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 the 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) Name and describe your organization.

The organization I have chosen is TACTECH. TACTECH is responsible for the

maintenance and operation of tactical equipment utilized to support multinational
operations within a given area of responsibility. TACTECH is a sub-organization of
Global Securities Inc., a much larger national organization. Many of TACTECH policies
and procedures are subservient to Global Securities Inc. TACTECH has a director, two
assistant directors, and 30 teams of technicians which each report to their assigned
Manager and Frontline Supervisor; in total the organization has ~200 employees. The
executive leadership, Managers, and Frontline Supervisors of TACTECH are drawn from
a community of proven leaders with at least eight years of experience. The technicians
are drawn from a pool of zero to four years of experience with very basic knowledge of
the systems assigned to them. TACTECH is a high tempo mobile organization that
travels with its equipment to facilitate the operations it is supporting. These operations
are high visibility events on a national level; they are inherently hazardous and could
result in the loss of life, substantial costly repairs, or in extreme casis a national crisis.

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

My role in TACTECH as a manager was to lead the four teams responsible for the
communication equipment utilized by our organization and its customers. I had a
frontline supervisor, two lead technicians, and four team supervisors who each had
approximately six junior technicians; in total I was responsible for approximately 30
employees. I reported directly to one of the assistant directors to TACTECH. As the
manager I was responsible for the operational status of TACTECH’s communication
equipment; I was to ensure that TACTECH’s policies and procedures were strictly
adhered to; I was responsible for the promotion and recognition of my technicians; and I
was responsible for the mental, emotional, and physical well being of my assigned
personnel. In addition to all of this TACTECH provided Global Securities Inc. personnel
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 on a daily basis to supervise/operate functions of their current mission sets. There were
many resources available to help me accomplish these responsibilities but it was my duty
to ensure that issues were identified and a plan developed to utilize those resources.

3) Describe the situation, including information you think will help the reader
understand the most important elements of the situation. (This will require
selectivity: part of the art of case writing is separating the essential facts from the
mass of information that might be included).

The Environment:

I had been in my position for approximately six months. I received a new

frontline supervisor about two months previously who had experience with our assigned
equipment and was recognized as a subject matter expert by Global Securities Inc. At the
time my teams were going through a rigorous evaluation by an external organization to
certify our capabilities and the equipment utilized. From our discussions the frontline
supervisor was satisfied with the position, the teams, and our relation. Global Securities
Inc. was organizing a multinational operation that would take approximately one year to
execute and entailed travel all around the globe. TACTECH had about six months to
prepare for this operation. All of the junior technicians on my teams had less than a year
of experience and no experience operating and maintaining the communication
equipment during operations.

The Situation:

Having recognized the current environment and identified several deficiencies I

generated a plan to get our teams on track and ready to support the upcoming operations.
I gave the plan to my frontline supervisor asking him/her to review the plan and give me
feedback before we issued it to our teams. I asked how much time would be needed and
he/she said a couple of days would be enough. After the allotted time I asked if he/she
had had enough time to review the plan and if they needed anything changed. The
frontline supervisor said yes they had had enough time and that nothing needed to be
changed. At this point I had my suspicions about their sincerity in the execution of the
task because this frontline supervisor had some very traditional ideas about the hierarchy
of a frontline supervisor and the plan specifically detailed a training regime that the
frontline supervisor would be responsible for (which is in the job description for the
position, leading and training junior technicians). So I asked again and got the same
response with a very flippant tone so I assumed I was overthinking it. I let the frontline
supervisor know that we would be disseminating the plan the upcoming Monday so that it
could be started with a fresh assignment of tasking for the teams, the frontline supervisor
agreed.

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 That Friday the plan was posted in the associated team spaces and personnel were
directed to review it and come with questions/concerns on Monday morning at roll call.
On Monday morning business went down as usual and then at the end of roll call the new
plan was brought up by myself, I explained its purpose and the guidelines associated with
it and asked for feedback from the group. No one had any feedback other than some
questions to clarify expectations then as we were all about to go about our tasking my
frontline supervisor came to me and said that he/she was not going to execute the plan
and he/she did not care what the consequences were. To be honest I was expecting some
resistance as is usually the case with any change implemented but I was completely
caught off guard by the demeanor and social impact of the statement. I asked if there was
something specific about the plan that needed to be addressed and the response was I am
not doing this.

The plan detailed guidance on how to report equipment deficiencies in a more

organized fashion; requirements for the routine review of outstanding requisitions; an
allotted time for self-paced training, as time permitted, that was to fall well within the
organization's approved work schedule; and a weekly quiz to assess basic knowledge
levels of the technicians, which was to be pulled from previous promotion exams.

The situation then started to devolve as the first line supervisor started to show
emotional distress when I asked a question trying to clarify what the issue was. At this
point I asked the audience we had accumulated to leave the area and tried to have a
private conversation with the firstline supervisor. I repeated what he/she said and asked if
he/she wanted to explain or say anything other than he/she was not going to execute the
plan. I asked if he/she wanted to talk to someone else about it and he/she came back with
the same response. When I saw the conversation was going nowhere I stated that I would
go and speak with my superiors about the blatant obstinate behavior that I felt was not
appropriate for someone in his/her standing within the organization, to which the
frontline supervisor stated that he/she did not care.

Unfortunately the situation only spiraled out of control after this meeting as the
frontline supervisor became more hostile and emotional about everything presented. The
directors of TACTECH counseled the frontline supervisor and directed strict compliance
to the legitimate plan. They then had me formally counsel the frontline supervisor and
add this to the employment record. It then turned into him/her having to give me a daily
briefing at the end of each day and documentation of what the frontline supervisor had
accomplished that day before asking for permission to clock out at the end of the day.
The whole situation was embarrassing, exhausting, and detrimental to our team's
preparations for the upcoming operations.

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The Background:

The frontline supervisor had been removed from his/her previous position because
the manager had communicated that they were impossible to work with and had instilled
a necrotic culture within the teams he/she was supervising. The directors decided to move
the frontline supervisor to my teams in hopes that it was just a personality conflict
between the previous manager and this frontline supervisor. I was not read into the
previous circumstances nor told about it until the frontline supervisor was removed from
our teams several months later and given a position that did not entail direct supervision
of technicians, a significantly less cumbersome role within the organization.