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.

Our issue was that a project in our organization was undertaken with limited knowledge
on what was going to be needed from the different departments and the expected lift that
this project was going to take. My role within the organization at the time was Operations
Manager and I reported to our Chief Operations Officer. I oversaw day to day projects
and tasks within my department as well as other departments to ensure that everything
was running seamlessly. The issue with this situation was that my leader did not involve
the necessary people or do their due diligence to understand what was needed to
accomplish the project that they had our Director of Recruitment take on. While this
project did affect our recruiting department, it was also evident that it would affect other
departments as well and because of the fact that the project was fixing past issues within
our system it was going to be more than just an implementation of a new system. This
caused an issue amongst our organization not only for the lack or clarity and transparency
of the project but because of the different needs each department had to ensure their
systems would continue to be operational.

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

As stated in our reading this week, “symbols take many forms in organizations” (Bolman,
L. G., & Deal, T. E., 202, p. 256). For me I felt that the symbols of our organization that
influenced the situation was the vision and values of a particular leader within our
organization. As discussed above, our COO was the one who initially reviewed this
project and what was going to need to happen to ensure completion. While he had all of
the details needed to bring a strong team together to make sure this project was a success,
instead he only looked to one department and lost sight of vision of our organization. I
felt that this happened because he was new to our company and did not fully understand
the values which we had and the fact that we were what we deemed as “small but
mighty”.
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 I felt that this played a prt in the symbols of the organization because he knew our culture
but still chose to lead this project in a way that we were not used to having it led. I felt
that this caused issues not only for myself, but for other departments who were used to
the constant communication and transparency. I felt that by him doing this, it devalued
many team members and department leaders by not knowing what was going to happen
to their systems and processes once this implementation was in place. By leading the
project the way he did, I felt that this caused issues with the culture of our organization
and overall morale of those involved.

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

I felt that my alternative course of action for this situation would have been to be more
collaborative with all team members and help keep an open and honest line of
communication amongst everyone involved in the project. Because I was not initially on
this project but later realized that I needed to at least help overseehow everything was
being completed, I think this hurt the project from the beginning because the Director
who was the project lead was not aware of the systems and processes that we had in
place. I think that by instilling the culture of our organization from the beginning of the
project, I could have helped to bring those needed into the project sooner to have a better
understanding of how they would contribute to the success of the project.

I also feel that my alternative course of action would have been to “creating and
maintaining cohesive groups and teams” (Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E., 202, p. 283). As
we read in chapter 13, there were many ways in which bringing team members together
collectively could have helped to alleviate tension and issues in this project. By bringinga
more diverse group together than just the one individual and additional outside vendors, I
think this could have led to more creativity on what could have been accomplished in the
system to make it more functional and a seamless transition into a new and better system.
I feel that even though our organization has grown, we need to encourage the differences
we all bring to the table and foster that connection amongst different departments.

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

Given what I have learned about this frame, I would have done many things differently.
First, I feel that by being involved from the beginning of te project I could have brought
about the teams in a better and more constructive way. Our project only had our Director
of Recruitment as the lead, our IT team members to help with the implementation, and
outside vendors who only knew about the system we wanted to implement but not about
who we were as a company. Knowing about the symbolic frame, I think the values and

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 vision of our organization needed to be at the forefront of this and other projects we have
moving forward.

Another thing I would have done differently is bring my humor and bubbly personality to
the team and departments to help relieve the tensions and doubts that anyone had. I think
by doing this, it would have brought about a more collaborative and fun environment for
those involved in the project to speak up and bring about ideas of how the system could
be more functional and more robust than it was when we finally pushed it live. Because
of only having limited people on the project to start, I felt that the implementation only
allowed for the basics to be put in place prior to us going live, but had we fostered our
culture and togetherness I feel that this could have helped to make more automations and
more reviews to help make the system bigger and better than it is.

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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