Chicago

For its Minnesota works, Chicago had a handbook which set out the service provision, how to deal with any landlord issues, the Minnesota team and the supply chain. The directors stated:

“…we have put together a handbook, and it basically sets out what is expected of us by Minnesota…”

Further, the handbook set out the process from Minnesota’s inception of the project to the end of the warranty support period. Minnesota assisted in the development of this handbook, suggesting a good alignment with customer needs. In addition, Chicago had the occasional ‘learn and share’ sessions to which it invited all its project managers to carry out a post mortem on key projects.

8.3.5 Dallas

Dallas regularly attended learning sessions set up by Washington where it presented to its peer group and viewed presentations from its peer group, again aligning with Kumar & Thondikulam (2006). These presentations were on a specific area of learning which each organization had discovered and considered of interest to the group. In addition, Dallas suggested that due to its size and diversity of skills, it finds it relatively easy to pool resources when looking for solutions. However, in knowledge exchange, Dallas admitted to being more reactive than proactive.

Dallas made the point that as much of its knowledge was made explicit as possible as if knowledge was only held tacitly then this led to problems on projects. Dallas MD advised:

“…explicit is very very important to us. …the management team on a building site need to have very explicit direction and they need to then be very good at communicating that explicit information in a very explicit manner, because we end up with the wrong product at the end of the day if we don’t do that.

So, to a degree, we try very very hard to not have any tacit knowledge because that leads to an uncertain outcome and that can be very dangerous to us.”

Stenmark (2001) noted the wider problems organizations encounter with leveraging tacit knowledge, such as lack of awareness and unwillingness for the individual to share.

The focus group was less aware of these knowledge exchange processes. Some participants stated that the recent drop off in Washington work had given some of the team the opportunity to learn about the different processes used in working with Dallas’ different customers. The focus group concentrated more upon the individual

knowledge exchange within the Washington delivery team which was based upon a mentoring system. In addition, it discussed the twice yearly ‘knowledge exchange’

day and e-mails from the directors as the main sources of organizational knowledge exchange. One member commented:

“…you will get some sort of communication because every month we have an internal review meeting where [the directors] will come down and review every aspect of the job…”

The difference in opinion on learning between the management and the focus group suggested a disconnect between what Dallas management intended to happen on the learning front and what actually occurred within the organization, which should not occur in an LO (Senge et al; 1990, 1994).

8.3.6 Kansas

Kansas used a similarly informal knowledge exchange system to Dallas with the directors meeting on a Monday morning to carry out knowledge exchange and then the learning was disseminated though each director’s team. Moreover, there was a quarterly newsletter circulated which informed the group about what was happening around the group. It was unclear whether there was any true knowledge which can improve business performance exchanged through these two routes or whether it was simply news and information being exchanged.

At a site level, there did appear to be knowledge exchange which happens when the site foremen come together, as noted by the focus group:

“They have weekly meetings between the Site Foremen that are there or the Contracts Managers. To see if there’s anything on each of the individual projects that might be able to help the other person when they come to do something similar.”

In addition, at the end of each construction project, each foreman offered up unused materials to the others to avoid unnecessary transport back to stores and then those materials potentially remaining unclaimed for months. Formal knowledge exchange was, however, not seen as overly necessary on the Oakland commission due to the repetitive nature of the work. Gieskes & Broeke (2000) noted that learning is more difficult in a non-repetitive climate and therefore Kansas’ position may not be viewed

as complacency, but simply that it felt knowledge exchange was part of the day-to-day role.