What Colour Lenses Are you Using to Look at Your Non-Profit?

When it comes to leadership and organizational culture, authors Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal argue that leaders tend to address issues and challenges by referring to the way in which they naturally see the world - or their dominant ‘frame.’

Their book is (fittingly) called Reframing Organizations. I think it’s a great resource for any organization – for profit or not. The gist of their message is that different organizations and their leaders tend to be dominated by one or two ‘frames,’ or world-views. They argue that many organizations could be much better off if their leadership developed the ability to step outside of their natural ‘frame’ to look at issues and challenges using different perspectives.

In and of itself, being able to look at things from different angles isn’t a revolutionary idea and it can be an extremely effective problem-solving technique. What is interesting about Bolman and Deal is that they methodically lay out four main lenses they feel are used by most people. These apply both to leadership styles and organizational culture:

The Structural Frame:  Leaders who use this frame focus on process, achieving objectives, setting goals and clearly laying out roles and responsibilities.  Organizations dominated by this type of frame are akin to a machine or factory with a place for everyone and everyone in their place. They tend to have a more rigid, and bureaucratic culture, often with a top-down hierarchy.

Political: People who use this frame treat leadership like a game characterized by winners and losers, gaining and losing power, deal-making and negotiation.  Advocacy is the name of the game. The political organization tends to be jungle-like, and is sometimes dominated by a competitive, ‘survival of the fittest’ attitude in within its culture.

Symbolic:  Symbolic leaders are larger-than-life heroes focused on getting stakeholders truly excited about what’s going on.  They tend to use rituals, ceremonies and metaphors to inspire stakeholders to go above and beyond to help the organization achieve its goals.  This symbolism pervades the culture of the organization. For example, an organization with transparency as one of its core values might get its point across by separating their office space with glass walls.

Human Resources: The Human Resources leader treats people within the organization as family, with the primary focus being on addressing their needs, as well as developing and nurturing relationships within the organization.  Organizations with an HR-centered culture are characterized by empowerment of the people involved.

When looking at your own non-profit, which of the four frames would you say dominates your organization’s culture? What might happen (good and bad) if your organization adopted some aspects of another of the ‘frames’ in the way it does things?

Drilling down further, what do you think is your dominant leadership frame? The next time you face a major decision, take a step back and ask yourself which one you are using to come to your conclusion. Would your decision be the same if you looked at it from one of the other angles above?