Beyond Frameworks

So here's the thing.  I love frameworks.  I really do.  I'm the type of person who thrives on creating order out of chaos - both in the physical realm (just wait until you see my file cabinet) and in the world of ideas.  As a strategy consultant, I've basically built my career around this.  Done well, a framework is elegant in its simplicity -- a mental shortcut that not only simplifies the complex, but empowers the user with a roadmap for success (e.g. moving to the upper right quadrant of a 2x2 matrix or climbing up Maslow's pyramid of needs).  When my husband told me about an issue he was struggling with on a recent date night dinner out, I reached for my computer and pulled out a framework I had come across earlier that day (that he not only indulges me in this but also somehow finds it helpful is one of the many reasons I love him).

So you can imagine my surprise when, about thirty minutes into a Lean In Seattle talk last weekend, I started to get antsy in my seat.  A talk on goal setting and personal transformation, it was a topic that normally would light me up; the energy of the dynamic speakers and women in the audience was palpable.  The speakers started with a powerful question: "A year from now, what do you wish you would have done differently today?" - followed by the presentation of three frameworks all focused on growth and goal-setting.

They were good, solid frameworks: (1) Start with why (then move outward into the how and the what); (2) the Empowerment Model, moving from self-awareness to vision to transformation to growth; and (3) the GROW model of goal, reality, options, and will.

But as I sat there, growing more and more antsy, it struck me that something was missing from this conversation.  Deeply and glaringly absent.

Fast-forward to today.  En route to South Africa, I am writing this post from an airport hotel in Dubai - trying to get this all out of my head so I can finally sleep (does that happen to you too? - ideas swirl constantly and so the easiest way to get them out of my head is onto the page).  Anyway.  I spent much of my 14 hour Seattle to Dubai leg reading Simon Sinek's Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action - based on his incredible TED Talk (apparently the 3rd most watched TED talk of all time).  It was powerful.  At least ten pages are earmarked for future reference and motivation (and it inspired me to re-watch the classic Apple 1984 Super Bowl commercial introducing the Macintosh computer... still so good).

But I finished the book irked with the same feeling I had during that Lean In Seattle talk this past weekend.  All emphasis was on the framework itself.  Very little was around the part that's actually hard: how to do this.  I had already seen the TED Talk, so I was already a convert.  I was hoping the book would help me define my "why".  Instead, it highlighted multiple examples of companies who led by their why (to outstanding success) and companies who did not (to mediocrity at best and failure at worst).  There was a short chapter on his own story and how he went from near-depression to jumping out of bed each morning once he had the epiphany that his "why" is to inspire people to do things that inspire them.  

To say that I don't know my "why" is not entirely accurate.  My "why" is changing the world.  But for me right now, that's not a good enough why.  Donald Trump is changing the world.  So maybe my why is about making the world a better place?  But isn't that what Trump believes he's doing too?  Anyway, this isn't a political blog...

My point is that an over-reliance on frameworks comes with a cost.  We get lured into believing we just need to find the "right" framework to solve our needs or to reach success (hence sharing three frameworks on goal-setting at Lean In Seattle so we could choose whichever one most resonates).  But so often while the framework itself may show us the "what" (the journey or the path), they often do not show us the "how".  And certainly not the "how" in this messy, human, irrational world of ours. 

Henry Louis Mencken said: "For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, clean, and wrong."

I actually don't go as far as saying frameworks are necessarily "wrong".  They're just not enough.  Take, for instance, the Empowerment Model I learned about at the Lean In Seattle event.  The speaker had me hooked as a way to approach goals as a "self-inventory" of where you are and where you want to go, moving from self-awareness (current state) to vision (future state) through transformation (change) and growth (next steps).  What this misses is how complex, messy, and HARD these steps truly are... you know, just go transform.  It's step 3.  Duh.

We begin to beat ourselves up.  If starting with "why" is so obvious, what's wrong with me that I can't figure out what my "why" is?  Awareness is not enough (look at doctors who still smoke, for instance).  To be fair to Simon Sinek, he does offer advice of looking to the past to find our why's.  But give us more on that please, Simon.  Share the messiness of honing your why, to inspire us to keep at it to uncover ours.

All of this is what makes me even more excited for Sunday's event (the reason I'm heading to South Africa in the first place).  As Faculty at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, I've helped lead work supporting national governments in Africa and the Middle East to develop National Quality Strategies (NQS), aimed at better health outcomes for all citizens.  Through this work, we've developed a framework for how national governments and partners can successfully develop, implement, and sustain national quality strategies.  But on Sunday's Africa Forum side session on NQS, my hope is to not only pressure-test the framework, but also go beyond it -- into deep and open dialog about how this framework plays out (or not) in the real world.  With senior government representatives coming from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa, Mexico, Scotland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it is our opportunity to go beyond frameworks and get into the "how" of development, implementation, and sustainability.  It's a challenging process and despite months of deep research, there are still many open questions.  But my goal for Sunday is that we learn together and emerge not only with a clearer why and what, but begin to shed light on what's been missing from so many frameworks today: how.