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 studying my work place which is the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence
Livermore National Lab. My current role is as the Radiological Control Field Supervisor
where I manage a small 5-person team that helps work groups complete work that
involves hazardous and radiological materials. I am studying the ongoing staffing
shortage we are experiencing, as the facility is close to the minimum staffing needed
before we start having serious scheduling challenges due to lack of personnel.

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

The political landscape of my organization is complex and frustrating to most of the

people that have to deal with it. The lab is laid out in a matrix style fashion, where the
people that I report to on a daily basis are different than those that I report too for human
resources related issues such as payroll, timekeeping, benefits, etc. This set up
immediately creates a political tension between the workers, day to day supervisors and
payroll supervisors. This political tension can be felt any time that anyone tries to get a
promotion, change jobs, increase pay or change any of the issues that are present in the
organization.

The political tension described above creates a situation that makes it almost impossible
to get anything changed in the organization. This includes making organizational and
human resource improvements, getting promoted and changing jobs. The baked-in
political hurdles that must be overcome to get anything done sews a culture of

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 complacency that preempts worker development and organizational progress. This
creates a situation where the best people come in and try to change things, immediately
run into the political minefield, get disheartened or defeated in their efforts, and end up
leaving the lab. This churn of the most talented people leaves only the those who are
willing to put up with, and add to, the political issues that prevent progress and
improvement.

3) Recommend how you would use organizational politics for an alternative course of
action regarding your case.

The politics of my workplace, and the issues they cause, are the most frustrating part of
my job. I spend way too much time every week navigating the political landscape of the
lab. There are several changes that I would make to help improve the politics of my
workplace in order to better suit the workers and prevent the amount of turnover that has
led to the perpetual short staffing we have experienced over the past 4 years. The first
change I would create a program that would empower workers to create positive
organizational change within the organization. This program would provide the workers
who want the change with expertise, resources, and management sponsors in order to get
the initiatives off the ground. This would, hopefully, create a program that would be able
to shift the politics of the organization from hinderance to helpfulness once the positive
changes start to take affect and the people at the lab realize the benefits that can be
realized from this program.

The second change is something that is much more difficult and expensive, yet can have
a huge impact on the politics of the organization, and that would be to reorganize from a
matrix system to a more traditional top-down type set up. This wouldn’t fix the politics of
the organization, but it would hopefully align the goals of each piece of the organization
better. The better alignment would prevent much of the hinderance to any sort of progress
that we face now. There would still be apprehension on many aspects of change, however
it would be harder for certain business units to completely prevent progress from being
made within the organization.

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 4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about this frame.

In Chapter 10 of our book we learned about mapping the politics of an organization and
about bargaining (Bolman, 2017). These topics in the chapter were of particular interest
to me as they can help greatly in navigating the political landscape of my organization.
Mapping the political structure of my organization helps immensely, since it is not
always readily apparent who has the power in any given situation and who you need to
talk to to get things done. Due to the matrix style of the organization I work for,
bargaining and negotiation are the only ways that you are able to get things done. Trying
to negotiate with other business units in order to make progress in my organization is
time consuming and exhausting, but it is the process that everyone must go through based
on the current political climate of the lab.
The changes that I described above in section three would realign the goals of different
organizations to be more in line with each other. This would prevent some of the
competition that leads to political issues as described in Chapter 9 of our textbook.
Preventing some of the political ill-will that is ever present in our organization would
immensely help to create a more innovative and employee focused organization. This
would ultimately prevent many of the departures that we have seen in the last several
years from my business unit. Preventing the employee churn, and all of the arduous
training involved with new employees, would put us in a much better staffing situation
and would allow us to meet all of our business goals.

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 Reference or References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(6th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass