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.

In Module 1, I spoke of my role as a Treasury Management Implementation Associate III

in the Treasury Department of City National Bank. The situation referred to the transition
to working from home during COVID-19 and how the department was not ready or
prepared the the amount of work that came and how that would trickle down to the
colleagues. The senior colleagues who were used to providing training based on their
skill set were not able to transition smoothly to virtual training and did not like to provide
training. Fortunately, I was the only colleague who did not mind providing virtual
training and liked it. I went from training on one system to four systems and creating
guides while still assisting in completing my normal workload. I noticed my schedule
went from 25% training with the completion of my daily workload to about 65% training
with the completion of my daily workload which naturally became an issue.

As a result, I would have to advocate for myself to either have a training role created or
for the training to go back to being evenly distributed so that I could maintain my
required workload. This did work in my favor and a new role was created for me as a
Quality Assurance Implementation & Training Associate I, where I solely focused on
training colleagues to complete the tasks correctly. When I wasn’t training colleagues I
was performing quality control on completed assignments so that I could gauge which
colleagues needed a refresher course.

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

City National Bank has a simple hierarchy model within our division, we have a
president of the Treasury Department and then managers of every sector that report to
her. My immediate manager was third in command and as stated in the text “…this type
of hierarchy further limits access to the top…” (p.103) This deserves to be noted because
1
 after a check-in call with my manager, when she decided we did need a colleague focused
on training it took about 2 months before anything was finalized. The waiting game that
followed for the position to be implemented was because my manager had to go through
a chain of command to advocate for it. It was truly unfortunate because during that
moment our department suffered from any sort of advancement.

Consequently, this process is bothersome and in this week’s readings I started to wonder
if there had been some restructuring to the way Learning and Development were
implemented, the department wouldn’t have suffered as long as it did. Our organization’s
structure had not been an issue till we shifted to working from home. Therefore, we
needed to adjust to accommodate the many changes that were taking place.
Unfortunately, it was evident that there was no contingency plan in place to
accommodate a work-from-home structure or what mattered most, the demand for tasks
to be completed at an accelerated rate. The fault is not completely on City National Bank,
many companies were unprepared to have their entire staff remote.

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

The first recommendation would be to create a position for a Learning and Development
colleague within every sub-department. This colleague would be in charge of meeting
with product managers when changes are made to deter quality control errors, ensure
comparable guides are on hand and updated as needed as well as making sure there are 2
well-trained staff for every system at all times. The structure of the department was
similar to the “Too Loose versus Too Tight” structural dilemma because the manager
blindly trusted everyone to know how to do their job without inspecting whether or not
they possessed the knowledge to do so. As stated in the text “If structure is too loose,
people go astray, with little sense of what others are doing.” (p.78) This is exactly what
took place especially since management did not know how to manage people from home.

Seeing as how there was no way we could rely on the current structure to help assist with
getting the necessary changes made. It would be more helpful if certain policies and
procedures could have been bypassed due to the nature of the situation and the fact that it
required immediate action. Not to mention, they could have opted for it to be a temporary
position created until something more final was available.

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

2
 To implement my first recommendation (above) I would restructure from a simple
hierarchy to one that is dual authority. Every manager will work with the Learning and
Development department to ensure a colleague is on hand. This colleague would make
the necessary changes as they pertain to the production of quality work, without having to
go through many channels and get permission to do so. This statement in the text only
further proved it was needed. “Two individuals have authority over specific areas of the
group’s work. Information and decisions flow through them.” (Bolman, p.101) Although
companies have what seems like archaic setups it is not often restructured. Most
managers focus on the “bigger picture” and without realizing their oversight affects the
employees day to day. This does need to be accounted for so that the
department/company as a whole can thrive but again this is overlooked in a top-authority
structure.

3
Reference
 Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and
leadership (7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass (ASU Bookstore Automatic
Purchase-Perusall Version Only)