#cmst480

Here’s some notes from the first part of Reframing Organizations by Deal and Bolman (pp. 23-31)

Common Fallacies in Explaining Organizational Problems

People erroneously blame problems on the following:

Fallacy 1: Blaming people

Fallacy 2: Blaming the bureaucracy

Fallacy 3: Thirsting for for power

Hit Number 8: March and Simon’s Organizations (1958); follows Simon’s Organization Behavior (1947) (Both fit the Structural / HR frames)

Simon argues that human are not rationale, rather we “satisfice” (choose the first option that is good enough; that is satisfactory and sufficient)

Decision making is always made with a simplified model of the world.

Organizations are complex systems

Peculiarities of Organizations (Snake pit or rose garden?)

Organizations are complex

Organizations are surprising

Organizations are deceptive

Steve Jobs learned two vital lessons from NeXT (failure) and Pixar (success):

Importance of aligning an organization with its mission.

Talent: The importance of relationships and teamwork.

Jobs didn’t change, how he interpreted things did!

Metaphors = magician / warrior

(Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 4)

Cluelessness = nonrational (a fact of life)

The chronic challenge of organizational life: “how to know whether you’re getting the right picture or tuning into the wrong channel.”

“Reframing requires an ability to think about situations in more than one way, which allow you to develop alternative diagnoses and strategies.”

(Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 5)

Why are organizations so poorly managed? Why do their vices exceed their virtues? (p. 6)

Management’s track record is poor due to an inability to make sense and for the ongoing potential for a “collapse in sensemaking.”

When we don’t know what to do, we do more of what we know. (Institutional theory) 

(Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 8)

For every managerial challenge, there is a consultant willing to offer assistance--at a price. (p. 9) - See Collins’s Buzzwords and Management Fads

Framing

A mental model to help map. 

“Rapid cognition” (see Gladwell’s Blink) (blink process):

Nonconscious

Very fast

holistic

“affective judgements”

Frame Breaking

Matching mental maps to circumstances. (Break frames). Be able to see differently.

Frames are both windows onto a territory and tools for navigation.

(Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 10-13)

The Four Frames

Factories

Families

Jungles

Temples and Carnivals 

(Bolman & Deal, p. 15-16)

 Questions

Do we really have “complex organizations” as Bolman and Deal suggest?  (p. 6)

I tend to think that we have complex systems, and organizations enact complexity. (Social Constructed Reality)