OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Structural Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the structural frame
2. Apply the structural 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.

At Professional Tax & Accounting, I held an internal role as an Operations

Manager. Within my position, I performed payroll, accounts payable/receivable, billing,

and human resources for the company. I also acted as the client liason where I handled

client concerns and questions. I managed inventory and cleaning, while also managing

the workflow for the entire staff. I worked directly under Denny, the top manager, who

was at best, self-assured, passionate, and believed his innovative ideas were superior to

more traditional methods. At worst, Denny was manipulative, verbally abusive, and at

times, threatening. When Denny was in the office, the air grew stale and the floor

suddenly became thin ice. Because of Denny’s bad leadership, the entire office felt

stressed and failed to perform well at their jobs.

There was a specific point in time when Denny wanted to restructure the

organization. He wanted to demote our General Manager to a bookkeeper and tax

preparer. He wanted to assume the role of General Manager so that he could manage the

struggling accounting firm more closely. In the midst of this transition, I was asked to

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 create a business proposal. In my proposal, I met each concern he presented with a

thoughtful, creative solution. In my suggested proposal, I had him out of the picture.

When I sent Denny my proposal, I asked him to postpone our all-staff meeting

where he was planning on announcing these organizational changes. I thought that these

big decisions needed more time to be thought through fully. He agreed, but only

postponed the meeting by one hour so that we could meet first. In our meeting, he

disregarded most of my suggestions, while increasing my workload.

After the meeting, I tried to go back to work, but was overwhelmed by how much

I needed to do and had a meltdown. Quickly, my colleagues off-loaded my work to help,

but it didn’t help. The temporary help was not a permanent fix.

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

The structure of Professional Tax & Accounting is a simple hierarchy with middle

managers that report to the boss and then a team of staff that report to them. One thing

about the boss, Denny, was that he did a poor job of putting teams together. I believe this

to be because he, himself, never fully understood what he was trying to accomplish. Our

textbook shares that in a poorly formed (or pre-maturely formed team), “frustrations

mount, and people wind up in endless meetings trying to figure out why they are a team

and what they are expected to do” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p. 111).

The simple hierarchy within an organization that had an unstable leader highly

influenced this situation. “Structural profiles of successful teams depend on the game –

what a team is trying to do” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p. 109). This is great is the boss

knows the answer to this question, but when he/she doesn’t, it’s disastrous. Just like

quoted above, the team was frustrated, both collectively and individually. Additionally,

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 the team never fully understood what they were expected to do. This caused staff to

perform poorly. The closer Denny got to managing the firm, the more the company

struggled.

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

Keidel suggests powerful questions in our text that I would use to drive my

thought process. Several important questions are suggested in our text, “What is the

nature and degree of dealings among individuals? What is the spatial distribution of unit

members? Where does authority reside? How are efforts integrated?, etc” (Bolman &

Deal, 2021, p. 108). Using these reflective questions, I feel that Helgesen’s Web of

Inclusion would be most appropriate for Professional Tax and Accounting.

Helgesen’s Web of Inclusion works from the center and moves outward (Bolman

& Deal, 2021, p. 87). I think that this structure would work best at Professional Tax &

Accounting because of the wide range of skills and expertise. The office is composed

mostly of producers with a few support staffmembers. However, the support staff is not

generally an expert in the fields of the producers, so it would not be appropriate for the

support staff to have authority over the producers, necessarily. Ideally, Professional Tax

and Accounting would restructure itself using Helgesen’s Web of Inclusion. This would

allow the producers to have freedom and autonomy over their work. Of course, there

would be accountability, but for the most part, each producer would manage themselves.

The strong support staff would be the center part of the web. The support staff would

manage the workflow, but remove them from heavily managing the personnel and

needing to be a subject matter expert over a wide variety of tax and accounting matters.

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

When I was in the midst of this situation, I did not take time to reflect on the

current structure from different angles. Knowing that Professional Tax and Accounting

had a simple hierarchy, I would try to keep an open mind. Just because the organization is

failing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the company needs restructured. Perhaps the

structure is fine, but it’s more that people are not in the correct roles. There are good

things about a simple hierarchy that you lose in a web of inclusion, and I think that those

differences need to be considered.

Another thing that I would have done differently involves figuring out what

“game” we were playing as a team. Reflecting back on the situation, I think that a lot of

pain and hurt came from not fully knowing what our shared goal was. We didn’t know

where our boss wanted to go as a direction. Before writing up a business plan, I think I

would have spent time with Denny to just get to hear his heart. From there, I would have

liked to approach this whole situation from a conversational approach. Perhaps he didn’t

realize that we didn’t fully understand his direction.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership
(7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass