Reframing Organizations: Integrating the Four Frames

Identify a situation ‘ripe’ for change,

A situation ripe for change is one that I have a personal connection with. For the sake of

confidentiality, I will call the organization XYZ. XYZ is known for their innovations. It has its

name on thousands of products. The plant that I worked for manufactures a product that is sold in

the USA and sells kits abroad.

From a structural perspective XYZ has highly developed organizations with well-defined

roles. XYZ seeks to operates away from the traditional vertical top down management style and

operates in a lateral fashion. It operates from a machine bureaucracy structure. Its goal is to be a

teaming facility with support roles. Gone are the supervisor roles and manager roles. In the place

of these individuals are coaches and business leaders. Teams meet each morning in their

prospective groups. Each group a member of a sub group. Each sub group feeds the final

assembly in a modular format. Broken down into smaller sub-assemblies with the goal of all

pieces coming together in a final assembly line. Picture many assembly lines feeding one main

assembly line.

Looking at one of the feeding assembly line teams taking a snapshot of the current

structure. Each morning the lateral structure allows the team to meet in self driven meetings.

Each member of the team has a rotational six-month role in which they are a part of another team
as well. The other teams are each in an area or function of the company, Operations,

Environmental Health and Safety, Quality Control, Team Leader, Recorder, Human Resources.

It is noteworthy to know that not all team members will be on a second team at all times, as is the

case of large teams. It also should be known that smaller groups must have each member

conducting multiple teams. Such as dual roles of Human Resources and Environmental Health

and Safety. During the morning meetings, each team member who is a part of a secondary team

brings information to the team from their area. During this time, they also take feedback back to

the secondary team. For instance, Human resources brings back information about hiring events,

rule changes, policy changes, conduct changes and much more.

Each sub team meets on a different day of the week. So Environmental Health and Safety

meets on Mondays. Human Resources on Tuesdays, Operations on Wednesdays, Quality Control

on Thursdays and Recorder on Fridays. This allows the team to have a steady flow of data each

day of the week. The sub teams also use an operations computer each morning before the team

meets. On this computer, the star point can access direct information from leaders of each sub

group. This is how pressing matters that can’t wait until the regular once per week meeting are

pushed to the teams throughout the facility. Things such as a safety stand down memo. Or

perhaps an unannounced visitor to the plant. It gets the information to the teammates in a much

faster manner and allows them to prepare first thing in the morning.

From a structural standpoint, XYZ’s site seems to have a great system that accomplishes

its task of creating innovation. One of the biggest shortcomings that seemed to reside in the way
that leadership is brought in. Team members are screened for teaming ability. Tests are given in

the form of computerized testing as well as group testing in which teams are observed during

interviews. The problem of talent acquisition is that to promote innovation the company has

many various programs that target college graduates. These programs such as Operations,

Management, Leadership, Planning (OMLP) bring on board fresh graduates and transfer them

every six months to new roles within the company.

The fresh graduates are not screened for teaming and often not fully acquainted with the

style of structure. This creates situations where the support staff members in the programs take

over teams and inject themselves creating a top down management style. “You can be a leader

without being a manager and many managers could not lead a squad of seven-year old’s to the

ice cream counter” (Bolman, & Deal, 2013, p. 345) Micromanagement, is the biggest killer of

the team’s effectiveness to operate. Decisions become the OMLP’s discretion, leaving team

members feeling cut out of the loop and disconnected from the process. The exact opposite of

what the lateral structure is trying to accomplish. It tends to be a rough cycle that repeats itself

every six months as one-member transfers out of the role and another fills the spot.

From a human resource frame XYZ has its biggest failures. “Organizations exploit

people chew them up and spit them out” (Bolman, & Deal, 2013, p. 113). The company has a

bad habit of posting positions in which well qualified individuals will interview for. Only to find

out after the fact that someone else was offered the position outside of the company before the

interview was even conducted. XYZ corporate puts a great deal of pressure to hire candidates
from outside the company who are fresh out of college. It’s a strategic plan that seeks to get the

latest and greatest information being studied.

This means the few spots that come available are often offered to individuals who are less

qualified than the ones interviewed. The common trend among interviews taken from a

qualitative prospective is people having a minimum of an associate’s degree all the way up to

master level degrees and still being turned down for the positions. This creates an animosity for

the newly appointed individuals coming from the schools and having little to no work experience

in a teaming environment. Compounding the problem is that most are very driven to prove

themselves and are unaware or disregard the teaming environment in place. This causes them to

run the already stressed employees into the arms of the competition and other high paying jobs

where their degrees can earn them promotions.

XYZ plant, viewed from a political frame is effective if done properly. Done properly

with high level mature teams and support staff not overstepping boundaries proves to be

extremely effective. The interviews conducted with such mature members of various teams

shined insight into how the team can use the power given to them to take the limited resources

and be very successful. “The political frame views authority as only one among many forms of

power. It recognizes the importance of individual and group needs but emphasizes that scarce

resources and incompatible preferences cause need to collide” (Bolman, & Deal, 2013, p. 195).

These collisions are dealt with via teammates talking through the pros and cons during each daily

meeting as discussed previously.

 Managers or in the case of XYZ (Business Leaders) have the task of setting the

overarching goals and disseminating the needs of the company to the teams. They are tasked

with building coalitions and developing teams to meet the goals head on. It’s there that

individuals are allowed to be political and explain their reasoning for accomplishing the goals

and need for whatever resources might be needed. It functions almost without fail when the team

members are mature and the coach remains in the coach role.

Discovery of the issue’s involving the political frame are when the teams are immature or

the support staff coach oversteps their bounds and becomes a micromanager. Then the dynamic

quickly gets off balance and causes power and decisions to go back to one induvial coach who

retains the actual power or formal authority.

XYZ has a very large symbolic frame for everyone both inside and outside of the

company. The XYZ monogram is very well known as they have thousands of products. The

symbols are injected again and again throughout the plant. Huge canvas hang from the walls

some fifty feet long and thirty feet high. Displaying the team members and year taken.

To further the symbolic frame XYZ, gives out small desk size symbols to team members

that perform above and beyond the call of duty. These team members can be recognized by their

team, other teams, support staff, outside venders and much more. The symbols given have

different colors that mean different things and carry different rewards. A black symbol carries a
one-hundred-dollar bonus, the blue symbol gets your name on all the televisions throughout the

plant.

Recommendations for Improvement,

Structural frame,

From a structural frame point of view XYZ is doing a great job. However, it is allowing

its structural frame to be overruled by untrained and unfamiliar talent acquisitions. Individuals

recruited straight out of school and being put in a nontraditional role of coach over the traditional

role of supervisor. The lateral team based setup only works when it is left to its own devices. So

XYZ needs to have a better system of getting individuals up to speed on how team based groups

work. The effective coaches know that they are there in a pure support staff role. Their goal is to

get all the much-needed equipment and higher reaching design changes to the team. They also

come into play in getting an immature team back to a mature status.

Heading up the solution to the problem should be the business leaders who have authority

over the coaches. A method of feedback to the business leaders or a report card for how the

coach is doing is badly needed. It will then align the coaches with the role they should be filling

and stop the individuals choosing to ignore the team environment for a traditional supervisor

employee setup.

Human resource frame,

 From a human resource frame Maslow’s hierarchy of needs must be met. The structural

problem would be much less, if the company would take talent from individuals who are well

qualified and already apart of the teaming environment. Outside sources then would not be as

much of an issue because the individuals are well aware of how the companies teaming site is

conducting itself. This would in turn fulfill Maslow’s hierarchy of needs by enabling individuals

to hit the higher purpose self-fluffiness needs.

When individuals in the organization have room to grow it stops the revolving door and

stops the talent from leaving. This talent is critical to XYZ’s innovation strategy. It is what has

kept them afloat all these years even during down cycles industry. Through the interview process

it was discovered that the push for this is coming from the corporate offices. It’s up to the higher

leaders of the organization to push back and find new ways of allowing individuals to grow in

the company and to stop the bleeding of talent to other organizations. Bringing in fresh talent

from outside sources is still critical however. Doing so should be done in a much different

fashion. Individuals put in programs and given roles such as coach need to be shadowed. They

should have a great deal of training leading up to taking charge and when in charge should be

watched by peers or business leaders to insure they are not overstepping their boundaries as

coach.

Political Frame,

The political frame of teams making the choices and stating their claims for resources

such as tooling, help, hours, etc. seems to be working. It’s when they are allowed to make the
decisions in the teaming stance that it has the greatest impact. If not allowed however and

coaches are assuming the role of supervisor the political climate changes drastically. It then

becomes a traditional system in which the overarching goal is to gain political capital with the

supervisor in power, to receive the various scarce resources needed. Correcting the situations in

the other frames Structural and Human Resource should correct the problems trickling down to

the political frame.

Symbolic frame,

The symbolic frame for XYZ is where they really shine. The corporation has a magnetic

pull because of its vast innovative history. People want to be part of this and strive to impress

individuals. Its creates a culture of pride that employees take home with them. The two-pronged

symbolic frame that XYZ has is working without fail. Incorporating the symbol as an image of

power and innovation drives employees to do better and constantly improve.

Implement the strategy,

Implementation of the strategy in this case would be easiest if done from a corporate

level. It seems that the strategy is formulated from the corporate level and then pushed to the

individual plant sites. The active decision to promote talent from within will take hold right

away. Each new hire being actively screened for the desired characteristics needed and

qualifications. As attrition occurs the new roles will be filled with more and more individuals

from the current facility. The talent acquisition from colleges and programs can continue but will
be screened with teaming qualifications. Candidates that fail to meet the teaming qualifications

will be passed in light that the main criteria for the position requires strong teaming abilities.

“Developing commitment or building a power base may be more critical” (Bolman, & Deal,

2013, p. 311).

Assess the results,

The short-term assessment will be quantitative and regard the number of employees being

promoted. As I stated above there seems to be a great deal of qualified employees that are willing

and ready to step up. If this is the case the amounts of employees should raise proportional to the

amount of turnover or attrition. If, however the number of employees being promoted within is

not going up in proportion to the turnover we must look at why. Perhaps the fresh graduates are

still bringing something to the table that is giving them an edge over the in-house talent.

Looking further into that hypothetical situation we can look at what can be done to

narrow the offset. Perhaps a simple course or skill that can be learned will even the playing field.

This might be another good opportunity for the fresh graduates to help employees who seek to

grow. Training programs or mentoring programs can help these individuals grow.

References,

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2013). Reframing organizations artistry, choice and leadership.

San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass.