Framing

What is Framing?

Framing enables you to define the intent, problem or opportunity to be addressed by using the opinions of different stakeholders. Framing the intent allows you to consider the complexity of the space you are entering to find a problem or challenge that people agree to, can easily wrap their head around, and agree is worth solving.

The methods in this module will allow you to step back and evaluate the big picture before zooming in on the details to ensure stakeholders agree on the problem that needs to be solved.

A frame is a perspective that:

• Directs attention to one place instead of another
• Says some things are important, and other things are less important
• Can change the way we think about and respond to a situation
• Helps us determine feasibility — the things we have the most ability to impact

Why is it important?

Framing helps a team or stakeholder group dive into a problem, challenge or opportunity together so they may agree on a definition of the root problem, determine what can and can’t be changed about the present situation, and suggest potential courses of action. Good Framing:

• Welcomes different perspectives
• Shines a light on blind spots, identifying potential areas of inquiry
• Makes the problem tangible and understandable
• Identifies potential barriers
• Defines resources that are available or needed

While framing your intent, you may feel uncomfortable due to the abstract nature of the exercises. However, rest assured that these exercises will empower you to dive into really important issues and drive positive impacts. And, without alignment, it will be very difficult to drive any concerted action.

Methods

• Collective Mind Mapping
• Five Why’s
• Stakeholder Analysis

Overview

Collective Mind Mapping is a method that invites input from a variety of people to explore available information and perspectives, find common ground, and ultimately align different stakeholders towards a common vision or desired outcome.

How to facilitate a Collective Mind Mapping exercise

Because this is a team activity, you want to make sure that everyone who is participating can contribute to the Collective Mind Map in real time.

Start by drawing a large bubble in the middle of the map and write the initial definition of the opportunity or challenge to be discussed inside of it.

Now radiate out by adding new bubbles. Ask each participant to share their perspective with regards to that initial frame, which may include potential root causes, key data points, anecdotes, perceptions, experiences, stakeholders, places, resources and other influential factors. Make sure to capture each keyword or short sentence in a new bubble. Tip: you may benefit from giving participants some pre-work. This gives them a chance to collect their thoughts before the session, and it gives you input to jumpstart the exercise. The “Framing: What’s the Problem” worksheet is a useful pre-work that you can give participants so you can use their responses as an input for this exercise.

Keep your Collective Mind Map balanced by drawing new bubbles around your initial frame through asking participants to share their perspectives, anecdotes, and experiences.

As you continue to add bubbles, look for connections between bubbles and draw lines to represent these. You can use color and line thickness to represent strength or type of connection. Consider naming the lines and drawing some lines as arrows to represent direction.

Keep a list of stakeholders to the side of your Collective Mind Map. Populate this list as individuals, groups or organizations are named during the exercise.

Once you start running out of space or participants run out of things to add, use a different color marker to cluster concepts that have some affinity, with input from the participants.

Engage the participants in naming each cluster in a way that makes sense to everyone, using full sentences instead of single words.

If your goal is to land on a re-definition of the problem or opportunity to be addressed, consider having participants vote for the cluster that seems the most important to them, and then collectively write a new frame or problem/opportunity definition. On the other hand, if your goal is to conduct the Collective Mind Map purely as an exploration of the initial frame, the identified clusters may give you a starting point to inform other activities, such as to determine topics of inquiry for Listening activities.

Documentation Tips

Photos are best to help participants remember what they produced. Usually it’s best to include high resolution photos with call-outs and text explanations rather than simply translating the Collective Mind Map into text or pretty pictures that do not resemble the original Collective Mind Map created with stakeholders. Here’s an example of a Collective Mind Map photo:

Overview

Five Whys helps you challenge your initial frame and understanding of the context around it. It aids in exploration and prioritization of the frames you have developed.

How to complete the Five Whys activity using the worksheet provided.

• Write your Initial Frame. This may come from a previous activity, such as Collective Mind Mapping, or you can create one based on research and personal experience.
• Then, ask yourself: Why is this happening? You should then come up with at least two explanations based on potential root causes. For example, one potential root cause may be based on an economic reason and the other potential root may be grounded on a social issue.
• Then, dig even deeper and write down reasons for these root causes.
• You will end up with three layers: your original frame, two initial explanations, and four follow-up explanations.

Problem:  Kids don’t have valuable after school activities.

Prioritize the frame you (or the team, if you are using this method in a team activity) would like to focus on. Some ways to think about which frame to focus on are :

• Impact. Is this a problem worth solving?
• Empowerment. Is this a problem we are empowered to change?
• Resources. Do we have the people and resources to tackle this problem?
• Context. Will solving this problem put us in the right path towards solving bigger problems?

Keep in mind that there is no wrong frame, but the frame you choose will inform what you do next.

Overview

In this module, you will use Stakeholder Analysis to identify the key internal and external stakeholders who are invested in the problem at hand. This exercise helps you visualize and prioritize people who should be engaged as you develop a solution.

How to complete the Stakeholder Analysis activity

This method focuses on three elements: identification, mapping relationships, and prioritizing stakeholders. A fourth element of the definition - understanding their potential for developing alliances - can be done with methods from the Sensemaking module once you have conducted other activities found in the Listening and Ideation modules.

DOWNLOAD WORKSHEET

Step 1:  Use stakeholder mapping to identify all potential stakeholders and map their relationships

• Define the scope for the exercise. For example, defining the scope as a particular school will yield a different set of stakeholders than defining it as the entire district.
• Spend a few minutes generating a broad list of stakeholders. You could capture each one of these in a separate sticky note. Think in terms of who could have a role, be directly or indirectly impacted, oppose change, etc. Make sure you are specific in your naming, ideally getting to the level of individual stakeholders. For example, “CPS” is too broad, as there may be many stakeholders inside CPS with different roles, levels of influence and impact. Instead, you should write a person’s name or title, e.g. “CPS Chief of Teaching and Learning.”

• If you are conducting this exercise with a group of people, divide the large group in small groups of three to four people, and have each person spend a few minutes sharing what they came up with in their groups. Ask each group to eliminate any duplicates and ensure that vague or broad stakeholders are discarded and replaced with more specific ones.
• Transfer the sticky notes to a physical or virtual whiteboard. Organize them in a way that tells a story. For example, you could map different stakeholders to show a process from left to right, or you could put a key stakeholder in the center of your map and arrange the sticky notes based on how close other stakeholders are to them.

• Use visual cues such as color, arrows, circles and lines to show relationships and connections between different stakeholders.

• Look for and fill in gaps. Once you start drawing circles and arrows, you will likely start thinking of stakeholders who are missing from your map. Often, these are people who are easily overlooked but very impacted by the problem you are exploring, like school bus drivers or after school tutors who may be impacted by a change in school schedules.

Step 2: Stakeholder prioritization

By now, your stakeholder map should give a comprehensive picture of all people who are impacted by the problem you are exploring. Now, it is time to decide who to include in your next exercise: prioritization.

• If you are conducting this as a group exercise, you might start by having each person in the room vote for the most critical stakeholders based on a clearly defined objective. for your exercise. For example, people may vote for different stakeholders if your objective is to identify people to engage in 1-on-1 interviews than if your objective is to identify potential allies to drive change in the school.
• Transfer the stakeholders with the most votes to a two-by-two prioritization matrix.
• Rank the stakeholders across the X-axis based on how Impacted they are by the problem. By the end of this step, your sticky notes should be in a straight line that is evenly distributed across the X-axis.

• Now, rank the stakeholders across the Y axis based on how Influential they might be in maintaining the status quo or in driving change. By the end of this step, your sticky notes should be well distributed across the four quadrants of your matrix.

• Now, name each quadrant in the context of the problem you are exploring. For example, the quadrant at the intersection of low influence and highly impacted could be named “the helpless” or “the underheard.” This naming exercise will give you insight such as questions you may want to ask stakeholders in that quadrant, or attitudes they may have towards the situation you are exploring. 
• Circle priority stakeholders based on what you want to do next. For example, you may use this to choose people to have one-on-one conversations with or to invite to a facilitated group event.

Documentation Tips

Photos are best. Participants remember the experience and what they produced together. Usually it’s best to include high resolution photos with call-outs and text explanations. You can also place a photo of the original Stakeholder Analysis activity right next to a digital version that resembles all the components and location of the original and is easier to read.

References

Lindenberg, Marc and Crosby, Benjamin. Managing Development: The political dimension Kumarian Press, Connecticut, 1981, 217 pp.