Frame Play
“Naïve realism”, in plain English, is the assumption that current beliefs about reality are just “how things are”. It’s the frame most of us operate from most of the time—and it is often very expensive thinking. It results in what hypnotist James Tripp calls the “truth trap”, the self-limiting view that, as he puts it, “How I see it is how it is and all I see is all there is.”
You’ve likely heard the Korzybski quote, “The map is not the territory”. Your “map” here can be thought of as a narrative. In her fascinating work on narrative warfare, Ajit Maan stresses that a narrative is always more than a claim about “the facts”. It also frames purported facts to confer on them a particular meaning. In doing so, narratives trigger aspects of your identity to motivate certain responses.
This implied meaning, however, is a construction—it is something added to the picture, a projection. The “meaning”, after all, is in the map and not the territory. In a way then the map is not the territory precisely because reality is not a narrative. When sensemaking through the lens of any narrative, the options perceived will be shaped by what author Caitlin Johnstone calls the “edges of the narrative matrix”.
As a result, every framing, every “lateral lens”, has its own field of non-vision, its own unique blind spots. This is what Korzybski meant with his concept of “logical fate”. From the same set of assumptions only so many options can be seen. Thus, if you want to expand your options, then you should begin by exposing your assumptions. In the field of Decision Quality, it is argued this matters 6x more than any other thing you might do to improve a decision.
This applies equally to business and product work. As Schön and Rein explain in Frame Reflection, framing implicitly selects and names what then become the “things” in a story about reality, which is here a story about what is “wrong” and what needs “fixing” (i.e., the “problem” and “solution”). As with any narrative, much of what is relevant and interesting is never “named and framed”. (Think of it as a form of sampling bias.)
A frame, then, can be thought of as the implicit assumptions at play that scope your thinking. These assumptions are baked into the language you use. The same language will often replicate the same constraints. Innovations in description can alter the prevailing “choice architecture”, triggering reframes that create new distinctions and reveal new options.
Psychologists call this “omission neglect”. You are, by definition, not focused on what is outside your frame, which means you are insensitive to what is missing from your current conception (no matter how important it might be). One way to counter this, as noted above, is to surface and challenge the assumptions at play. Another is to play with the scope of your thinking by intentionally dialing the level of abstraction. A helpful concept here is “logical levels”, which is a sort of nested categorization.
To take a common example, an Altima is a type of Nissan which is a type of car which is a type of vehicle. There are three framing moves that can be made here, exploring the “scope” of your thinking. To move from car to vehicle is to “chunk up” to a higher level of abstraction. To move from car to Nissan is to “chunk down” to the more specific. To move from car to, say, public transit, is to “chunk laterally” to something analogous that still (here literally and metaphorically) “gets you there”.
When a product team gets a request, it is typically at a very low logical level, such as for some specific feature or functionality. To implement this as-is can miss a lot of opportunity. Often, then, a more consultative approach is more valuable. Doctors, for instance, certainly listen to patients—but they still do their own diagnosing. If they instead take patient self-diagnosis at face value (which is malpractice), then they are not bringing their expertise to bear. (In coaching this is sometimes called the “coaching agreement”.)
The client’s presumed topic is typically not the real topic. It’s a thread—you should pull on it to get the whole rug. The goal of both the business stakeholder and the product team, after all, should be the same (to maximize value). The presumed problem—whatever it is—will seldom be optimally framed, which also means the requested solution—whatever it is—will seldom be the best intervention to pursue. The request then should be treated as an invitation to discovery. As is, it is too specific.
A good first step then is to chunk up from the requested output to its desired outcome. Alignment on an outcome increases the degrees of freedom available on the lower level of output. This can be thought of as how much “wiggle room” you have based on the decisions made or the questions asked. Asking bigger questions gives you more options.
In negotiation there is the concept of upleveling (chunking up) from individual positions to larger interests to find “common ground”. Fisher and Ury, in Getting to Yes, describe this as “expanding the ZOPA”, the “Zone of Possible Agreement”. Chunking up in this way often makes alignment easier. This is why mass movements organized around a higher ideal often splinter into factions when things get down to lower-level tactics.
In product work, chunking up from output to the desired outcome enables you to then chunk down and laterally to discover alternative ways to achieve the agreed outcome. This helps you apply Satir’s Rule of Three, popularized in product work by Gerald Weinberg. As Satir would put it, “One option is no choice, two is a dilemma, and three offers new possibilities.” You need three options to get unstuck. This was later given support by the research of Paul Nutt, who found the success rate of executive decisions can be dramatically improved by requiring they compare three alternatives.
You can also then explore the agreed outcome from alternative angles or lenses, asking, for instance, what other skills could be brought to bear, how the lens of your identity influences the assumptions being made (this being not unlike de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”). What would happen, for example, if you weren’t a “software team” but a more general “problem-solving team”?
It is also a good idea to consider the meta-outcome, the outcome of the outcome, the higher-level goals the agreed outcome might then help you achieve. In general, the higher the level of the goal you can effectively go after the more degrees of freedom you create. This not only increases your impact but also makes alignment easier while aiding ideation on lower “levels”.
Logical levels can also be thought of as nested frames. Below, for example, is a visualization adapted from Parker’s 1997 book, The Negotiator’s Toolkit. This emphasis on “stacked frames” helps ensure you are attending to and aligning on what you need to optimally move from the present to the desired state (from PS to DS), whatever that is. Notice how similar this is to more current models of product strategy. (These are not new ideas folks!)
For instance, in his 1967 classic, Military Strategy, J.C. Wylie distinguishes between what he calls “sequential” and “cumulative” strategy. In the image above right, even with an iterative approach where you try an option (make a bet), learn, and then pivot, that is still a lateral move in a sequential strategy.
In many arenas, however, you cannot control outcomes and larger goals as much as only influence them. This might call for more of a cumulative strategy, where multiple paths are pursued simultaneously to together nudge the needle on desired outcomes and goals. This would show up as branching in the model.
To close, being more consultative and improving your skill at frame play helps get you out of the “truth trap”. This helps you avoid the error of omission neglect by moving more to what Tripp describes as an epistemology of “generative pragmatism”. That is something we should all want.
Until next time.