Marcelino Sarabia

OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Symbolic Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:

1. Describe the symbolic frame

2. Apply the symbolic 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.

My role is a Senior Finance Analyst and the situation involved my Uber account,

specifically the monthy invoice I produce and the invoice process I go through to produce

it. There was a new client manager that took on Uber and she (Rebecca) had a handful of

requests to change the invoice process and add additional data in the invoice. The current

process and product met all of the requirements stated in the Uber contract however

Rebecca just wanted more information to be included. That said the request was not to

improve the organization or meet specific requests from Uber themselves. When

presented to our Program Manager, the requests were denied. That was followed by

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 Rebecca going against the verdict and contacting me directly to make all of those

changes. This required me to do the work of a full team alone which pushed me into

excessive overtime, my other accounts suffering, and affected my overall quality of work

due to lack of rest and time off.

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

The first symbol is the myth, and a myth is usually something that originates in the

launch of an enterprise (Bolman & Deal, 2017) which in this case fits in the beginning of

making our department the most efficient in the organization since our work load is so

heavy. The myth was that all of our processes are automatic and our turnaround times are

extremely quick. Although our department has done a lot of work with our engineers to

automate many of our processes as well as incorporating new softwares designed to

increase the speed in our data analyzing work. When we got to this point, senior

management raved on about how we are quick and have all of this automation to make us

even faster, and it created a myth that we can accommodate any request, and time, and

have it done by whichever requested time frame. This has made it difficult for us because

although we do have all of this software, there is still a great deal of manual work, and

not everything is a one person job. We have task forces within our department that tackle

on projects collaboratively. External members not in our department are not aware of

how we operate internally so it creates high expectations and when we cannot

accommodate people, others have the mindest of “well you’re just not asking the right

person” which is untrue.

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 The second symbol is a ritual. A ritual is a “routine that usually has a statable purpose,

but one that invariably alludes to more than it says…” (Bolman & Deal, 2017). In this

case the ritual is that we, the finance department, is to do whatever we need to do to

accommodate the requests from other senior managers when the request is something that

benefits the organization as a whole or meets the requests of the client directly. That said,

following that ritual so habitually, it felt inappropriate for me to say no although I knew it

had no actual benefit to the organization or was requested by the client themselves. This

is why I continued to accommodate even though it pushed me in to overtime, made my

other accounts suffer by being late, and affecting my quality of work due to lack of sleep

and time off.

Recommend how you would use organizational symbols for an alternative course of

action regarding your case.

I would have incorporated values within the team. The myth is something we are all used

to abiding by, but with the implementation of values, the team would know when it is

best to accommodate, when it is okay to say no, and when to prioritize ourselves and

quality of work over the requests of other management that is not aware of what we do

internally and the way we operate. The values would be about not letting any other work

suffer at the expense of something that has no organizational value or meets the requests

of our clients specifically. It would also be to take care of ourselves because our team is

full of dedicated hard-workers, we consistently put ourselves in situations where we

overwork ourselves.

I would also implement a sort of ceremony or ritual that introduces other program

managers or senior managers of other departments that we work with often (for

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 example, client managers, sales managers, etc.) to our line of work and give them time

to oversee some of our processes. This would allow for some of the unrealistic

expectations to be cut out and inform other managers about what would be technically

feasible and when we say that it is not, that it means it is not and not just that we do not

want to.

3) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned

about this frame.

Given what was learned about this frame, I would hope that the Senior Managers in the

department would be careful with the gloating about the speed and automation our team

consistently has. Doing so creates expectations from other departments we work with and

when we can’t accommodate their new requests or time frames, it makes it seem like

there is an alternative reason or preference for us to not assist with it. This is why

Rebecca continued to go against my Program Manager’s decision on going through with

the changes. This would resolve the myth around turn around times on our department.

Second, I would do more with the team and inform them all that the ritual of always

doing what we are told. I think it would be best to differentiate between doing everything

to accommodate the organization’s requests to improve the work we produce and being

the team expected to drop what we are doing to help on a request that doesn’t necessarily

benefit the organization as a whole and meet our client’s expectations. This would cut out

a lot of stress and overtime from me and my colleagues. This would resolve the issue

surrounding the ritual we are used to and habitually follow.

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 Reference or References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership

(6th ed.). Jossey-Bass, a John Wiley and Sons, Inc. imprint.