Why I Love Business Frameworks

The Tool I Reach For When Things Get Complicated

I'm a big-picture thinker. Give me a mess of data, insights, and half-formed goals, and my brain immediately starts looking for the shape underneath it. That's what a framework is to me: not a rigid box, but a way of putting parameters around complexity so it has enough structure to move, without losing the nuance that makes it true.

Right now I'm in the middle of two framework projects with clients, and they couldn't be more different — which is exactly why I love this type of work.

Project one: revising a framework that's outgrown its original shape.

This client already has a framework that I helped build a year ago.

It worked.

But the market shifted, the customer shifted, and the business's goals shifted with them.

So we're not starting from scratch, we're going back into something that already has bones and asking which parts still hold weight and which parts need to flex. That's a different skill than building from zero. It's editing a structure while it's still standing.

At its core, this framework is about taking someone on a journey of learning, moving a person from where they are now to genuine understanding, one deliberate step at a time. That makes it a particularly complex kind of puzzle. There are a lot of interlinked parts: each stage has to build logically on the one before it, but people don't actually learn in a straight line, so the framework also has to flex around where someone really is, not just where the sequence says they should be. Solving for both, the logic of the progression and the fluidity real learning requires is genuinely one of the most fun puzzles I get to work on.

Project two: building a framework that lets strengths take turns.

This client has multiple product strengths inside their business.

The challenge isn't a lack of a good story with their products, it's too many good stories competing for the spotlight.

The framework we're building creates a system where different strengths can lead at different moments without the core marketing message getting diluted or the customer getting confused about who this brand actually is.

Structure, in this case, is what protects the clarity.

Two ways to think about the shape

I recently listened to Aggressively Human's episode on frameworks, and it put language to something I've felt intuitively for a while: a framework is a distinct way of thinking, not just a list of services or features.

The hosts made a distinction I found useful: architectural frameworks show the pieces, transformational frameworks show the journey.

Both of my current client projects are really a blend, we're mapping the pieces of what makes the business work and the path the customer or stakeholder takes through it. That's usually where the real thinking happens: not in picking one or the other, but in figuring out how the pieces and the journey talk to each other.

Why I draw it out

Here's the part of my process I don't talk about enough: for me, a framework is fundamentally visual. Words alone can't hold the kind of complexity I'm usually working with — I need to be able to draw it out to actually see it. My notebooks are full of arrowed lines, circles, pyramids and other visual representation of how I see the situation from various points of view.

Sometimes that means a Venn diagram, when the real story is in the overlap, where two audiences, two strengths, or two priorities intersect and that intersection is the insight.

Sometimes it's a lifecycle circle, when the work is cyclical and returning to a stage isn't failure, it's just where the business is right now.

Sometimes it's pillars or a pyramid, when there's a clear foundation that has to hold before anything gets stacked on top of it.

Sometimes it's boxes with weighted value, when not all the pieces matter equally and the visual needs to show that at a glance.

The shape I choose isn't decoration, it's the argument with the most important data distilled down to a few words and shapes. A great framework takes a lot of editing.

A pyramid tells stakeholders something different than a circle does. Choosing the right one is how I translate a pile of insights into something that communicates the essence of what we're trying to achieve, and shows everyone exactly where we are on the map right now.

The part I actually love

Here's the thing about building a framework that people don't always say out loud: it's not a purely logical exercise. Yes, there's a set of logic to follow the data has to hold up, the categories have to be mutually exclusive enough to be useful.

But the good frameworks also require creativity.

Pattern recognition.

A willingness to sit with the mess a little longer before you name it, because naming it too early flattens the nuance you were trying to protect in the first place.

That's the tension I'm most interested in as a strategist: enough structure that stakeholders can actually use the thing, enough flexibility that it doesn't break the first time reality gets complicated.

Not every project needs one

I want to be clear about something: I don't reach for a framework on every client engagement. Many I use existing marketing frameworks like the SWOT analysis. Most projects don't need one and forcing one onto a problem that doesn't call for it just adds overhead without adding clarity.

A custom framework is a specific tool I bring out for complex projects when there's a lot of data, a lot of moving pieces, and a real need to make sense of both what's true now and what the path forward looks like. When that complexity is there, a framework is how I get to forward vision and plan of action.

If you're building one right now

You don't need to have it perfect before you start using it. This podcast episode made the point that it's okay for a framework to still be "jello" — evolving, imperfect, not yet fully set — as long as you're staking out that territory and starting to build around it. I'd add: the revision process is just as valuable as the first draft. Both of my current client projects prove that a framework isn't a one-and-done deliverable. It's a living structure that should get smarter as the business, the market, and the customer keep changing.

If you're sitting on a pile of insights, goals, and data that hasn't found its shape yet, that's usually the sign a framework is trying to happen.

The work is giving it just enough structure to hold, and just enough room to breathe.

*Credit to Aggressively Human Podcast for the inspiration and clarity on frameworks that led to my writing this post.