URBS 4/511 Urban Policy & Strategic Analysis

Reframing Organizations

Buried deep within their book, Reframing Organizations, Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal come to the heart of the problem of management: “Control is an illusion and rationality an afterthought…. Organizational life is always full of simultaneous events that can be interpreted in a variety of ways” (p. 266). They key to accomplishing something that requires concerted action with other people is to reframe your perception of the situation to take into account the divergent perspectives of the various players. “”Their frame—not yours—determines how they will act” (p. 270).

PRINCE analysis (Coplin & O’Leary, 1972) is concerned with a single frame—yours—and a single process—power. Breakthrough negotiation (Ury, 1991) is concerned with two frames—yours and your partners—but still mostly uses a single process—power. Bolman & Deal are trying to balance multiple frames simultaneously, each with its own particular process. On the other hand, Ury and Coplin & O’Leary provide fairly specific instructions for implementing your analysis. Bolman & Deal are less specific in that regard.

Bolman & Deal identify four distinctive “frames” from which people view their world—Structural, Human Resources, Political, and Symbolic. Each frame comes with a constellation of concepts, metaphors and values which provide the scaffolding for organizing raw experience of the world. No one uses only one frame all the time, although people often show a preference for one or two frames. The characteristics of the four frames are summarized in the following table:

Overview of the Four-Frame Model

	Frame
	Structural	Human Resource	Political	Symbolic
Metaphor for Organization	Factory or Machine	Family	Jungle	Carnival, temple, theater
Central Concepts	Rules, roles, goals, policies, technology, environment	Needs, skills, relationships	Power, conflict, competition, organizational politics	Culture, meaning, metaphor, ritual, ceremony, stories, heroes
Image of Leadership	Social architecture	Empowerment	Advocacy	Inspiration
Basic Leadership Challenge	Attune structure to task, technology, environment	Align organizational and human needs	Develop agenda and power base	Create faith, beauty, meaning
Organizational Ethic	Excellence	Caring	Justice	Faith
Leadership Contribution	Authorship	Love	Power	Significance

Source: Bolman & Deal (1997), p. 15 & p. 344

Not every framework works well in every situation. As a change agent, you will find that all or most of the frames will be employed by the people you will be dealing with. The “trick” to creating change in an organization (or a community or a relationship or….) is to figure out which frame offers you the best opportunity for focusing all the actors on a workable solution. This means you are going to have to convince some people to change their frame of reference, at least when they are thinking and talking about the changes that are coming. Once the situation or problem has been successfully reframed, you will need to help them reinterpret the new framework in terms of their preferred approach. Think of it as a problem of water running in a streambed that is causing a problem. The flow has to be disrupted so it can be redirected—where it will then settle down again into a stable channel.

Choosing a Frame

Question	Frame if answer is Yes	Frame if answer is No
Are individual commitment and motivation essential to success?	Human Resource, Symbolic	Structural, Political
Is the technical quality of the decision important?	Structural	Human Resource, Political, Symbolic
Are there high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty?	Political, Symbolic	Structural, Human Resource
Are conflict and scarce resources significant?	Political, Symbolic	Structural, Human Resource
Are you working from the bottom up?	Political	Structural, Human Resource, Symbolic

Source: Bolman & Deal (1997), p. 271

The interesting thing about Reframing is that each of the frameworks has a way of formulating and expressing common organizational processes. It is possible for people in the organization to talk all day about “strategic planning” and mean very different things. If one assumes that one’s own framework is the common one, you can be sure you will be misunderstood. It is important to identify the values and metaphors at work for the other participants, and speak to them in their terms if you are going to get them to support the change you desire.

Reframing Organizational Process

	Frame
	Structural	Human Resources	Political	Symbolic
Strategic Planning	Strategies to set objectives and coordinate resources	Gatherings to promote participation	Arenas to air conflicts and realign power	Ritual to signal responsibility, produce symbols, negotiate meanings
Decision Making	Rational sequence to produce right decision	Open process to produce commitment	Opportunity to gain or exercise power	Ritual to confirm values and provide opportunities for bonding
Reorganizing	Realign roles and responsibilities to fit tasks and environment	Maintain balance between human needs and formal roles	Redistribute power and form new coalitions	Maintain image of accountability and responsiveness; negotiate new social order
Evaluating	Way to distribute rewards or penalties and control performance	Process for helping individuals grow and improve	Opportunity to exercise power	Occasion to play roles in shared ritual
Approaching Conflict	Maintain organizational goals by having authorities resolve conflict	Develop relationships by having individuals confront conflict	Develop power by bargaining, forcing, or manipulating others to win	Develop shared values and use conflict to negotiate meaning
Goal Setting	Keep organization headed in right direction	Keep people involved and communication open	Provide opportunity for individuals and groups to make interests known	Develop symbols and shared values
Communication	Transmit facts and information	Exchange information, needs, and feelings	Influence or manipulate others	Tell stores
Meetings	Formal occasions for making decisions	Informal occasions for involvement, sharing feelings	Competitive occasions to win points	Sacred occasions to celebrate and transform the culture
Motivation	Economic incentives	Growth and self-actualization	Coercion, manipulation, and seduction	Symbols and celebrations

Source: Bolman & Deal (1997), pp. 267-268

Bolman and Deal also provide similar analyses for Leadership:

Reframing Leadership

	Frame
	Structural	Human Resources	Political	Symbolic
Effective Leader	Analyst, architect	Catalyst, servant	Advocate, negotiator	Prophet, poet
Effective Leadership Process	Analysis, design	Support, empowerment	Advocacy, coalition building	Inspiration, framing experience
Ineffective Leader	Petty tyrant	Weakling, pushover	Con artist, thug	Fanatic, fool
Ineffective Leadership Process	Management by detail and fiat	Abdication	Manipulation, fraud	Mirage, smoke & mirrors

Source: Bolman & Deal (1997), p. 303

And for the process of change itself:

Reframing Change

	Frame
	Structural	Human Resources	Political	Symbolic
Barriers to Change	Loss of clarity and stability, confusion, chaos	Anxiety, uncertainty, feelings of incompetence, neediness	Disempowerment, conflict between winners and losers	Loss of meaning and purpose, clinging to the past
Essential Strategies	Communicating, realigning and renegotiating formal patterns and policies	Training to develop new skills, participation and involvement, psychological support	Creating arenas where issues can be renegotiated and new coalitions formed	Creating transition rituals: mourning the past, celebrating the future

Source: Bolman & Deal (1997), p. 321

Your job, then, as an analyst and a potential change agent is to determine:

What is the problem, and what is the situation in which it is embedded?
Which frames are in play?
Which frame(s) is most likely to lead to the desired change?
How can the concepts, metaphors, and values of that frame be used to reframe the situation to resolve the problem?

While the work here is in the conceptualization, a checklist can help with the process.

MSU