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Reframing Organizations summary

Name: Reframing Organizations
Rating: 4.4 (38 reviews)
Author: Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal

Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal

Artistry, Choice, and Leadership

4.4 (38 ratings)

22 mins

Brief summary

Reframing Organizations by Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal is a management book that offers four different lenses (structural, human resource, political, and symbolic) through which leaders can view and analyze their organizations to better understand and successfully navigate the complexities of managing.

Topics

Leadership

Table of Contents

Reframing Organizations
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Run your company the way it should be run.

Executives and managers take great pride in bringing their best to the companies they work for. But more often than not, it takes more than individual passion to ensure a company’s success. In fact, it is the structure of a company that ultimately ensures its long-term prosperity. In the fast-paced business world, executives often face difficult questions and need to make decisions with limited information. They may not know immediately what should be done to enhance their company’s strength.

This is where these blinks come in. We’ll explore the restructuring options that are available to businesses of all sizes. Sometimes we have to learn from experience, but when profit is at stake, it’s much more efficient to learn from the knowledge of others. In the following blinks, find out what structures to put in place and what decisions to make to ensure that your company thrives.

In these blinks, you’ll learn:

how supermarket chain Whole Foods organizes its stores;
which highly respected company began life as a sketch on a napkin; and
which CEO of a major auto firm realized it was better to own up to past mistakes.

Mistakes are made when complexity is simplified. The trick is to question your prejudices.

There’s no escaping problem-solving. At some point, we’ll all have to use this skill. There are occasions when it can be relatively straightforward, like working out what planes and trains to take to make it home for Christmas. But it’s an entirely different kettle of fish when we’re facing more complex questions. A common error is to simplify complexity, but this just leads to mistakes. And if you’re a leader of any sort, that’s the last thing you want to do.

This oversimplification tends to take two forms. The first and most obvious is when the sheer volume of information is too large to be processed easily. In these circumstances, leaders are inclined to focus only on what they deem critical. Thus, they close themselves off from information that might be useful. Secondly, when leaders are faced with complex and intricate situations, they revert to prejudice rather than actually looking at the matter at hand. After all, simplification is so much easier.

The authors see President Donald Trump’s actions as a good example of simplified prejudice. In March 2017, he tweeted repeatedly that Barack Obama had tapped his phones during the lead-up to the 2016 election. Trump had received this faulty information from the far-right news outlet Breitbart. He clung doggedly to this erroneous first impression, even after an investigation confirmed that Obama had ordered nothing of the sort. But this case is hardly unique.

In 2011, neuroscientist David Eagleman conducted a study that showed we all tend to disregard information that challenges our established worldview. In other words, we see what we already believe, rather than believe what we see. This can be dangerous for both individuals and companies dealing with complex challenges. A more successful approach to problem-solving would be to question the existing beliefs you hold.

The existence of self-managing teams within company structures can improve decision-making processes.

It’s an adage that’s been drilled into us for all our adult lives – good team players make for good employees. That said, companies still largely structure themselves with the expectation that their employees will work as individuals. But what if companies were truly structured to function as teams?

One model they might look to is that of self-managing teams. These are teams that don’t have a boss, and team members work and make decisions collectively. They elect who is responsible for which tasks and determine team goals and timeframes for completion.

Company success is built on good hiring practices and quantifiable rewards for employees.

In business, the quality of your product becomes irrelevant if you don’t have a good team in place to keep customers happy. And the best way you can achieve this is by knowing what exactly you want to offer your customers.

Let’s look at how Southwest Airlines does this. The company aims to give their customers a great flying experience. That premise means they know exactly the sort of team they want. Their employees have to have a positive outlook, great interpersonal skills and a sense of humor.

Distributing company profits and job security encourages employee loyalty.

We all want job security. But it’s no longer a given in the modern market economy. The response of American companies to the 2008 recession demonstrates just that, as they laid off over two million employees. That said, not all companies have ditched the idea of job security. And there are good reasons for that. Let’s look at an example.

Lincoln Electric, a manufacturer of arc welding materials, has a policy of never firing employees who've been working there for at least three years. This has been challenging at times. Even when Lincoln Electric saw their sales figures sink by 40 percent over several years, they managed not to fire anyone. They found alternatives, for example by retraining mechanical workers as salespeople.

Myth and vision are key to company success, and company heroes and heroines enforce those ideals.

Big brands don’t always have the best reputations. More often than not, they’re vilified as the poster children for consumerist societies.

But brands are valuable– they’re an intrinsic element of a company’s mythos and also motivate employees to identify with a company's vision of itself. The right use of myth and vision is sure to support company success. Carl Jung, the famous turn-of-the-century psychologist, argued that myths are critical for the creation of collective dreams. These legitimize the values and ideas that hold organizations and companies together.

Taking on a new managerial role can be tough, and it requires quick thinking to fit in quickly.

No matter what sort of company you’re working for, you’ll know that rules, routines and regulations matter. Everything has to function like clockwork. But nevertheless, it’s inevitable that at times, egos will rub against each other, and eventually, conflicts and grudges emerge. Things can get even more intense in times of change, like when a new manager arrives.

There’s no point beating around the bush – taking on a managerial position at a new company is tough. And you don’t want to be the spark that lights a tinderbox of lingering resentment. Let’s look at the fictional case of Cindy Marshall, who’s been transferred. She’s now a new manager in the customer service section of her company in Kansas City. Theoretically at least, it’s a major promotion. But she’s been posted there because the service has been sluggish and inefficient.

New executives should adapt to their new company culture, which often involves winning over key stakeholders.

Company culture can be difficult to quantify and analyze. But it can be done. The consultancy firm Bain & Company ran a survey asking companies how well they thought they deal with changes in company management. It turned out that only 12% were able to achieve what they had in mind, namely a smooth transition that didn’t detrimentally affect company performance and kept employees satisfied. The lesson of this is that new executives have to adapt to company culture.

Let’s turn to how 3M dealt with changes to their top management. 3M is a company that is famous for its innovative and creative solutions. You know Post-it Notes? Well, that idea stems from 3M. However, in 2001, the company's profits were tumbling. A new CEO, James McNerney, was hired. It was his job to make the business profitable once again.

Companies that don’t make ethical compromises find themselves better off and trusted.

There’s no bigger coffee chain in the world than Starbucks. No wonder, then, that in 2007 its chairman, Howard Schultz, asked his fellow company leaders whether they felt that Starbucks was at risk of losing its soul. The company had grown so quickly that Schultz worried that its shops had become impersonal and that its ethical guidelines regarding produce and employees were being disregarded.

What defines this story is that Schultz hadn’t lost sight of ethical issues, despite his company’s size. Meanwhile, most companies don’t worry about that at all. In truth, companies that don't compromise on their ethics will do better in the long run. Just look at the German electronics company Siemens. It used to routinely pay bribes overseas when cultivating business partnerships.

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What is Reframing Organizations about?

Reframing Organizations (2017) looks at how to structure organizations in order to simplify tasks and decision-making. It shows that there is no foolproof way to arrive at the right answer when facing complex challenges. However, certain structures exist that increase the chances of company success.

Best quote from Reframing Organizations

It makes sense to pay top dollar for exemplary contributions of skilled, motivated, and involved employees.

—Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal

Who should read Reframing Organizations?

Managers
Employees
Organizational psychologists

About the Author

Lee G. Bolman is a professor at the Bloch School of Business in Missouri where he specializes in leadership and organization. He is also a popular speaker and workshop leader for companies, governmental bodies and universities in the US and abroad. Terrence E. Deal is a retired professor of education at the University of Southern California. He has worked at many of the most prestigious US universities, focusing on organizations and the methods they deploy to deal with symbolism and disruption.

© Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal: Reframing Organizations copyright 2017, John Wiley & Sons Inc. Used by permission of John Wiley & Sons Inc. and shall not be made available to any unauthorized third parties.

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