Reframing Organizations

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Reframing Organizations

• Bolman Deal

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Perception
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Perception is a 'Learned Experience'

• It is the awareness of the external world (or
  some aspect of it), through one or more of our
  senses and, the interpretation of these by our
  mind.

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Comprehending Perception

• We all have a different store of knowledge.
• We all therefore interpret the world around us
  differently.
• Understanding relies upon the speaker and his
  audience having the same perception of the
  required outcome.

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Understanding

• Understanding is achieved by interpreting current
  experience using past experience as a source of
  reference, and establishing a context upon which
  to base this new information. In other words
• We are only able to understand today in terms of,
  and because of, our past experiences.
• Yet, we also know that 'Today' is unlike
  'Yesterday'.
• We inherit Yesterday's patterns and need them to
  interpret what our senses are experiencing in the
  present.
• These patterns are simultaneously essential and
  yet out of date.

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How Little We Remember
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What do you see?
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What do you see?
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How do we perceive?

• We store a model or memory of objects.
• The process of perceiving involves matching
  what our senses are experiencing to one of our
  models.
• Perception is an active pattern-matching process.
• We recognize the world because of our historical
  store of information.
• We create our own unique world, our own
  interpretation of reality.

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Summary

• Discovering a new perception adds to the database
  of patterns which already exists in our minds.
• Once existing experience has been proved
  inadequate to correctly interpret an image, the
  brain supplements its store of knowledge with the
  new experience.
• Once new experience becomes old experience, it is
  often difficult to imagine the state of mind
  prior to gaining this new insight.

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What is perception?

• A process by which individuals
• Organize interpret their sensory impressions,
• In order to give meaning to their environment.
• What one perceive may be substantially different
  from reality.

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Factors that Influence Perception
Factors in the perceiver Attitudes Motives Inte
rests Experience Expectations
Factors in the target Novelty Motion Sounds Si
ze Background Proximity
Factors in the situation Time Work
setting Social setting
Perceptions
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Organizational Applications of Perception

• Employment Interviews
• Self-fulfilling prophecies of performance
• Performance evaluations
• Employee effort
• Employee loyalty

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Shortcuts used to Judge Others

• Selective Perception
• Halo Effect
• Contrast Effect
• Projection
• Stereotyping

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Perceiver Evaluates. . .

• Distinctiveness Does the actor behave this way
  toward other people or things?
• Consistency Does the actor behavior this way on
  other occasions?
• Consensus Do other people behave the same way
  as the actor in similar situations?

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To Attribute Cause

• Distinctiveness Do I act this way toward
  everyone, or only Susie?
• Consistency Am I always the same way to Susie,
  or just this one time?
• Consensus Would everyone yell at Susie in this
  situation?

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To Attribute Cause

• When Distinctiveness is low, Consistency high,
  and Consensus low, we make an
• INTERNAL ATTRIBUTION
• When Distinctiveness is high, Consistency low,
  and Consensus high, we make an
• EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION

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Managerial Implications

• Perception
• Individuals behave based not on the way their
  external environment actually is but, rather, on
  what they see or believe it to be.
• Evidence suggests that what individuals perceive
  from their work situation will influence their
  productivity more than will the situation itself.
• Absenteeism, turnover, and job satisfaction are
  also reactions to the individuals perceptions.

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The Johari Window
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What are the Frames?

• Structural
• Human Resource
• Political
• Symbolic

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The Structural Frame

• Emphasizes goals, specialized roles, and formal
  relationships. The structures are designed to
  fit an organizations environment and technology.
  There is division of labor, rules, policies,
  procedures and hierarchies. Problems arise when
  the structure does not fit the situation.
• Leadership Challenge Attune structure to task,
  technology, environment.

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The Human Resource Frame

• The organization is like an extended family, with
  individual needs, feelings, prejudices, skills,
  and limitations. There is a capacity to learn
  and a capacity to defend old attitudes and
  beliefs.
• Leadership Challenge Align organizational and
  human needs.

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The Political Frame

• Sees organizations as arenas, contests, or
  jungles. Different interests compete for scare
  resources. Bargaining, negotiation, coercion,
  and compromise are an enduring part of life.
  Coalitions form and change. Problems arise when
  power is concentrated in wrong places or so
  dispersed nothing gets done.
• Leadership Challenge Develop agenda and power
  base.

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The Symbolic Frame

• Treats organizations as tribes, theaters, or
  carnivals. Organizations are cultures, propelled
  by rituals, ceremonies, stories, heroes, and
  myths, not by policies and formal authority. As
  theaters, actors play dramatic roles, audiences
  form impressions.
• Leadership Challenge Create faith, beauty, and
  meaning.

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How Do We Reframe?

• First, what is framing?
• Psychological Biases
• Illusion of Control
• Framing
• Discount the future
• Domain of Gains (Risk Averse)
• Domain of Failures (Risk Seeking)

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Hayakawas Language in Thought and Action
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Take Away Message

• To understand how language works, what pitfalls
  it conceals, what its possibilities are is to
  understand a central aspect of the complicated
  business of living the life of a human being. To
  be concerned with the relation between language
  and reality, between words and what they stand
  for in the speakers or the hearers thoughts and
  emotions is to approach the study of language as
  both an intellectual and a moral discipline.

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What are we concerned with?

• Truth of statements
• Adequacy of statements
• Trustworthiness of statements
• Semantics The study of human interaction
  through communication. Central assumption
  cooperation is preferable to conflict.

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Language and Survival

• Most of the time we are drawing upon the
  experiences of others in order to make up for
  what we ourselves have missed.
• Animals communicate with a few limited cries, we
  have the full power of language at our command.
• We differ in that we can make statements about
  statements. In short, language can be about
  language.

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Language and Survival

• We use language to
• Cooperate
• Pool knowledge
• However, words are tricky
• The Niagara of Words
• They can mean different things
• Yet, we are involved with these words.

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Language and Survival

• What are our unconscious assumptions about
  language?
• What is the relationship of language to reality?
• Words shape our beliefs, prejudices, ideals,
  aspirations

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Symbols

• Signal Reaction a complete and invariable
  reaction that occurs whether or not the
  conditions warrant.
• Symbol Reaction a delayed reaction, conditional
  upon the circumstances.
• We may try to avoid, but the rejection of symbols
  is, in itself, symbolic.

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Symbols

• Symbols and things symbolized are independent of
  each other.
• Yet, we find connections.
• The symbols of piety, of civic virtue, or of
  patriotism are often prized above actual piety,
  civic virtue or patriotism.

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Maps and Territories

• The symbol the thing symbolized
• The map IS NOT the territory
• The word the thing

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Maps and Territories

• Verbal World the world we come to know through
  words.
• Extensional World the world we know through our
  own experience.
• This verbal world ought to stand in relation to
  the extensional world as a map does to the
  territory it is supposed to represent.

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Maps and Territories

• How does the territory differ from a map?
• Verbal World Reports Map
• Extensional World Experience Territory
• How good is an inaccurate map?

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Maps and Territories

• Three ways to get a false map
• They are given to us
• By making them up for ourselves by misreading
  true maps
• By constructing them ourselves by misreading
  territories

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Reports, Inferences, Judgments

• Reports are verifiable, exclude inferences,
  judgments, and loaded words
• Verifiable yet we often trust without verifying
• Inferences a statement about the unknown based
  on the known
• Judgments expressions of the speakers approval
  or disapproval of the occurrences, persons or
  object he is describing

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Reports, Inferences, Judgments

• Verifiability rests upon the external observation
  of facts, not upon the heaping of judgments.
• Many words simultaneously report and judge
• Judgments stop thought, how?
• Snarl words and purr words report the state of
  our internal worlds.
• Slanting is using implied judgments
• How can we ever give an impartial report?

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Contexts

• How do words mean?
• Guided by historical record, but not bound by it,
  because new situations, experiences, inventions,
  feelings are always compelling us to give new
  uses to old words.
• Verbal Context understanding in relation to
  other words
• Physical and Social Context understanding in
  relation to situation

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Contexts

• Extensional Meaning something that cannot be
  expressed in words because it is that which the
  words stands for. Its the territory!!
• Intentional Meaning that which is suggested
  (connoted) inside ones head.

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The One Word One Meaning Fallacy

• NO WORD EVER HAS EXACTLY THE SAME MEANING TWICE
• First, if contexts determine meaning, there are
  never two exactly the same contexts
• Second, everyones meanings are from their
  experiences (chair)
• Third, in terms of extensional meaning, it always
  is changing
• Contexts often indicate our meanings so clearly
  that we do not even have to say what we mean in
  order to be understood!

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Ignoring Contexts

• If we can get deeply into our consciousness the
  principle that no word ever has the same meaning
  twice, we will develop the habit of automatically
  examining contexts, and this enables us to
  understand better what others are saying.

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Take Away Message (Again)

• To understand how language works, what pitfalls
  it conceals, what its possibilities are is to
  understand a central aspect of the complicated
  business of living the life of a human being. To
  be concerned with the relation between language
  and reality, between words and what they stand
  for in the speakers or the hearers thoughts and
  emotions is to approach the study of language as
  both an intellectual and a moral discipline.