OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Political Frame Worksheet

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

As the General Manager of my organization, I am responsible for my site's daily

operations and budgeting. I lead a team of technicians and managers who assemble and
recondition utility trucks. Our organization's target for a vehicle returning from a job site to be
available for another customer is ten days. However, the team was averaging twenty days for
reconditioning. To correct this, I implemented a window tree process to help communicate
workflow and assignments and assigned the Service Manager to reassess the truck detailing
process for efficiency gains. The team wasn’t involved in the process change and met the change
with resistance. The Service Manager had difficulties understanding the bigger picture and
couldn’t conceptualize how changing the detail process would gain efficiency. As a result, the
Service Manager has struggled with a redesign and implementation of the window tree process.

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

Within my organization, I observe politics forming around departments, and, more

granularly, within the sub-departments. The organization comprises Production, which assembles
the units, Rentals, which upfits custom equipment to the trucks, and Service, which reconditions
the units. Within Service are Body Shop, Detail, Reconditioning, Wash Bay, and Check-In. The
organization is influenced by politics through the politics around the different departments. The
nature of production is more predictable and easier to forecast. Service works on returning units
with varying levels of repair required. This has influenced the Service Department to view
Production as the “favorite” department because they rarely wait on parts and have delays in the
production line.

Within the Service Department, the team has viewed Detail as having the lowest power
and sees working in the department as a demotion. The detail crew is compensated equally with
the other technicians, but the work can be very difficult. Because of this view, it has been
difficult to cross-train individuals in detail. This has impacted the way other technicians treat the

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detail crew and has partly contributed to the turnover in the department. Consequently, it has
become difficult to leverage man-hours to keep up with the production of the service technicians.
As a result, the detail department has bottlenecked, beginning to impact the total cycle time.

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

Much like the scenario with the school district within the text, the barriers to control from
the top approach were ineffective. When I felt that I needed to get it done as soon as possible and
knew how to correct the concern, I made an assumption that neglected the agendas and power of
my team. As Deal and Boman put it, this could lead the team to devise creative ways to resist,
divert, undermine, ignore, or overthrow innovative plans (Bolman & Deal, 2021). The team was
aware of the bottleneck and wanted to come up with a solution but felt ignored that they didn’t
play a role in the solution.

An alternative course of action utilizing organizational politics would involve leveraging

the Service team's functional expertise to facilitate resolutions. To address perceived
departmental hierarchies, I would designate a detailer to lead a small group, granting them
decision-making authority to demonstrate that the Detail department is not inferior. Additionally,
I would employ networking strategies to assess potential resistance and understand underlying
motivations, identifying key relationships. Using my influence, I would pose probing questions
to encourage self-discovery among team members.

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

What I would do differently is foster self-discovery by empowering the team. The

Service department views the detailers as lower-ranked. I could assign the Service Manager to
identify the most skilled detailer to lead a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and
Threats) analysis. The detailer would be in charge of identifying and assembling the team. They
would collaborate with outside influencers to assess their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats. This process would enable the team to analyze the current procedures and
recommend solutions to rectify issues or determine if the root cause lies elsewhere. Once a
recommendation for change is made, the Service Manager can assist in the planning and
implementation of the change. This task force approach could also be used in the implementation
of the window tree process. I could present a scope statement of generating a deliverable that
will improve the identification of repairs and parts. This would empower the Service Department
to control their department and generate improvements.

This grassroots approach would yield better results with fewer barriers. Within the
organization, departments share mutual agendas. I also share the same goal of delivering fast and
high-quality service to our customers. With this alternative solution to drive improvement, I rely
on the team’s services, and they are equally reliant on me to provide them with the resources they

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need to be successful. By leveraging their drive to deliver quality service to our customers, I
could use the political frame to acknowledge their talents and creativity. People rarely like to be
explicitly told what to do without their input. Through the task force project, I could have
utilized their functional expertise to create an innovative solution to improve cycle time and
enhance visibility in the reconditioning process.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and
leadership. Jossey-Bass.