The Bolman and Deal’s Four-Frame Model

Leaders in organisations face the challenge of meeting the objectives which have been set for them. As a result, they find themselves together with their colleagues in a crisis when they fail to meet these objectives or when confronted with a situation in which they are unable to manage. As a result, it is critical for every leader in the organisation setting to understand how to frame and tackle the issues which they face within the organisation. The research paper focuses on an analysis of a work issue through the Bolman and Deal’s four-frame model. Furthermore, the analysis of the workplace issue reveals the areas of improvement and key action points and insights for me as a leader to ensure that I effectively handle the situation better when confronted with a similar situation.

Description of the selected issue

In every organisation, managers and team leaders have a great responsibility of ensuring that they organise their teams to successfully achieve their objectives (Kaliannan and Adjovu, 2015). As a result, most of the managers are always under pressure from the executive team and the board to ensure that their teams achieve their success. Two years ago, while leading a group of business development and sales personnel, I had the responsibility of providing that we grow the sales revenue of the company by 15% in three months. As a result, there was intense pressure from the management team for us to achieve the objective within the set timeline for us to unlock the desired growth by the company. As the team leader and the manager tasked with the responsibility of motivating the team and driving them towards the achieving the goal, I was directly responsible for the success of the project.

During the project, most of the team members lost confidence in my leadership, and a lot of conflicts emerged especially since most of them were frustrated that we were not going to meet the target. Furthermore, some of the members opted to send in their resignation letters resulting in a shortage regarding our capacity and human resource with regards to handling the workload that we had. Moreover, most of the team members were demotivated since they felt their opinions and input to the project was not being applied. Also, most of them thought that there was a lack of clarity regarding the strategy and tactics needed for us to achieve the goals. Hence, the members were non-committal, especially during the group meetings. When we conducted the review of the project after two months, we realised that we had a 25% chance of meeting our target. I was under much pressure and scrutiny from the executives to ensure that we achieve the objective. As a result, the lack of cohesion, teamwork and ownership of the vision led to conflicts within the team and poor performance. Three weeks later, the management team decided to let me off the project due to the poor performance of the team and the failure to meet our objectives.

Exploration of the issue using the Structural Frame

Bolman and Deal (2013) developed a framework with the aim of empowering leaders in the organisation to analyse the problems from four perspectives which they referred to as frames. The emphasis of the frame theory is that a leader who only focuses on one structure is bound to fail in meeting their objectives (Bolman and Deal, 2013). The four frames developed by Bolman and Deal include the Structural, human resources, political and symbolic (Bolman and Deal, 2013). The frame that applies to the issue being addressed is the structural frame.

The structural frame focuses on how hierarchies and relationships should be developed in response to the tasks and goals that are produced within the organisation (Lyon et al., 2014). The structural frame was formed in line with the essential characteristics of the organisation. Organisations exist to achieve established goals. The structural framework emphasises that one of the critical ways of achieving these goals is to increase performance and efficiency through the division of labour and specialisation (Tan, Hee and Piaw, 2015). As a result, the managers should organise and coordinate employees in an efficient manner to ensure that there is the effective division of labour and specialisation. As a result, organisations and departments, perform optimally when rationality prevails. Managers must ensure that structure aligns with the organisation’s circumstances.

As a manager, our team failed to deliver the target of growing the sales revenue within three months by 15% since we were unable to apply the structural frame in working towards achieving our objective. There were inadequate control and inappropriate structures towards achieving our target. The structural frame emphasises on precision and certainty of outcome. As a result, the frame does not match up well with uncertain or ambiguous issues or processes. As the business development team, we were confident of the outcome. However, there was a lot of ambiguity especially with regards to how we were going to achieve the objective. As a leader, I had failed to provide clear strategies and tactics on how we were going to meet the revenue target. Moreover, the team members were not clear on the specific initiatives and programs which they needed to do to ensure success.

The structural frame advocates for a stable organisation where the members are not threatened by change, and there are low cases of conflict (Sasnett and Ross, 2007). The management team failed to provide for us an alternative target in case we didn’t achieve the 15% growth. As a result, most of the team members were working under fear based on the knowledge that they would be fired if they failed to meet the target. The structural frame emphasises a top-down approach to decision making. There is a crucial emphasis on the team leaders and managers to ensure that they offer the leadership and mentorship to the team members to ensure that there is teamwork and collective responsibility to enhance success. The failure to show leadership and initiative from my part was one of the key contributors to failure as a team. The team members relied on my knowledge and experience as a manager to guide them to undertake the project successfully.

Opportunities for Action for myself and others

The foundation for every successful project is for the project leader to organise the team structurally while ensuring that the members are motivated even as they work towards achieving the objectives of the group (Higgs and Rowland, 2011). The analysis of the workplace issue which we faced through the framing theory enabled me to realise that there were a lot of areas in my leadership and management style which need improvement. One of the key action points for myself is to learn how to organise my team members based on their strengths and abilities. The concept of division of labour and specialisation is very critical especially in the context of working towards achieving a specific goal collectively. When the members of the team are allocated tasks based on their strengths and abilities, the collective output of the group increases (Garicano and Hubbard, 2009).

Communication of the vision and objectives of the project is very critical for any project to succeed as every member effectively understands their role (Agarwal and Garg, 2012). One of the reasons why we failed to achieve our objectives was the lack of clarity of the vision and how we were going to meet the target. As a result, the key learning point for myself is to improve my communication skills in such a way that my colleagues can understand the nature of the tasks and they can easily understand their roles and functions. Efficient distribution and allocation of resources hugely influence the success of the project. As a team leader, one of my key roles and responsibilities was to effectively use the resources which were at our disposal to ensure that we meet the objectives. Failure to efficiently allocate the resources was one of the critical factors that led to our failure. As a result, there is an opportunity for me to learn how to allocate resources effectively when handling a project to ensure that we achieve the set target with the limited resources available.

Teamwork and cohesion ensure that the full potential of the skills and abilities of the team members is realised (Vianen and Dreu, 2001). There is an opportunity for me to ensure that I learn how to organise teams and foster teamwork among my colleagues. The fact that there was an apparent lack of unity resulted in our failure. When undertaking projects which have a lot of pressure, most of the members are usually easily discouraged especially when they experience challenges. As a result, it is essential for the manager to ensure that they motivate the team members to keep their focus on achieving the targets despite the challenges they face. Hence, there is an opportunity for me to increase my interpersonal skills to the extent that I can effectively interact with my colleagues with the objective of helping them solve any challenges that they are facing to ensure that we achieve the set goals.

The analysis of the workplace issue also revealed an area which my colleagues need to improve on. There was a definite lack of communication within the department. Hence, the members need to develop the confidence to communicate and share their ideas on how the team can achieve the objective. The members also failed to work as a team. Hence, there is an opportunity for them to learn how to work to the strengths of each other within the organisation to enhance cohesion and improve the overall success of the team.

Two insights that were out of Sight

The analysis of the workplace issue through the four-frame model enabled me to gain insight on two key points. The first issue was on strategy. Strategic planning is a critical element towards the achievement of goals. Once the target was communicated to us by the management team, we didn’t take time to analyse the tasks for us to develop the tactics on how we could grow the sales pipeline for us to achieve our objectives. Sequencing of events is a crucial element of strategy (Jennings and Disney, 2006). A robust organisation structure supports the correct organisation of the activities of the department.  As a result, the structural frame model has enabled me to realise that strategic planning is mandatory for the successful execution of a project within the organisation as it empowers the members to develop working tactics on how to achieve the goals (French, 2013). Moreover, being conscious of the task at hand enables the leader to effectively allocate resources and correctly sequence activities which ultimately result in the achievement of the objectives.

The other insight that I realised later through the help of the structural framing model was the division of labour and specialisation. There is a need to effectively allocate tasks to the strengths of the individual team members to ensure that each of the members contributes their expertise and skill to the best of their abilities (Brusoni, 2005). Moreover, greater synergy is enhanced when all the members of the department feel that they are being utilised to their strengths. As a result, it requires the manager or supervisor to know the skills and abilities of each of the members and this can only be achieved after a developing a good working relationship. Therefore, there is an opportunity for me to comprehensively know my team members through enforcing closer interactions with them. The ability to allocate tasks and resources effectively across the members within the department will enable us to achieve our goals in the future. 

Summary of the issue from the perspective of four frames

The workplace issue where we failed to meet our objectives has been analysed through the structural frame. However, Bolman and Deal (2013) considered other frames of thought such as the human resource, political and symbolic frame. The symbolic frame addresses the need that the employees or people usually have within an organisation to ensure that they derive a purpose and meaning in their work. Most of the employees who are not passionate about their work do not perform effectively when given the opportunity (Pradhan and Jena, 2017). As a result, it is critical for the leaders to identify whether the people who they are managing are passionate about what they are doing or not. Hence, the symbolic frame of thought emphasises that there is a great need for the leaders to focus their attention on motivating and inspiring their colleagues to ensure that they remain focused on the goal despite the challenges that they may be facing. Moreover, the symbolic frame is also emphasised by continually creating a motivating vision while recognising the achievements of the employees.

Analysing our issue through the symbolic frame enabled me to realise that most of our team members did not have the drive and passion for working towards achieving the target that had been set. As a result, most of them were not motivated enough especially since they could not derive a sense of meaning and purpose in the work that they were doing. The political frame focuses on addressing any conflicting interests that may arise for both individuals and groups within the organisation. Conflict of interest normally occur especially in cases where there could be inadequate resources, and hence everyone is advocating for their interest. The conflict could also arise in cases where there are differences in ideology especially with regards to how a task should be handled. Hence, the political frame advocates for power-base building, conflict resolution and coalition-building to ensure that teamwork is enhanced even as everyone is working towards achieving the targets of the organisation.

One of the key reasons why we didn’t achieve our objective as a team was the fact that conflict of interest had taken root and thus we could not meet our goals. As a result, going forward, I will ensure that I apply the political frame to all the future projects which I will be undertaking to provide that we adequately address any conflict of interests especially due to the differences on how the resources should be allocated and how the ideologies of how the projects should be conducted. The human resource frame focuses mainly on the people’s needs within the organisation. The human workforce cannot be underestimated, and when their needs are not addressed, they will not perform optimally (Resnik and Elmore, 2018). As a result, Bolman and Deal (2013) emphasise that focusing on the employees and empowering them to perform their job guarantees productivity within the organisation effectively. Moreover, there is the need for the leaders to address their needs hence they will be able to focus effectively on the task that they have been given.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the research has explored the management analysis and problem-solving of a work issue through the framing model. Bolman and Deal (2013) developed the framing model which focuses on the four key areas of structural, human resource, political and symbolic. As a department, we failed to achieve the target of growing the organisation’s revenue by 15% within three months mainly because our frame of thought did not factor the structural aspect. As a result, analysing the workplace issue through the structural framework enabled us to realise that there is a great need for leaders to develop a framework of thought that fosters a strong organisation structure, addresses the needs of the people, overcomes organisation conflict and continuously motivates the employees.

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