Prompt #1:  What did you learn about organizations, and/or the behavior of individuals within an organization?  How do the ideas presented in Part Two (the Structural Frame) of the B&D textbook enrich your understanding of the ways in which organizations and the people working in them function?

What I learned was that every organization has to function a little differently.  I have worked in the same industry most of my adult life, so that is really what I have to compare to, so I was a little surprised to read about companies like UPS who actually prefer so much structure.  “Given such a tight leash, you might expect demoralized employees.  However the technology makes the job easier and enables the drivers to be more productive.  As one driver remarked to us with a smile, ‘we’re happy robots.’” (Bolman and Deal pg 48) Reading this, or about teachers that prefer more strict job roles and lines of authority was a little shocking to me.   Although I do want my job role and expectations of me to be clear, I like to have some flexibility of how that gets done.  I have had too many experiences that have been like being micromanaged, and that does not promote high employee morale or even employee retention.  After reading this, I can see how certain industries could benefit more from such a tight leashed structure, and that it does help the employees not only be more productive, but to make them feel very clear about their day to day activities. 

 

Prompt #2:  How can you apply the concepts that you have learned about in the readings to your personal or organizational life?  Be specific.

Balance is key, which is not always an easy thing to obtain.  I believe for most professions or organizations that is true, and it is true for me working in the banking world.  Banking requires a lot of rules and policies, both internal set policies and federal regulations that we have to follow.  These are not wishy washy rules, these are things that have to be done or we can lose or jobs, lose licensing, pay fines, and sometimes even go to prison.  In that sense, there is a lot of vertical coordination that has to be in every banking center, and it comes from the very top down.  As a branch manager, I am expected to be the authority inside the banking center to make sure all of the staff is adhering to these rules, policies, and procedures.  But then, also as the branch manager, I practice some level of lateral coordination.  We have both formal and informal meetings, to go over things like customer service scores, sales numbers and goals, and general operational things that may need to be addressed.  I have these same types of exchanges with my boss as well.  We have to have a good balance of both the lateral and vertical coordination to make sure that the bank runs wells, doesn’t break any policies, and hopefully keeps the employees somewhat happy as well. 

 

Prompt #3: What are the “structural imperatives” identified by Bolman and Deal?  In other words, what is the universal set of internal and external parameters that organizations need to respond to when choosing its structure?  How does structure influence what happens in the workplace?

The structural imperatives that Bolman and Deal identify, are things that should be included when evaluating what type of structure would work best for a particular organization.  “There is no such thing as an ideal structure.  Every organization needs to respond to a universal set of internal and external perameters.” (Bolman and Deal pg 60)  The parameters are size and age, core process, environment, strategy and goals, information technology, and nature of the workforce. 

If there is not enough structure, or no structure in a workplace, then a lot of times, people are working toward nothing.  There is a waste of time, energy, and resources.  If there is too much structure then a similar thing could happen.  If there is too much structure that is requiring a lot of meetings, memos, and red tape then there can also be a waste of time and money.  If the structure is not well designed for the particular company or organization, then it will continue to fail.  No matter how many new managers or employees you bring in, if the structure is faulty, then the fate of the company is sealed. 

 

Prompt #4:  In Chapter Four, Bolman and Deal describe eight basic structural tensions that organizations face when searching for an appropriate structure.   Consider an organization in your life (perhaps your family, or any other organization with which you are familiar).  Make some connections / discuss this organization in light of at least a few of these structural tensions.

In my family, I feel like we have suffered from Too Loose versus Too Tight.  My mom is very structured, very particular, very traditional and old school, and very obsessive compulsive.  My dad and I are very much the opposite.  We are much more laid back, go with the flow type of people.  It has caused conflict within our family a few times.  I can think of a few instances, one of which would be when we took family vacations.  My mom would be up at the crack of dawn, not wanting to miss anything at all.  My dad and I wanted to sleep in, it is vacation after all.  She could not understand why we put up such a fuss when she would try to get us up before the sun came up.  It would definitely put a damper on our vacations.  Another big time that sticks out for me, is just recently I got married.  As my mom’s only daughter and being 31 years old, she had been waiting for that day to come.  She could hardly contain herself with all the planning, making lists, and coming up with a million and one ideas.  That being said, my now husband and I were not wanting to be particularly traditional in our wedding.  What I mean is that I didn’t want to wear a veil, and the groom and groomsmen didn’t wear jackets and they wore Jordan’s instead of dress shoes.  We didn’t want big flower arrangements or anything like that, we wanted something fun, by the water, to celebrate with our family and friends.  My mom couldn’t wrap her head around any of it.  It was not what she had pictured for me after all these years so during the eight LONG months of planning, I got many text messages and emails telling me all the reasons she thought what I was doing was wrong.  It got to a point where I didn’t even want to be around my mom, I wanted to elope!  She is my mother and I love her, but she is too tight on everything, and I am not going to lie, I have a tendency to be almost too loose on a lot things, and that is a recipe for disaster.

In the banking center that I took over last November, we had the situation of Goal-less versus Goal-bound.  There was a teller there, she has been working for the bank since 1988!  She had tried to move up in the last few years but she just couldn’t quite catch up so she moved back down to being a teller.  The problem is that she was stuck in the old way of doing things and the old goals.  As the computer systems have been upgraded, and there have been new ways of doing things, she just didn’t seem to move forward with it.  Her numbers, her balancing accuracy, and everything else was suffering because of it.  When I would have to put her on a disciplinary warning, she would tell me what she thought the goals were, and it was the very old way of doing it.  She would type in the old commands to the new system and freeze up the whole computer. Because she would do that, she would then do a lot of hitting “enter” and “escape” thinking that would solve the problem.  She overdrew a client’s account by $15,000 by doing this.  The problem was, that the previous manager before me, didn’t have the heart to really stay on top of this teller to see if she could move forward with the times, or if it was time for her to take a step back.  It was a very hard thing for me to approach, especially as the new manager and her being so tenured. 

 

Prompt #5:  Throughout your progression in the Organizational Leadership program, you have had a number of courses that include content that could be viewed through the structural frame.  Please highlight what you would consider to be two of the most important things (ideas, concepts, theories, models, processes, skills, etc.) that you have learned in previous coursework that you can relate to the structural frame.  Briefly discuss each key learning, the course where you learned it, and its connection with the structural frame.

I am currently enrolled in OGL 360-Assessment in Leadership.  We have learned about modeling the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encouraging the heart.  Although we are still in the early stages of that class, all five of these principles have been huge for me as a current manager and leader.  I feel that these principles all support the idea that “suitable forms of coordination and control ensure that diverse efforts of individuals and units mesh.” (Bolman and Deal pg 45)

In most of my courses here at ASU, the emphasis has been put on it is the leader’s job to set the tone, build a foundation, good communication, and lead the way.  Ironically, I am in a class right now, one that will leave the name out of that has started out focusing on that same idea.  The part that is ironic to me is that the professor isn’t really practicing what she preaches.  The course schedule was less than clear to put it mildly, and the entire class turned in the first two assignments late.  After the professor gave us all zeros on the assignments, we all took both the hallway conversations and to email to reach out to her to try to understand why we got zeros.  After explaining the way her course calendar worked, we all asked if we could go ahead and turn in our assignments, and now knowing going forward what her expectation was not be late.  We got very little communication from her, but we all still have zeros.  When your entire group that you are leading doesn’t understand your communication, I kind of feel like there is an issue.  The structure is not good, and everyone gets start off on the wrong foot.  “Troubles arise and performance suffers for structural deficits, remedied through problem solving and restructuring.” (Bolman and Deal pg 45)

 

Prompt #6:  How has structure impacted the culture and outcomes (for customers, employees, stockholders, surrounding community and/or any other stake-holders) in an organization with which you are affiliated?  Describe enough of the situation concretely to provide context and use concepts from the readings in your response. If you don’t think structure has any influence, think again more carefully and perhaps revisit the readings / Learning Module content to broaden your definition and understanding.

 

I definitely think that structure has impacted the culture and outcomes for all of us at the company I work for.  We are actually in the middle of a pretty big structural change.  Previously I answered to a district manager who oversaw about 20 branches, and he was in charge of making sure we were performing both in sales and in operations.  We now have had a restructure where there is a now a sales district manager and an operations district manager.  The sales district manager is now the direct manager for my sales staff and not me.  I answer directly to the operations district manager.  Previously, my district manager was extremely micromanaging.  He tried to instill so many rules and policies, that it made it very hard on us.  We were constantly having to report our sales, 4-5 times daily.  During my last audit, he sent me over 150 text messages checking to see how it was going.  For the one year that we had that district manager, we lost seven branch managers, and countless other employees because they couldn’t handle the management structure.  I was not far from leaving myself, I used to say I wanted to cry or drink, or sometimes both, every single day when I left work.  Now, with the new structure, there is NO communication.  Because I have two different managers who technically oversee my branch there needs to be a good amount of communication between all three of us, to make sure we are on the same page about everything.  Instead, I am lucky if I get one email from each of them per week.  If I email or call them, I very rarely get any response back.  The company as a whole did this restructuring to theoretically take a lot of the work off the plate of the branch managers, but right now it is causing more work and frustration.  I am hoping it is a growing pains situation, and that we will get it all figured out, but based off other part of the company that rolled this out months before we did, it isn’t looking promising.  It has created a culture where it seems most people don’t want to come to work, which is sad because there are people who used to love working for this company and have been doing so for 30 plus years.  The customers can feel our frustration, and they get frustrated with the high employee turnover and the long lines they have to wait in when we are understaffed due to employees being so unhappy and unsupported.