Wessex Event 17/07/2015 - On becoming a 'Bricoleur

Title: Bricolage or Making Best Use of Available Methodologies Topic: Developing professionals for the 21st century

Dr Ian Cammack

i.j.cammack@soton.ac.uk

Objectives: • To disseminate doctoral research project on ‘Becoming a

Project Manager’.

• To share ideas about practice development for early career practitioners.

• To offer an invitation for dialogue about developments on both sides of the “border”.

A Personal Journey

Complicated Systems Complex Systems

A job well done?

44% of humanities & social science students felt their course represented good value. BBC 22nd June 2015

Bloom’s Taxonomy

http://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-taxonomy/

• A man may well learn to talk about taking action simply by talking about taking action (as in classes at a business school) but to learn to take action (as something distinct from learning to talk about taking action) then he needs to take action (rather than to talk about taking action) and to see the effect, not of talking about taking action (at which he may appear competent) but of taking the action itself (at which he may fall somewhat short of competent).

(Revans 1971 pp. 54-5 original emphasis).

Becoming a Project Manager

Firefly moments

The world of practice

• What were your fire-fly moments as you entered the profession?

– Critical moments that defined your practice +ve / -ve

– Key conversations +ve / -ve

– Reflections & sense making +ve / -ve

• Capture & summarise (patterns / common themes etc. ) these to share

APM Bok v.6

Stage 1: Early career practitioners word cloud

Source: 100 dissertations (10,000 words each) from MSc students Discussion of the similarities / differences with the world(s) of the audience

APM BoK v.5

Concepts Procedures

Organising Analysis

Sense- Making

Commun- ication

Experience General- isation

Decision Making

Problem Solving

Commun- icating

Co- operation

Leader- ship

Negotia- tion

Influenc -ing

Initiative

Internalis- ation

Follower- ship

Strategic

Copes with Ambiguity

Relational

Collabor- ative

Goal Directed

Integrity

Emotionally Intelligent

Reflexive

Aware of context

Systemic Eloquence

Factual Knowledge • Facts • Structures • Procedures • Concepts • Principles

Experiential Knowledge • Experience • Internalisation • Generalisation • Abstraction

Mental Skills • Organisation • Analysis • Evaluation • Synthesis

Information Skills • Acquisition • Recording • Remembering • Communication

Action Skills • Communicating

Decision Making • Problem Solving • Takes Initiative

Social Skills • Co-operation • Leadership • Influencing • Negotiation

Mental Characteristics • Strategic • Agility • Flux • Creative

Attitudes • Pluralistic • Relational • Dialogical • Collaborative

Personality • Openness • Integrity • Goal Directed

Mindfulness • Contextual

Awareness • Emotional

Intelligence • Reflexivity

Cognitive Affective

Kn

ow

led

ge

S

kil

ls

Per

son

al

Q

ua

liti

es

Adapted from Carter, 1985 p. 146, Cammack 2013 & Zenger et al 2011

Ways of Knowing: Artisan

Knowing

• “...and the final product ultimately depends on the requirements of the stakeholder” (student cohort 5)

• “Viewpoints are heterogeneous and come from all stakeholders” (student cohort 6)

• “... the most important practice is stakeholder communication in general and [specifically] client engagement...” (student cohort 7)

Bricoleur

Levi-Strauss: A"bricoleur" performs tasks with materials and tools that are at hand, from "odds and ends."

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/ 2013-07/29/heath-robinson-deserves-a-museum

Doing

• “...at the same time it has posed a question [about] how should I manage my stakeholder in order to influence their level of expectation?” (student cohort 5)

• “The biggest issue here is that I did not involve the key stakeholder enough in the beginning of the project.” (student cohort 7)

• “As the project went on, we noticed that communication with the stakeholders was not as easy as we thought.” (student cohort 8)

Mindful Practitioner

http://stonebalancing.com/index.php/galleries/special-limited-edition-collection#1-6902

Being

• “I realised that if I had adopted good stakeholder management process, there would have been more collaboration and less conflict” (student cohort 5)

• “As a professional project manager I feel it is vital to manage other stakeholders’ emotions and opinions without letting them affect my emotions, opinions and relationships with other stakeholders.” (student cohort 6)

Education needs to be more than cognition

Career Planning

What do you do to support the career development of the early career practitioner?

• Knowing • Doing • Being

How effective (i.e. leading to long term success) are these strategies?

Practice Development

• Performance Reviews

• Action Research

• Action Learning & Learning Sets

• Zone of Proximal Development / Reflection

• Mentoring

• Coaching

Ackoff’s f-laws

• “Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure”

http://www.f-laws.com/pdf/A_Little_Book_of_F-LawsE.pdf

Next Steps

• Invitations

– for dialogue with your organisations

– practice development work initiatives

– support your networks of early career practitioners

Dr Ian Cammack

i.j.cammack@soton.ac.uk

• Ackoff, R. (2006) A Little Book of f-laws: 13 Common Sins of Management

http://www.f-laws.com/pdf/A_Little_Book_of_F-LawsE.pdf

• Carter, R. (1985) A Taxonomy of Learning Objectives for Professional Education. Studies in Higher Education Volume 10, Issue 2, 1985

• Zenger, JH, Folkman, J & Edinger SK (2011) Making Yourself Indispensable. Harvard Business Review

https://hbr.org/2011/10/making-yourself-indispensable/ar/1