OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Symbolic Frame Worksheet

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

To start, my role in this given situation was as a newly appointed internal project manager at
the company I currently work for, DeNOVO Solutions, LLC. The situation that unfolded was
one of pettiness and micromanagement. The old project manager and team lead had left the
company over personal reasons dealing with himself and his wife and what they dealt with at the
company. His wife left on not-so-great terms and he did not like how she was treated, so he also
left. Fast forward about six months and he was back in the picture, only now he was working
with the company that DeNOVO is a subcontractor for. He actually ended up being my manager
through this ordeal because the office he worked for was connected to my office (his old team).
For myself, this was the best outcome possible because I was brand new in my role and he had
the knowledge necessary to help me at any time I needed. My executive leadership did not see it
that way. They felt as if he left the company and basically conspired with the larger company to
take that role in order to have a management role over my team and DeNOVO. This put me in a
really tough position as a new project manager, one that I was not always ready to deal with.

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

Symbolism in the government contracting world is an odd thing. Every company believes
they are the best. They know the best. It is a cut throat environment because companies are
fighting for millions of dollars worth of contracts from the government. Symbolism within the
contracting world is always about prestige and how one company treats its employees better than
the others so why would anyone rightfully want to work for any other company than the “best”?
Being that companies are fighting for contracts simply to pay their people and remain afloat, I
understand the harsh reality of why companies compete against each other the way they do. The
issue in this situation was that symbolism also related to pride and caused further issues.

DeNOVO is the smaller of the companies in this situation and is actually a sub-contractor
under the other company. Standing up for yourself is one thing, but outright fighting with the

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larger company over a petty situation is a whole new scenario to put a company and a team in the
middle of. Realistically, there were times that the pride of these two companies in the situation
could have very well caused the larger company to just drop DeNOVO over some sort of conflict
of interest cause. This would have affected myself and my team, but also maybe more
importantly to the company, it would have affected their revenue by millions of dollars. The
pride that was present between the two companies is one of the. Main reasons behind the
micromanaging that they performed on my team as well as my old manager’s team. The
symbolism of “we are the best” and “we will win this petty fight” between both companies
caused this situation to ccur.

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

Recognizing that symbolism is such a heavy characteristic that makes or breaks a successful
contracting company within the government sphere, it is difficult to recommend anything from
my end. Chapter 12 describes an organizations symbolism defined through vision and values
(Bolman & Deal, 2021). DeNOVO has an entire wall in the break room dedicated to the different
values and ethics that the company lives by. It is printed in the format of those cliché word art
boards where the more prevalent a word is, the larger it is visually on the board of words that run
both horizontally and vertically. One of the largest words on that wall is “respect”. Coming from
a military background and working with the government on their contracts, one would think that
the company CEO and executive leadership understand respect for superiors.

DeNOVO as a company is underneath the company that is the prime contractor on this
program. I believe that DeNOVO needed to get back to the very values that they display and
advertise in order to have realized that the situation was larger than this one single program and
one person leaving DeNOVO for the other company. Using the term “respect”, the company
executives would have emerged to find that the old team leader for the program leaving for the
larger company was the best thing that could have happened for the program. It would have
saved them a lot of anguish, saved some reputation between the two companies, and would have
never put myself or others in harms way the way they did temporarily.

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

It always comes back to two things for me with this response. I think about the people and I
think about my own lack of leadership and stepping in sooner to help ease the tensions. Again,
one of the most important things that DeNOVO prides itself on is the people that work there. All
employees are viewed as family members. Why, then, would a company put an entire team in the
middle of a petty argument between itself and the leadsership of another company? Why would a
company pin its own employees against someone who used to be part of the “family”? These are
questions I always asked myself while the altercation was taking place. I never stopped to ask

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myself why I was not stepping up and protecting my team, the program, and the relationship
between my team and the old team maanger more. I was too new to the leadership role and felt
as if nothing I would say or do at the time could have made any sort of difference. This went on
for multiple months before I was able to gain the courage to speak up for myself and my team. It
was symbolic to me in a sense that I found my own values and vision throughout this entire
situation. I was able to better determine who I was and am as a leader, the things I stand for, and
what I believe in. I just wish I had learned those things sooner.

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 Reference

The Symbolic Frame. (2021). In Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership (7th
ed., pp. 255–256). essay.