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.

The situation that I will be referencing is employee layoffs and how this ultimately
impacted and altered the culture within Taco Cabana.

In 2020, the covid-19 pandemic was starting, and organizations were all struggling to
find how to function. Businesses were not earning money because of restrictions placed
by the government, employee staffing concerns, safety fears of working in proximity of
others, supply issues, communication breakdowns and more. This unfortunately made it
hard for businesses to survive or even thrive. Many businesses were lost, closed or sold
because profitability was just not there. This inevitably impacted jobs, culture and morale
in most or if not all industries and businesses. People were also having to take on more
responsibilities in their roles to compensate for the work that was not being performed by
a full team.

At height of the pandemic, Taco Cabana’s executive team met to discuss the state of
business. It was determined that hard decisions were going to have to be made for Taco
Cabana to survive and keeps its doors open. We were going to have to perform layoff’s
and close some stores. My involvement around these discussions were related to field
operational teams and not in the corporate office setting. With reducing the workforce
within the organization, employees and leaders were having to pick up the workload of
those that were laid off; with no added compensation or benefit. Lack of communication,
appreciation and stress from the pandemic aftermath, lead to a culture disruption within
the organization.

Taco Cabana was a prior employer of mine and my role was a Regional Human
Resources Manager. In my capacity, I lead a team of 4 Human Resources Business
Partners supporting field operations throughout the organization. We supported in the

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 people aspect with items such as minimizing risk, development, recruiting, performance,
compensation, consulting, regulatory/compliance, talent and more.

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

Taco Cabana has a typical organization structure that supports and leads the restaurant
operations. This structure involves a CEO, executives, upper management, middle
management, lower management, supervisors and front-line workers. There are also sub
departments within the structure to support such as human resources, construction,
quality control, training, technology, security, and more. Every department working
together with defined responsibilities to go after the company’s strategic goals, which
describes the social architecture of work (Bolman & Deal, 2021).

The structure of the organization at Taco Cabana greatly influenced the situation. From
the start, financial goals that were set from the top were not being achieved from the
front-line teams. This was mainly due to the outside disruptions of the covid-19
pandemic. With a sharp decline in sales and profitably the operations executive
leadership team and human resources had to meet to collaborate where layoffs were
going to happen, to save the company from closing. We discussed items such as
performance, tenure, employee files with corrective actions, etc. to try and make better
informed decisions around the layoffs. The conversations often stalled because of the bias
from leaders around certain employees. Because of this, we had to shift to just one
consideration for the layoff’s, which was tenure. We also discussed the rollout plan to
conduct the layoffs and an option around a severance. Once the plan was solidified, we
moved to discussing the restructure and additional roles that employees and leadership
were going to have to take on.

As we moved to perform the layoff’s and discussed the role enhancements with the
remaining the team, we shared how this was going to help address the long-term stability
of the organization. Eventually with the added work, inexperience and stress from the
pandemic repercussions, culture began to shift.

Leadership had a responsibility to uplift and embrace the teams they managed over. I
noticed a gap and when I connected with teams in the field, I often heard employees
share how they felt burnt out. They were having to work multiple roles, longer hours and
having to work through the complexities of the pandemic, while they felt upper
leadership was not present to support. They also shared how they felt everything was
bottom line driven to make a profit versus being people centered and living its mission.
They stated there was lack of communication coming from the leadership team and felt
when they reached out, nobody was there to support.

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

Considering the unprecedented time of the pandemic, there is always room for
improvement and a change of action. “Structure needs to be designed with an eye toward
strategy, the nature of the environment, the talents of the workforce, and the available
resources” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p. 63). With the collaboration around layoffs with the
executive leadership team, I would have recommended that we left bias outside of the
door, when it came to the partner planning discussions. If our strategy was to ensure the
success of the brand, we should have selected the best personnel based on multiple data
points. Having to perform layoffs with just the one consideration of tenure, led to losing
some top talent. Talent that was brought in to support the organizations growth or
enhance the environment and cultural aspects.

“When the time for restructuring comes, managers need to take account of tensions
specific to each structural configuration” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p. 88). Being that
additional roles and responsibilities were having to be picked up by all employees in the
organization due to the layoffs, I would have recommended that leadership met with all
individuals on their teams personally. Sharing appreciation and guidance on how we will
create success together and being supportive of feedback. I would have recommended
that as part of the transition process, we would discuss how we would show up for one
another in a positive way. I would have utilized the office of the CEO to communicate
the appreciation of all employees on a routine cadence and set goals for us to go after
together. I would have set up reoccurring meetings to discuss our employees moral and
feedback to create solutions through times of ambiguity at all levels. I would have had
teams collaborate within the structure to design and implement training plans to help our
teams be successful with the added responsibilities and inexperience in some of these
roles. Communication would be key at all levels to ensure the culture of the brand was
protected, tension was eased, and actions were created to better support every employee
and team within the organization.

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

I would have done a lot of things differently. Most importantly, I would have leaned into
my courage to have a more transparent conversation with the executive team. From the
start, I knew that selecting only tenure would cause a big problem for us long term as an
organization. Considering that we were keeping leaders that had performance or
personnel issues just because they were more tenured, would cause a concern around
cultural aspects. I would have shared my opinions and solutions to better inform my
organization of the possible repercussions or successes we would see with the restructure
from layoff’s.

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 I would have also ensured that culture, collaboration and communication was top of mind
during times of bewilderment. From a structural standpoint, ensuring that I spoke up to
different levels of leadership when a concern was present, so that we could create
solutions. I would have revisited the restructure to understand if we were over piling
work and how we could better support our teams from data collected through one on one
engagement (Bolman & Deal, 2021). I would have ensured that there was clear
communication on our goals, support structure and priorities around how to best support
our teams.

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 Reference or References

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

(7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Jennings, L. (2021, July 26). Anil Yadav’s “entrepreneur Mindset” drew him to acquire Taco

Cabana. Nation’s Restaurant News. https://www.nrn.com/fast-casual/anil-yadav-s-

entrepreneur-mindset-drew-him-acquire-taco-cabana