OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Identify an organization and situation you want to study over the remainder of the course.
2. Describe the organization and 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) Describe your organization.

The organization is a specialized group in the United States military that is for the most
part siloed away from the rest of its branch and has minimal contact with units apart from
themselves barring select few. We’ll call the organization The Lozenge Company or
TLC. The organization works on a global scale daily. Everyone inside the organization
holds a clearance including the contractors and the facilities are all heavily secured. The
locations are fenced, gated, and layered in monitored cameras, as well as individually
specific keys to always move throughout the facilities. The organization owns and
manages a massive amount of physical property and equipment that is unclassified as
well a large amount of classified property that is compartmented. The organization is
traditionally utilized for specific tasks in time critical situations and has emerged in the
last twenty years as a small faction inside the overall military apparatus with an influence
that far surpasses its size. TLC is quite small and selective with less than a couple
thousand personnel across all locations. The organization is known for leadership,
logistical excellence, and accountability. Because of this, it’s also known for severe
disciplinary actions when something goes wrong internally.

2) Describe your role in the organization (it can be internal or external).

Across almost a decade at TLC I served in varying positions with four years as project
manager and another two as a program manager. At the time of the situation, I had double
the average tenure at TLC and an enormous amount of organizational and peripheral
support services knowledge. These are impossible to gain elsewhere. When this
happened, I still belonged to the organization technically but was attending a school
located two hours away until my last bit of time had expired, and I officially exited. I was
still beholden to three bosses at this point but had never worked for any of the three as I

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 was exiting the same as their predecessors had. I knew everything in the environment as
well as everyone involved but had no personal relationship with the leadership above me
and minimal ties to the subordinates involved. I was utilized to help control the situation
because I was the only prior lead remotely available and I was still “local”.

Describe the situation. (see the Canvas instructions for details, especially about how
your situation will be analyzed from five different perspectives over the next five
modules)

The situation arose when a section with sensitive property began having issues with its
acting Project Manager and very specifically the Assistant Project Manager. The acting
PM who we’ll call Arizona had very little time in their position and was making mistakes
frequently. However, many of these could be attributed to genuine lack of knowledge in
the organization system rather than an inability to do the work and with coaching,
Arizona was competent and relatively effective. The Assistant PM who we’ll call Ohio
had double the time with TLC that Arizona had and understood how everything worked
perfectly. Almost as soon as Arizona took their position, Ohio was subversively taking
advantage of the situation to their own benefit. Compounding the issue, the leadership
team (who replaced the team I worked for previously) had transitioned to working on a
different continent a few months earlier rather than through a security door and the
normal accountability and communication disappeared.

Over a period of two months, Ohio had successfully hidden away a large amount of
property that had become unaccounted for but very clearly belonged to the section and
could be utilized effectively still. While Arizona struggled to move resources and fulfill
demands from across the globe (literally), Ohio was removing and hoarding property to
sell before it could be handled and accounted for again. I had been placed to help coach
Arizona but immediately realized that Ohio was stealing from the organization and
attempting to sell it elsewhere. Over the course of three weeks, I quietly amassed
documentation and alerted the management team to Ohio’s actions.

When confronted with the situation Ohio immediately sought an out by referring to the
property technically not existing on paper. “Why does anyone care about this stuff when
no one has managed to keep it on paper. Why don’t we just do what we want with it and
get some benefit from it?” was Ohio’s response. And then all hell began to break loose.
From a continent away the leadership team ignored the evidence and documentation
backed up by internal security evidence. The upper managers made one phone call to the
US, spoke with one person we’ll call Kentucky, and moved on. However, Kentucky was
also new and had become fast friends with Ohio and was gaining monetarily from the
transactions. Everyone in my location can see what’s going on but now Kentucky and
Ohio are off to the races as Dominic, the most senior leader declines to do any further
research on the documentation. A few weeks later, I officially exit the organization and
move elsewhere only to find out that Dominic has returned to find out everything he’s
ignored has been true and he’s now missing six-figures worth of property (a huge deal).

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 And for the next six months my phone rang at least once a week to help unravel the mess
that Dominic “didn’t think was actually happening”. “So much talent and experience, yet
key decision makers were at sea. They misread available information and failed to act or
did the wrong thing. The technical term is cluelessness, a pervasive affliction for leaders
everywhere.” (Bolman et al., 2017)

Reference or References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Introduction: The Power of Reframing. In Reframing
organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. essay, Jossey-Bass, a John Wiley and Sons,
Inc. imprint.