Frames (th)at Work
How content finds a way to cross the chasm
Frameworks come in all shapes and forms, or so I’d like to say.
With its popularity gained as a tech buzzword, it was bound to overflow. Personally, I love this word and I use it a lot to explain things that are probably not always meeting the criteria for them to be classified as frameworks.
Here are a couple of definitions:
Generally, we call a framework conceptual structures that can support or guide the building of something that expands the structure into something useful.
A framework is a standard set of concepts, practices, and criteria for dealing with a common type of problem.
In computer science, a software framework is a bring-your-own-code system that takes your code and runs it through its own complex code that achieves some task. But I won’t refer to software frameworks here.
What I’m interested in is the trend that it’s picking up for the past few years, especially on LinkedIn, regarding how we circulate knowledge and communicate in the digital medium. While other social media platforms share information in forms of video content, stories, sound-only, LinkedIn has developed a taste for condensed knowledge into something visual, structured and appealing to an audience that can derive insights from. Of course, we are not ruling out the appetite for carousel presentations with big fonts and short sentences that highlight the essence of the essence on a specific theme.
But for now, I want to focus on what frameworks are actually and why is, in fact, difficult to distinguish them from systems and models (mental models included).
Outside cybernetics and coding, frameworks fulfil a crucial purpose in handling complexity in areas such as healthcare, business, psychology, education, environmental science and so on. From research to development, frameworks hold structures in place when we blink or take our eyes off of them. Their value here, although not always approached properly, is to enable people to solve problems and make better decisions — hopefully in a systemic way, so the impact is achieved throughout.
Frameworks fulfil a key need: understanding in problem-solving. And for that, they are based on transparency of:
- Why — the underlying logic behind and for doing something
- What — the guidelines that need to be followed when doing it
- How — the flow that enables things to happen in various scenarios
Conceptual frameworks are combining theory and practice through Purpose, Structure, Guidelines, and possibility for Reusability.
We can’t really have a framework without fulfilling these four criteria.
Without them, we fail to understand.
Without Purpose: We may hit the target but miss the point.
Without Structure: We can’t see the forest for the trees.
Without Guidelines: We reinvent wheels because we don’t know wheels exist.
Without Reusability: We have to run twice as fast just to keep in the same place.
Frameworks are meant to support, not restrict. Their power comes from how easy it is to reuse in other contexts, and how effective their results are every time we adapt them to different scenarios. A framework that doesn’t adapt when we need to update it is a costly choice and can slow developments.
Here’s a very interesting phenomenon: Take bureaucracy, for instance. It’s not just one framework, but a set of problematic and competing frameworks that are seeking to standardize and hold together complex and often unpredictable players. A framework alone, is not necessarily rigid, but trying to control everything creates and an absurd amount of friction or rigidity. Their reusability is contested when the context suffers radical changes — Covid, Wars, Climate Change etc. If they fail to respond, they are causing more problems than they solve.
Now, let’s park that aside, since it’s a set of very boring frameworks with little to visual appeal. Visualization is extremely powerful because it can make complex chunks of knowledge to be shared. But is everything that I’ve collected while scrolling for about an hour on LinkedIn a framework?
Not quite, but who’s to say?
It’s hard to draw clear distinctions between frameworks, systems, models and even methods (although I won’t discuss these ones for this piece), because knowledge varies across different fields and the framework builders have different target audiences in mind when they build them. I’d say that as long as they fulfil Purpose, Structure, Guidelines, and Reusability we should be on the safe side.
But that’s the thing. There is no such a thing as a meta-framework (again, we don’t include the software frameworks here).
These criteria are necessary but not sufficient when it comes to validating what we call purpose, what kind of structures make sense inside a framework, what are the minimum requirement for guideline development, are there ranges for reusability, specificity, generalization, etc?
This is the distinction I got when I asked the question:
Frameworks provide the “scaffolding” for thinking and problem-solving, models offer a “blueprint” or representation of reality, and mental models serve as a “lens” through which we view the world and make decisions. (I think it’s Copilot’s genius that gave out this sentence)
But let’s look at these distinctions in slightly more detail because it sounded nice, but I still had no idea how to relate to that them meaningfully.
I’ll use DIKW pyramid to connect with this challenge because I think its elements can help us draw pretty useful distinctions between frameworks, models, systems, methods et al.
Frameworks and models
Models are representations or simulations of reality, used to understand, analyse, and make predictions about systems or concepts. They can be physical, mathematical, or conceptual and tend to be more specialized than frameworks.
Models work on the bottom of the pyramid, with data offering a platform for it to be analysed and processed towards further, more specific uses.
But it’s quite difficult to draw the hard line of when “specific” turns into a “broader” use. Let’s take the example of a data model — it goes through a rigorous vetting in order to make it to that title: scalability, complexity, performance, interpretability, robustness, etc. Up to this point, purpose, structure, guidelines are met. What about reusability?
Mental Models are also interesting to point out here. These are internal representations that individuals use to make sense of the world and carry a high-degree of raw personal, subjective data and influence how we perceive information and make decisions. They may be a lot less rigorous and highly specific, often focusing on a particular topic or problem that is unlikely to replicate in a different situation or individual.
So what is the main distinction between framework and model?
I previously wrote:
Frameworks fulfil a key need: understanding in problem-solving.
whereas,
models are used to understand and predict.
Same DIKW is a model because it “predicts” a path or a progression for data to be classified and organized as relevant information, then later refined as knoweldge. Wisdom is a bit controversial because it’s harder to pinpoint its contents and how it differs from knowledge without highlighting situations where it makes an appearence.
The condition of reusability gives us a clue on how to better approach this distinction: it’s not about the count of instances where either can be used, but in the variety of “unrelated” scenarios. We would expect models to keep a logic and linear continuity between applications. A framework can take “leaps” with more ease, and they are also more “analogy friendly” since prediction for the sake of it is not its goal.
Even mental models tend to be linear, perhaps more colourful and unregulated than a mathematical model, but they also fulfil a predictive function of a person’s behaviour.
* Also, I don’t find mental models that individual and specific, and even if they are, they are transferable through shared narratives and language, so broader application to a group or organization is not so far of a stretch.
Frameworks and systems
While systems can be frameworks, the term “framework” is broader and can refer to a variety of structured approaches. A framework can be a conceptual structure used to solve or address complex issues, and it doesn’t have to be a system in the traditional sense.
Systems are not equipped by default with the ability to solve problems that may surface. It’s also not making problems visible (I might say on the contrary, systemic problems are quite hard to bring up and contain). Systems move up to the “information” level of the pyramid. They handle certain structures, levels of orders and relationships.
If we also refer to how parts interact and connect to a bigger picture, we could find a good overlap between systems and frameworks on structure, guidelines, and reusability. What about purpose?
Defining the context and the challenges that make sense in that context are good prerequisites in systems work, but it may not be enough to build practical approach to handling the system. I may map the system and the systemic problem but would I actually be able to solve it? Will the system let me?
Again,
Frameworks fulfil a key need: understanding in problem-solving.
whereas,
Systems are about how parts interact, connect and form the whole.
What sets systems apart from frameworks is that systems’ end goal is to support themselves, concerned with their own effective functioning.
Frameworks and Knowledge
In essence, frameworks provide a scaffold for organizing complex thoughts, actions, or refined information, which can be connected and applied across different fields and contexts. They can also be built on a set of ideas or beliefs used to plan or decide something. But in the recent scene of knowledge sharing in the digital medium, they have become more, visual, creative and colourful. But are the visuals I picked on my LinkedIn feed frameworks?
Let’s see what I discussed so far:
1. Frameworks fulfil a key need: understanding in problem-solving.
2. Conceptual frameworks are combining theory and practice through Purpose, Structure, Guidelines, and possibility for Reusability.
The hardest criterium to identify is the Guidelines as they are either implied or perhaps described somewhere else to save time and make others more curious about the content. So, they do offer some “framing” which makes exciting to look at and get inspired. Frameworks don’t have to be incredibly complex and technical. They can be simple as long as they fulfill their function effectively.
I let all the links at the end of this post as I don’t want to scrutinize my feed just yet. I’ll write a few more articles about how to identify, modify and create frameworks. For now, I just wanted to contemplate the beauty of frameworks:
- Frameworks are not only functional. They are educational and a fantastic way to express points of views, condense knowledge and pass it on.
- They make context more visible to outsiders, and can communicate across different levels of understanding and expertise.
- They are addictive! Once you get a taste for frameworks, you will have a limitless folder of saved frameworks, and will seek to build your own.
The use of the term, might be a bit broad, but I think it’s a great idea to build more frameworks than simply state an opinion or enter a debate with narrow arguments. Frameworks can bring worldviews into a discussion, making it richer and more fulfilling.
Knowledge decays faster and faster now, but we also need to get faster at reworking, reframing, recycling it. Frameworks from simple to complex may be our only way to handle this phenomenon and not feel at a loss.
What I loved about those visuals I gathered on LD is their creative ways to putting together different sets of perspectives with experience, content, structure.
Links to posts that I used to build the main image (the sources are included in their posts if you want to check them):
5 B2B Buyers’ Behaviours in 2024 — Pierre Herubel
Product OKRs — Tim Herbig
Product Marketing — Anthony Pierri
Human Experience Continuum — Timothy Timur Tiryaki
The Improvement Goal Map — Timothy Timur Tiryaki
Mindset, ness monsequeira — Vanessa Monsequeira
Talent Grid — Monte Pedersen
The Full Stack Product Manager — Ankit Shukla
5 Types of Go-To-Market Strategies — Oliver Ding
The Four Dimensions of Tone of Voice — Nick Babich
The Habit-Goal Paradox — Growth Tribe credits to Pejman Milani
