Reframing Organizations

Bolman & Deal

Perception

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.

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.

UnderstandingUnderstanding 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•These patterns are simultaneously essential and yet out of date.

How Little We Remember

What do you see?

What do you see?

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.

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.

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.

Factors that Influence Perception

Organizational Applications of Perception

Employment Interviews

Self-fulfilling prophecies of performance

Performance evaluations

Employee effort

Employee loyalty

Shortcuts used to Judge Others

Selective Perception

Halo Effect

Contrast Effect

Projection

Stereotyping

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?

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?

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

Managerial Implications

PerceptionIndividuals 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 individual’s perceptions.

What are the Frames?

Structural

Human Resource

Political

Symbolic

The Structural Frame

Emphasizes goals, specialized roles, and formal relationships. The structures are designed to fit an organization’s 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.

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.

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.

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.

How Do We Reframe?

First, what is framing?

Psychological BiasesIllusion of Control

Framing

Discount the future

Domain of Gains (Risk Averse)

Domain of Failures (Risk Seeking)

Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action

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 speaker’s or the hearer’s thoughts and emotions is to approach the study of language as both an intellectual and a moral discipline.”

What are we concerned with?

Truth of statementsAdequacy of statementsTrustworthiness of statements

Semantics: The study of human interaction through communication. Central assumption: cooperation is preferable to conflict.

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.

Language and Survival

We use language to:Cooperate

Pool knowledge

However, words are trickyThe Niagara of Words

They can mean different things

Yet, we are involved with these words.

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

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.

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.

Maps and Territories

The symbol the thing symbolized

The map IS NOT the territory

The word the thing

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.

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?

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

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 speaker’s approval or disapproval of the occurrences, persons or object he is describing

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?

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 wordsPhysical and Social Context – understanding in relation to situation

Contexts

Extensional Meaning: something that cannot be expressed in words because it is that which the words stands for. It’s the territory!!

Intentional Meaning: that which is suggested (connoted) inside one’s head.

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 contextsSecond, everyone’s meanings are from their experiences (chair)Third, in terms of extensional meaning, it always is changingContexts often indicate our meanings so clearly that we do not even have to say what we mean in order to be understood!

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.

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 speaker’s or the hearer’s thoughts and emotions is to approach the study of language as both an intellectual and a moral discipline.”