MBAX 6005 Week 8 Leadership Brief Memo Example

Memorandum

To: General Manager, Riverbend Regional Transit

From: Organizational Analyst

Date: October 9, 2026

Re: What a political diagnosis of the fare failure asks of your calendar

The Shift in One Sentence

The validators stay broken because no coalition at Riverbend gains from fixing them, so your work this quarter moves from redesigning the structure to assembling a coalition that does.

Why the Diagnosis Changed

Our first analysis read the fare failure structurally: nobody was responsible for the point of boarding, so we proposed a liaison empowered to take dead-validator buses off the road. Later analysis found that the gap stayed open for reasons a new role would not touch. Operations avoids missed trips by keeping dark-validator buses running; the drivers' union local avoids fare disputes through the wave-through practice; and the suburban board members won their express bus order from the same capital budget the repairs needed. Each group gains from the status quo. A liaison role would collide with all three without offering any of them something in return.

Two Calendars, One Quarter

Table 1 sets out how your next twelve weeks would look under each diagnosis.

The structural calendar is filled with design work done largely inside headquarters. The political calendar is filled with meetings outside your own chain of command, with people who have no obligation to agree with you.

Table 1

The General Manager's Quarter Under Two Diagnoses

Composite organization.

Architect or Negotiator

Bolman and Deal (2017) pair each frame with an image of leadership. The structural frame casts the leader as a social architect, who designs the right roles and rules. The political frame casts the leader as an advocate and negotiator, who builds alliances, bargains and uses power to move an agenda. The same manager can play either role, but they call for different skills. The architect needs analysis and authority; the negotiator needs an understanding of what each party wants underneath what it says. Fisher et al. (2011) distinguish positions from interests, and the union's position, no fare enforcement, sits on top of an interest in drivers' safety that a fare agreement could serve.

A Table With Its Own Budget

The centerpiece of the political approach is a standing labor-management fare table, with the union, operations, finance and the call center represented. It should control one budget line, the validator repair fund, so that agreements reached at the table can be carried out without returning to the full capital process. Without money of its own, the table would be one more place to talk. With it, each party has a reason to attend: operations can trade bus holds for faster repairs, and the union can trade one-touch reporting of dead validators for a guarantee that drivers will never be asked to enforce fares.

What I Recommend You Do This Month

Meet the union local president and the operations director separately before any group meeting, and ask each what they would need to support a repair program. Brief the board chair on the idea of a fare table with its own budget line before the next capital discussion. Pfeffer (1992) observes that influence depends on building support before a decision point, not at it. If the chair hears the idea first at a public meeting, the suburban members will treat it as a threat to their bus order rather than as a way to protect the fares their express riders pay.

References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership (6th ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in (3rd ed.). Penguin Books.

Pfeffer, J. (1992). Managing with power: Politics and influence in organizations. Harvard Business School Press.