OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I: PCA-Political

Frame Worksheet
Worksheet Objectives:

1. Describe the political frame

2. Apply the political frame to your personal case situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook
and other course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a
chance to update this and format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

I am a Starbucks Corporate Partner (employee). I have worked most of my adult career

with Starbucks, first as a field partner (employee who works in the stores) and for almost a year

now, I have been on the corporate side. About five months ago, I joined the a team that supports

our Global Supply Chain. As you can imagine, it is challenging, given we are still navigating the

pandemic and are completely virtual. I am on a time limited assignment and my role was created

due to the need to communicate with the field leaders about delays that impact store orders. The

role was created by executives who are very removed from the work to support the team. Best

intentions and terrible execution have resulted in where I currently land, since it was created with

such urgency and I have no background in logistic services. There was no time to train and

pulling a partner from another team was also not an option. This resulted in a decrease in my

morale and confidence to execute my job responsibilities. It shows that training is impactful to a

partners (employees) experience at being successful.

2) Describe how the politics of the organization influenced the situation.

 We are in the people business serving coffee. Without the people, the partners and the

customers we would cease to exist. It is important to keep both happy and satisfied, but here I

will be focusing on the internal politics that led to my role being created which has had the most

impact on my situation. Power was a large factor in my role being created. Creating a new

headcount, even temporary, requires authority to make it happen, because of the way our

department is structured. There is a budget and a finite amount of resources, “Important

decisions involve allocating scarce resources,” (Bolman & Deal, 2017, p. 185). Time and

monetary impacts are two of the scarce resources that impacted the creation of my time limited

role. Spending money on additional salary can be a huge risk. There was little to no bargaining

and negotiation to try and meet the needs of all of the stakeholders. Members of the leadership

team had to determine what the needs were and balance those with the needs of other leaders to

reach a bargaining agreement on what the scope of the role would look like.

Both sides had to make concessions to strike the deal. One of those being not pulling an

existing team member from a different team who was trained and understood the work. This

created a talent pool that had no experience to hit the ground running with the work that was

being asked of them to complete. One of the supervisors had a lot more influence on the team,

“Opportunities and influence flow to people with strong reputations” (Bolman & Deal, 2017,

p.192). Having created a network of alliances through in-person networking and tenure on the

team. This has given them the ability to have their goals and needs met faster than others with

the same title. That same leader influences the training curriculum and was uninterested in

creating a well rounded immersion into the role. This created some tensions between the teams.

Power creates conflict between those who have it and fight to keep and those who do not fight to

get it. It appears the individual with more power came out ahead. They were not willing to let a
member of their team go to support another team. This resulted in my team having to start from

scratch with a new member. Which then depleted the resources of time and morale.

3) Recommend how you would use organizational politics for an alternative

course of action regarding your case.

Organizational politics are not going away and can be helpful to accomplish work.

Having a strong network of alliances and a clear agenda allows the team to get work done. Had

the team had a clear agenda and alignment, the negotiations and bargaining could have been less

decisive. I think that leaders could have talked more about the impact of the role to the broader

team. Less negotiations and trade offs could have been made if leaders were able to pull from the

existing talent pool with the training and I could have been brought in to back fill them. While

there would have been concessions that needed to be made for both, the impact would have been

less for all.

If my boss had had the positional authority to pull from another team that would have

allowed her team to accelerate the pace of work. This new team member would have had the

foundational knowledge to support the work getting done. I could have then backfilled the now

open role and used my foundational knowledge of stores to support the team. It is important to

keep in mind the team that I sit on currently is made up of four individuals, the team they should

have pulled from consists of more than thirty individuals. The ability to network and negotiate

seem to be the most important in my organization. Who you know allows you to accomplish

your agenda. Not networking and building alliances can have a negative impact.
4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have

learned about this frame.

Having a clear agenda of what you aim to accomplish and a network of alliances seems to

be a big part of navigating an organization. Building a strong network of people would be

something that I do and continue to do. It is my belief that you have to be able to have like

minded people together in order to accomplish the goal or agenda. Deal making and negotiations

are tricky when you do not have a clear agenda and allies. The allies part takes time to build and

navigate. While the role was created with a sense of urgency, it was a gift, labor is a scarce

resource. As a leader I would be thinking constantly about what work is important and what

could be retired, so that when negotiations about roles and responsibilities happen there is a

better position to bargain from.

Having now come out the other side, I can advocate for partners who may come onto the

team. We now know how long it has taken to train me, the time and financial resources allocated.

This gives future leaders a stronger bargaining position. There is information to support the

stance. I think it is important to forge bonds with others to accomplish your goals. This is the

only thing I think could have been done differently for a better outcome for the team and myself.

Having allied yourself with those that have the ability to influence others becomes helpful when

you are trying to use resources. I would have fought more to have a more tenured partner join the

team. I would have used my relationship with the more senior leader to share advantages and

disadvantages to earn a little more bargaining power. This would have created the ability to get

more work done. This would have also ceased some power struggle over the ability to train me

and my role. As it was, we had to circle back around to accomplish my training by making more
negotiation and bargaining. When if we had aligned at the beginning in what was in the best

interest of all, instead of a select few a lot of time and resources could have been saved.

Reference

Bolman, L. G. & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership

(6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass