📑 How (and why) to roll your own frameworks in consulting engagements

Bookmarked How (and why) to roll your own frameworks in consulting engagements (tomcritchlow.com)
  • Frameworks are simple tools for thinking that can create a shared world view and be easily referenced
  • The first instinct of many consultants is to grab a framework that you’ve heard of but this causes problems in three ways:
    • They’re too complex
    • They’re not relevant enough
    • You didn’t make it so there’s little attachment
  • Instead I believe you should be making your own frameworks and they you should focus on:
    • Simple frameworks (even a simple categorization is a framework)
    • True frameworks that say something about the client’s business
    • Co-creating them with clients so you get the IKEA effect
  • I’m still figuring it out but I believe doodling, sketching, notebook diagrams and visual thinking can help you get better at making frameworks
  • And, finally, for maximum effectiveness you need to focus on memorable names – compress to impress.
Tom Critchlow reflects on the use of frameworks to inform decision making. He touches on the failure of pre-existing framework and instead suggests we should focus on co-creating:

  • Firstly you avoid almost-true frameworks. The client almost certainly knows more than you do and has an awareness for the corporate memory so can help you avoid evolutionary dead ends that might not be immediately obvious.
  • Secondly by co-creating with the client you get at least one senior member of the organization fully immersed in the theory, not just the summary of the framework. Remember frameworks are abstractions – by design – but you want at least someone who understands the whole system not just the abstraction
  • Thirdly, because the client co-created it with you they are proud of their work and far more likely to use, reference and share the framework than if you hand it to them fully formed.

This process stems from ‘client-ethnographies’ that is a part of ongoing work:

Every time you’re on-site with a client’s organization you’re studying the people, the behaviours, the motivations. You’re asking questions of as many people as you can.

Activities such as doodling and refining the name can help with with the process.

2 responses on “📑 How (and why) to roll your own frameworks in consulting engagements”

  1. Welcome to another month of Read Write Respond, a newsletter of ideas and information associated with all things in and out of education, mined and curated for me and shared with you.

    June is always an interesting time in the the school year. With end of semester, biannual reports and the cold and flu season. This year did not disappoint.
    Due to a change of circumstances, my wife has stepped up in regards to her responsibilities at work. Along with being more involved within the leadership group, she has been organising replacements teachers each day. Along with study, this has left her with very little time for anything else. Subsequently, this month, even more than usual, I have been taking the ‘second shift‘ balancing meals, pickup, cleaning and general runaround.
    On the work front, I was posed with a question: do you want to do on-boarding of new schools or consultation where I would work collaboratively with schools to solve their problems. Although I was torn with where I see myself long term, I said that onboarding was more of an imperative right now so that is where I needed to be. So I have been progressively moving to the PreFlight team, although in many respects I already was in that team. This is all while guiding a few schools through the reporting season.
    Personally, I have continued to take Friday’s off on leave to stay home with Ms 3, which is a priceless opportunity in my opinion. (She is only 3 for one year.) I have been listening to quite a few records, including Art of Fighting’s Luna Low, Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back, Radiohead’s MINIDISCS and Kirin J Callinan’s Return to Centre. However, the album I keep coming back to has been Mark Ronson’s Late Night Feeling. I finally saw Dr Strange, which helped make a bit more sense of Endgame. I finished reading Mike Monteiro’s Ruined by Design. In regards to workflows, I finally got around to adding my social media feeds to Inoreader. I also wrote a couple of longer pieces. One a response to Austin Kleon arguing that blogging is about letting ideas into your world, not vice versa:

    Twist Your Head Around, It’s All Around You – a Reflection on Letting Blogs In

    The second post about the importance of trusting teachers:

    On Trusting Teachers

    Learning and Teaching
    Banning mobile phones in schools: beneficial or risky? Here’s what the evidence says
    Neil Selwyn suggests banning phones overlooks the immediate measures to deal with cybersafety, ignores the digital distraction associated with all devices and misses the opportunity for a conversation.
    Using debating and Socratic Seminars to improve my students’ critical thinking
    Bianca Hewes documents her use of Socratic Seminars to support students in engaging with the critical frame.
    How to study (for English)
    Deborah Netolicky shares some strategies and suggestions to support the study process.
    School Growth: Small Changes Lead to BIG Impact
    Chris Wejr reflects on his experiences of using learning sprints as a means of making small and meaningful impact.
    How (and why) to roll your own frameworks in consulting engagements
    Tom Critchlow on co-creating a framework to inform decision making.

    Technology
    The “Privacy Policy” Policy – IRL Podcast
    Manoush Zomorodi leads an exploration of what we mean by privacy by taking a dive into privacy policies.
    Decades of history could be ‘erased from Australia’s memory’ as tape machines disappear, archivists warn
    James Elton discusses the demise of tape machines and the memories kept on them.
    #Domains19: Minority Report – One Nation Under CCTV
    Martin Hawksey takes a look at privacy and security associated with our digital futures.
    Why Most Marketing Emails Still Use HTML Tables
    Ernie Smith discusses the problems with email and the need to move forward.
    AirPods Are a Tragedy
    Describing the Apple AirPod headphones as if from the future, Caroline Haskins breaks down the impact of the device on the world at large.

    Reflections
    I live-tweeted the raids on the ABC — and it was a first for the AFP
    John Lyons reports Australian Federal Police’s raid on ABC and what this means for democracy.
    Research: Women Score Higher Than Men in Most Leadership Skills
    Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman discuss research into women in leadership. What was interesting was the influence of self belief.
    After a near-death experience, Andrew Denton has a new intensity
    Konrad Marshall provides a profile for Andrew Denton and his talk show Interview.
    The mindfulness conspiracy
    Ronald Purser argues that paying closer attention on the present is not revolutionary, but rather magical thinking on steroids
    We Need a Data-Rich Picture of What’s Killing the Planet
    Clive Thompson discusses the power of big data to support making clearer decisions around climate change.

    Read Write Respond #042
    So that is June for me, how about you? As always, happy to hear. Also interested if anyone has any thoughts on the changes I made. Rather than including a range lengthy elaborations, I have provided a short summary and linked to my bookmarks.

    Cover Image via JustLego101

    Reply

  2. Deborah, I really like your discussion of innovation and ecosystems:

    An ecosystem is a complex community of interconnected organisms in which each part, no matter how seemingly small, has an active, agentic part to play in the community. There are constant interdependent relationships and influences. The notion of an ecosystem of education resonates with Bob Garmston and Bruce Wellman’s third Adaptive Schools underlying principle of what they call ‘nonlinear dynamical’ systems: that tiny events create major disturbances. This principle reflects the way change often happens. The little things we change or do can have unexpected, chaotic, incremental effects that are difficult to quantify or not immediately noticeable.

    Working as one of those ‘little things’ that come into the school it can be easy to bring in a script when arriving at a new school. The problem is that each school is made up of many other ‘little things’. I have therefore found it more useful to gauge as much about the school’s context as quickly as possible and then re-framing my message to fit.
    Tom Critchlow describes this as ‘client ethnographies‘:

    Every time you’re on-site with a client’s organization you’re studying the people, the behaviours, the motivations. You’re asking questions of as many people as you can.

    While Doug Belshaw talks about the dangers of dead metaphors and failed frameworks:

    So although it takes time, effort, and resources, you’ve got to put in the hard yards to see an innovation through all three of those stages outlined by Jisc. Although the temptation is to nail things down initially, the opposite is actually the best way forward. Take people on a journey and get them to invest in what’s at stake. Embrace the ambiguity.

    Although it can be a challenge to find the time and resources, without it change is often frustrating to say the least.

    Reply

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