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.

My role in Starbucks is as a Shift Supervisor reporting to a Store Manager and

leading a team of up to 9 at a time. I work alongside other Supervisors to maintain
standards and policies using tools and procedures provided by the organization. In my
current capacity, I work with other supervisors throughout different parts of the day like
opening the store, peak business period, and the middle of the day (day parts).
For the last few months, communication has been breaking down and some issues
are being made larger as time goes on. Because there is a lack of effective
communication and standard adherence, there has been hostility and negativity in the
workplace. This creates an issue for the team as leadership presence is lacking and
standards are being disregarded. This could also cause issues with the customers we serve
as drink quality and experiences might be different depending on who’s working. Like a
machine bureaucracy structure, these policies and standards are put in place across all the
stores in the organization to ensure high-quality beverages and world-class customer
service experiences (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p. 82).

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

There are multiple ways to approach this situation as it relates to the structure of
the company. One could argue there are changes in upper leadership who make the calls
for labor allowance and how labor will be split among different parts of the day. This
could lead to periods of time where the team might not feel as supported. With this
scenario, instead of leaning on disregarding policy and being negative as a leader, a
supervisor would be able to make the call of extending a barista shift or communicating
with supporting facts about why an additional partner would be useful at a certain time of
day when busy. Problem-solving with the intent to make the team feel more supported
rather than badmouthing the company and other partners and supervisors to the team they
are leading would lead to better outcomes.
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 Another scenario where structure could have influenced this behavior is simply
the lack of structure. Until about two weeks ago, we had an assistant store manager
working with our store manager to further his own development. I believe this assistant
manager could have played a role in the breakdown of communication because he never
acted on the reports of the bad-mouthing and negative attitudes towards the organization.
Because there was no action taken by a high-level partner in the structure of our store, the
team could have felt alone and therefore done whatever they felt was necessary
regardless of policies and procedures. The text describes a critical dilemma regarding
structure being too loose and how people can go astray without the proper structure and
disregard for what others are doing (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p. 78).

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

Adhering too strictly to policies can be a problem just as not adhering to policies
can be a problem within an organization (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p. 79). In this case, I would
recommend some work be done by the top of our store’s structure, the store manager. I
think the first step would be to outline again, with clear borders, what the structure looks
like in the store and how our own subgroups as supervisors create our own team in the
structure of the store. I think this aspect gets lost easily when there are differences in the
types of leaders and a general disregard for standards. Once there is an understanding of
the structure, work can be done like taking on a new project where the team can work on
being effective again.

Unfortunately, in-store operations at Starbucks are typically cut and dry. If you
aren’t following standards and there have been multiple attempts to realign values and
goals, partners can be let go. While this is not an easy decision, a restructuring of
leadership in-store can allow for new ideas and collaboration that might not have been
present beforehand. While there are a lot of upper leadership who rely on restructuring
early in their reign, restructuring can still not be the most effective strategy (Bolman &
Deal, 2021, p. 75). I think in the case of my situation, it sounds too difficult to try and
remedy and almost too far gone. The lack of respect that the partners offer their leaders is
hard to remedy without significant action being taken to eliminate the behaviors that do
not align with the organization's mission and values.

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

I think I would have approached the issue differently knowing what I know now
about the structural frame. There was a lot of small talk amongst the supervisors about
how public messages were left regarding which supervisor left behind tasks after they
left. Instead of talking among other supervisors, the issues should have been brought up

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 to the person who wrote them. I would add that there would need to be an appropriate
way to approach a team member about issues like this that wouldn’t feel so hostile. If
there was no solution or nothing had been resolved, I would have immediately moved up
the structure of our store and brought in the manager. This would have allowed less time
to build between instances and allowed for issues to be squashed instead of being left to
fester and grow for weeks.

As another example of what restructuring looks like in this organization, two

other partners and I were brought into a store a few years back to ‘fix’ the behaviors. We
came in and took time to build relationships and watch and listen to issues that the team
had. We didn’t make any sudden movements and were able to get a big picture of what
was happening and what was lacking. In the sense of reframing, most partners in the store
didn’t know what an effective leadership team was and were used to an almost toxic
work environment. There aren’t two stores that are run the same way and there isn’t only
one right answer, the difference is how the situation is framed (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p.
13). We were able to make small changes that were understood and appreciated by the
team and gradually we were able to get the team back on the same page with more
motivation and meaning than they had before. I would love this to happen within our
store, but it seems out of reach without buy-in from everyone.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass