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.

My role with Salad and Go was Assistant Store Manager. Some of my responsibilities were

to lead shifts, ensure goals regarding speed, labor, and accuracy were being met, and develop

team members into more experienced roles. The situation that I would like to discuss was how I

navigated the transition from working with one Store Manager to a different one. The person

who was replacing the current Store Manager was an external hire which was rare for the

company at the time. This was a challenge for me because I had to get accustomed to this

person’s style of leadership while also training him how to properly follow store operations.

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

Salad and Go relies heavily on its structure in order to achieve its mission of serving

nutritional options in a timely manner to those on the go. There are five positions that exist in the

store that each have their own responsibility that contributes to carrying out service efficiently to

customers. These positions include order-taker, salad builder, salad finisher, window greeter, and

online builder/finisher. Each of these positions play a part in making sure that each order gets to

the customer accurately and on time. If there is a bottleneck at even one of the positions, it can

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slow down the whole team. Because of that, having efficiency at each of these stations is

essential to ensuring that are goals regarding speed and accuracy are being met.

The structure of the store impacted the situation because the new Store Manager was not

working efficiently at his station and it was slowing down the rest of the team during peak times

of service. Not only that, but he did seem to have a desire to improve as he would make

statements such as “I work at my own pace.” This made it difficult for the team because they

were used to working with a store manager who excelled at meeting the organizational standards

and motivating others to do so as well. This was challenging for me because it was difficult to

train someone who was not invested. Along with that, team morale was starting to decrease

because the team did not feel motivated by their leader. All of this caused the structure of the

store to begin to fall apart.

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

For an alternative course of action in this case, I would work with the Store Manager to

develop a strategy for the store to get back on track to meeting the organizational metrics. As

Bolman and Deal (2021) explain, “High-performing teams translate common purpose into

specific, measurable performance goals” (p. 110). In order for a team to perform well, the goals

need to be specific and attainable. I would explain this to the Store Manager and work with him

to develop a plan to get himself and the team back on track. I would start off by creating goals

for the team that were below the organizational goals and work up to the correct metric. For

example, the company goal for speed is two minutes and five seconds. I would set a goal for the

team to reach speed of two minutes and ten seconds. This would give the Store Manager more

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slack to improve his speed in his position as well as help the store get back to meeting the

company metrics.

Another way that I would use structure to encourage a different outcome in this situation is to

make sure that each team member held a position during service that they were highly proficient

in. Because Salad and Go’s structure is a machine bureaucracy, if one member is not performing

their task efficiently it can impact the operation of the entire restaurant. For that reason, it is

essential that the team member at each station is completing their task properly and quickly. In

order to ensure that the team was meeting the goals regarding speed and accuracy, I would

observe each team member in their role and make changes as necessary. I would communicate to

the Store Manager as well so that he recognizes the importance of the organizational structure

and has the confidence to make decisions to improve efficiency in the store. These actions would

make the transition between store manager easier on the new Store Manager and the team.

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

Based on what I learned from this frame, I would create more efforts to push the new Store

Manager to understanding the organizational structure. Through this frame, I have come to

understand that every team member must be knowledgeable about the structure in order to carry

out tasks effectively. Because of that, it is important for team members to have clearly defined

roles and for team goals to be specific (Bolman & Deal, 2021). Using this knowledge, I would

have sat down with the Store Manager and explained the organizational structure to help

communicate why his individual performance contributes to the rest of the team’s success. From

there, we could have developed a plan to get him up to speed with the rest of the team. I think

that this would have helped the team during the initial stages of the transition. Along with that,

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this would relieve the pressure on the Store Manager so that he did not feel that he had to be

perfect in his role.

The new Store Manager had big shoes to fill, as his predecessor was well-liked by the

team and consistently led the team to success by meeting the organizational goals each month.

After the fact, the Store Manager explained to me that because of this, he felt pressure to be

perfect. Knowing this, something I would do differently is to explain to the team that since he is

an external hire it is going to take some time for him to completely understand the organizational

structure and processes. I would also encourage the team to provide the new Store Manager with

support in order to help him get adjusted to his new role. If I did this, it would have created more

transparency of the transition process to the team.

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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