My personal preference is to place the initial belief and its supporting notions in red (to mentally connote “stop”) and the reframed notions and belief in green (to suggest “start”). The teams can each work on different topics or the same one and compare notes.Įach group should be assigned a whiteboard (or space with a sticky easel pad), and two different colored Sharpies (or Post-it notes in two different colors with black Sharpies). If you have more than a handful of people participating, split the team into groups of 3 based on the subject they want to reframe or as cross-disciplinary teams. You can run a Reframing session solo or with a large group.
#THE REFRAME HOW TO#
It can be esoteric (e.g., technological disruption in your industry) or quotidian (e.g., how to collapse silos across business functions). So, how do you get started on a Reframing exercise? It begins with selecting a topic you want to examine. Innovation becomes easier when you split tradition from its conventions.” And this is what is at the heart of Reframing - examining and reassessing entrenched beliefs to discover new possibilities. But that is not true – that is the realm of artists. Peter de Boer, a THNK faculty member, states in his post, How to Reframe Your Thinking to Delight Users, that “A lot of people think that disruptive innovation means throwing everything away and starting over on a blank slate. In his words, “Reframing opens up new spaces, new possibilities, new ways of feeling and new ways of acting.” In his book, Benammar ponders two questions: 1) Why do we do the things that we do?, and 2) How can we do things differently? Bennamar believes that, as children, we learn accepted norms about how society is organized and we never question these structures. Reframing is a device to help you get out of your comfort zone, to challenge orthodoxies and open your mind to new ways of doing things. As a result, organizations need to be adaptable and shift their thinking to tackle the challenges and stay ahead of the competition. Thriving in this unstable environment means evolving as new business contexts emerge. Today, businesses need to constantly re-examine how they go to market as new entrants are continually nipping at their heels. It used to be that an approach to creating economic value would be fixed for decades. Business models are also less enduring than in the past.
To complicate matters, every company and every market is unique. We operate in a VUCA world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
#THE REFRAME PROFESSIONAL#
In Reframing: The Art of Thinking Differently, Benammar’s seminal text about the Reframing technique, he provides a guide to this powerful four-step methodology, discusses its applications in both personal and professional situations, delves into how we can re-evaluate our values, and discusses how we can reframe large-scale paradigms that impact humanity. The notion of reframing a belief has been around for over a decade but it was formalized into a system by Karim Benammar, based on the paradigm shift theory by Thomas Kuhn, and popularized by THNK. And the great news is, anyone can master it without prior innovation experience. So how can you look at your sector, business model, product, work initiative, even personal life considerations differently? One exceptional tool is Reframing. But, they weren’t at the time when they were envisioned.
#THE REFRAME TV#
Netflix: what if people could watch TV and movies anytime, anywhere?.Let’s face it, we have collective thoughts about audience preferences, technological disruption, competition, differentiation, etc. Reframing is a tool to think differently about an issue by exposing conventional “wisdom” that stands in the way of progress. Reframing has allowed me to employ a fresh perspective when considering complex business considerations.
When I met the folks at THNK, a higher education design thinking institution and innovation consultancy, and they introduced me to their Reframing methodology, I was instantly blown away. We all need some help to stimulate our minds to think in unconventional ways. The reality is it’s tricky to break from accepted standards and look at a problem (or opportunity) from a different vantage point. Yet, how often do we abide by a ‘business as usual’ stance because that’s the way it’s always been done? Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.” I think we can all agree.