OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA- Political 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

Medtronic is an organization in the medical device industry. It supplies many different

medical device platforms, from implantable devices to surgical tools. Medtronic started
due to a power outage that affected all of the patients that had pacemakers plugged in and
could not run during the outage. Earl saw an opportunity to battery power the devices so
that they could treat the patients not being connected to a wall plug. I am a technician in
the battery department. My department builds many different models of battery
specifically for Medtronic devices. I have a wide range of responsibilities ranging from
equipment support, to calibrated device management, to doing equipment and or tool
qualifications. My situation revolves around when I was a team lead for one of the
production lines. The supervisor had ultimate say but I was allotted a lot of input into the
decisions. I had a situation that I was told I had to give one operator to another line. We
had a good group of eight people with one that was a lot slower at the processes. I was
told the other line needed a solid person, so I was not allowed to give that one slower
operator to them. So, the first decision was pretty easy that I would give them one of the
newest additions to my line. I then h. to decide between the two. Both were very punctual
and had both learned about the same amount of the processes at the same speed and had
equal quality of their work. My decision ended up coming down to the social makeup of
the group. One of the two connected a lot more with two strong personalities on the line,
and at times those two could make me feel as if they were strong holding me into things.
I decided that since I had the opportunity, I could not let them become a trio. So, I gave
that operator to the other line. It was a tough decision and had so many inputs into why I
made the decision I did, it also could have come with multiple different outcomes.

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 2) Describe how the Politics of the organization influenced the situation.
I think that the politics created the situation to start with. Someone above me used their
power to determine that the other line had more importance at the time than the line I was
working on. They brought there need to a meeting with my manager and I am sure their
director and convinced the director that his needs were more important than my
manager’s needs. Good operators are a scarce resource and the politics about attaining
and keeping them is always at play.

I also think that politics had a play in me making my decision. I did not want the trio to have
a greater ability to use coercive power on me. They would have very easily been able to “…
have the ability to constrain, block, interfere,……..” more with me if they had more people on
the same mission as them. So, I was trying to create a situation that would have less power
over me overall. (Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E.)

3) Recommend how you would use politics for an alternative course of action
regarding your case.
I would have taken the time to try to use the “alternative: principled bargaining, built
around four strategies” to convince my management to take the slower person, or just get a
new employee and leave me with my team intact. I think that I could have insisted on
objective Criteria and pulled together facts that show how well-oiled my team was as is and
how detrimental it will be to my team to take anyone of my strong assemblers. (Bolman, L.
G., & Deal, T. E.)

I also could have done some DMAIC problem solving and “invent options for mutual gain” I
think that I could have gotten some assistance from other leads that have been in this
position to produce some alternative options to move forward on. This would have at least
shown how the decision was affecting people. I assume they did not even think about how it
affected anyone as it was a number on a paper to them. (Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E.)

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

I would have insisted on more collaboration with upper management. I would have tried
to exercise some of my power that I have as a long-term employee who has met a lot of
people and tried to get some more power built up so I could keep my strong operators.

If that did not work, I would have used my power to attempt to trade my weaker
assembler with a stronger operator on a different assembly line. This was an option that I
did not even consider as I did not see myself having any sort of power due to the assigned

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 power of my management. I think that if I would have used politics and tried to negotiate,
I could have had more options come from the situation. I was too willing to just do what
they wanted me to do because that how it always was.

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 References
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(7th ed.). San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass (ASU Bookstore Automatic Purchase-Perusall Version Only)
(7th ed.). San