How we think

“Having a strategic conversation without a strong frame or two is like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box. It’s possible—but damn hard.”

From Moments of Impact

A critical part of the tradecraft of designing great strategic conversations is identifying—or creating—a few strong frameworks to orient ourselves and focus our attention.

Why are conversational frameworks so critical? Because complex problems involve so many different, interconnected issues that they push our cognitive load beyond the limit. Put ten people in a room with twelve different opinions on a complex issue and no strong frameworks, and you’ve got a recipe for spinning your wheels without getting far.

Conversational frameworks are so powerful because they allow us to get our arms around a complex challenge by defining the playing field. Doing so gives us a way to situate each specific observation, data point, question, and opinion so that we can see the connections between them more clearly.

Read more on the power of conversational frameworks…

Not all frameworks are created equal, though—and many can create as much confusion as clarity. There are four key criteria to a good conversational framework:

they are calibrated at the right level of resolution—not too “high level” but also not too down in “the weeds”;
they are simple—reducing complexity usefully, using the 80/20 rule;
they are visual—allowing participants to truly see how the pieces of the puzzle relate to each other in a systemic way; and
they are MECE—that is, they create a landscape that is mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, so that each observation can be clearly located in the landscape.

The tradecraft of selecting just a few key frameworks for a strategic conversation (never more than 3 per session!) requires experienced judgment. It’s too easy to pick or create the wrong frameworks—especially because there are so many useless ones out there that don’t meet the above criteria or fit the current situation well.

There are two common types of bad frameworks that bog down many workshops:

Pseudo frameworks are lists or “buckets” that are dressed up with attractive but meaningless visuals. These frames seduce us at first but ultimately don’t satisfy because they don’t help us organize our thinking in a systematic way.
Heavyweight frameworks are anything but simple—they attempt to list every issue related to a given topic in so much complexity that they make our heads hurt. While these visual inventories can be helpful as a checklist for completeness testing in program management, they make for lousy conversation interfaces.

A cool thing about being an indie boutique is that we can pick and choose the best frameworks from anywhere, so long as they’re in the public domain (and always with attribution). There’s no requirement that we use only our firm’s frameworks and not those of competitors—even if the other ones are better. Also, we tune out the noise of management fads to include only the classics—whether they’re decades old or (relatively) hot off the press.

In the sections on Strategy, Innovation, and Team Effectiveness below, you’ll find our “Greatest Hits” list of the most useful frameworks for these important topics, with links for more info. In most of our sessions, we deploy at least one of these—often in combination with one or two new frameworks that we customize to context.

Note that two of these frameworks—the Business Model Generation Canvas and the Innovation Ambition Matrix—appear in the sections on Strategy and on Innovation, since they are both innovation strategy frameworks.