In summary, all seven of Weick’s properties of sensemaking were identified during the study. The importance of sensemaking is clearly apparent for project practitioners to develop understanding and practices in knowledge intensive environments.
Earlier it was stated that sensemaking commonly occurs when a flow of activity has been disrupted and brings upon a surprise (Cannon, 1999; Dougherty & Drumheller, 2006; Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010; Weick, 1995). It should, however, be noted that such surprises or unexpected events do not necessarily trigger sensemaking. The trigger is subjective upon various factors such as one’s experience, perceived impact and emotions in relation to individual, social or organisational identity, as well as personal or strategic objectives (Dougherty & Drumheller, 2006; Maitlis & Christianson, 2014; Maitlis et al., 2013).
Two prominent themes that were highlighted in reviewing the sensemaking process were learning and communications. The need to learn appeared in the forms of:
Learning from ‘error’ – the practice of moving members between teams across locations was ‘adjusted’ since ‘we were swapping them so fast…they weren’t learning anything!’ (#10). In another scenario, two support teams supporting the ‘same’ product were originally segregated according to global versus regional implementations. As conflict and knowledge disparity had arisen between the two teams an initiative was introduced
‘to break down the ‘wall’…to combine regional and global into one…as a true globalisation of the team, so now we do not have this struggle’ (#18).
Learning together with stakeholders (internal and external) – in order to provide a plausible solution to resolve a problem or produce a product. In working with external parties ‘they do not know much about <The bank> so we have to tell them how we work... so then together we’ll…make it work for <the bank>’ (#16).
In the provision of a service, it was also about understanding ‘…are their system provided perfect? Actually no, but I think it’s a continuous improvement’ (#20). Another respondent also described how she had to get two competitors to work together on the same project. ‘There was no way we could deliver without both the suppliers together…[and]… definitely needed both suppliers to cooperate together’ (#15).
From an internal aspect respondents spoke of ‘…getting everyone together in one room and to talk about what they want to see, or have in a product’ (#19). There was also the situation with a new project whereby the stakeholders ‘don’t really understand whether this is your problem or my problem, or whether we have a problem. Even we don’t know. So we want to flush this out’ (#9).
Learning from disparate pieces of information – in addition to working jointly with internal and external project stakeholders, there was the continuous need to obtain information from indirect sources to piece them together to arrive at a plausible solution.
This normally came from one’s personal contacts and conversations with other colleagues since ‘it’s just knowledge in the team…it’s just in our heads’ (#12). ‘Because I know the people I can just pick up the phone and say “Can you just do it for me?”’ (#6) Another respondent (#17) described how he used his prior knowledge, ‘gathered a lot of information that had already been drawn up…different individuals within the bank…then pulling something together…on what would be the best solution for Hong Kong.’
Knowledge intensive work environments are characterised by a variety of problems and solutions (Haas, 2006). For organisations taking a command and control approach, i.e. clearly stated goals, explicit rules and highly specific roles, for project teams this can result in disappointing outcomes (Ashmos & Nathan, 2002). Sensemaking around cues to explain and anticipate events and then to synthesise existing with newly identified knowledge is critical in prioritising issues and determining the most appropriate action (Haas, 2006; Klein et al., 2010).
Communication is one of the most important skills required of a project manager in order to promote positive project outcomes (Association for Project Management, 2006; Thamhain & Gemmill, 1974). The PMI (2013a, p. 287) simply defines project communications management as including ‘the processes that are required to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring and the ultimate disposition of project information.’ The PMI focuses more on the explicit communications such as the project plan, communications plan, and work performance reports.
The Association for Project Management (2006, p. 102) defines communication as ‘…the giving, receiving, processing and interpretation of information. Information can be conveyed verbally, non-verbally, actively, passively, formally, informally, consciously or unconsciously’ and states that the primary objective is ‘to gain a common understanding’. The APM focuses more on the softer aspects of communications advising that ‘[t]he project manager should recognise that…different audiences have different communication needs’ and highlights ‘[i]nformation that may be critical to the well-being of the project is often informally available before it is available through formal channels.’
This theme of information availability through informal channels was also prominent in this research and discussed earlier in section 2.3. Examples from the respondents are briefly summarised below.
Respondents spoke of the availability of explicit knowledge within the organisation through the intranet, formal documentation and project repositories. However, for various reasons, respondents had to revert to informal methods to obtain knowledge and make sense of the situation:
• Lack of project-closing governance – ‘It wasn’t documented, formally documented… It was a bit of… Just Flipping Do It!’ (#4);
• Lack of knowledge management culture – ‘It’s just in our heads. We don’t have anything documented!’ (#12);
• Lack of priority – ‘We all try to focus on the current deliverables, so what happens is your focus shifts from that documentation to these things’ (#5);
• Lack of requirements to deliver – ‘Lots of loopholes, or lots of gaps, so then we have difficulty in formulating our requirements’ (#7);
• Change in user requirements – ‘or even the users, they may change their minds. ‘Oh, actually, I want something else!’ (#12);
• Delivery of an innovative product – ‘It’s a continuous improvement… All these (feedback) we sum up’ (#20);
• Dynamic environment – ‘There is new stuff every day and you get exposed to bigger areas every day’ (#1);
• Team member transfer between projects – ‘People move within the organisation from different teams, so after every two years, you will see people moving to other…’ (#5).
Despite the above reasons for lack of documentation, the majority of respondents advised that this was not a major problem:
‘You have system experts who have been there for 30 years and they understand all aspects of it. So if you have any problems… go to them as well. So it depends, I think, knowledge is not a problem within <The Bank>.’ (#5)
In order to gain knowledge, they would either undertake a resource seeking approach to locate new useful contacts, or utilise social bricolage which is the reliance on one’s existing contacts (Baker et al., 2003).
Due to the lack of clarity in requirements as illustrated above, there is also the necessity to develop a shared understanding of the project outcome. This would require the clear communication and negotiation of individual and collective perceptions and expectations (McLeod et al., 2012).
As posited by (Weick, 1995) the seven interrelated properties of sensemaking should only serve as a guide since they ‘suggest what sensemaking is, how it works, and where it can fail’ (p. 18). Many fields of research have evolved since the seminal works of Weick. Further to the earlier coverage concerning the individual (Harris, 1994; Louis, 1980) and the social constructionist approach (Gephart, 1993; Mills et al., 2010) framed in a retrospective process (Weick, 1988, 1995), there is increasing interest in forward looking or prospective sensemaking (Colville et al., 2016; Gephart et al., 2010; Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2015; Stigliani & Ravasi, 2012).
This research recognises the abundance and differing approaches of sensemaking research and therefore supports the view taken by Maitlis and Christianson (2014, p. 108) that ‘we will understand more about sensemaking and what it enables in organizations if we study the same central process, albeit in different ways, with different actors, in a variety of contexts’ and therefore referred primarily to ‘classical’ sensemaking perspective (Weick, 1988, 1995).
Chapter 5 has presented the analysis of the data and the subsequent identification of the central phenomenon. Chapter 6 which follows provides further discussion on this phenomenon, highlights the contribution to knowledge, limitations of the study, and recommends areas for future research.