The Strategy of Reframing: Organizational, Personal, Social, and Spiritual

      Over the last several days, I can’t seem to get the concept of reframing out of my mind, but that is by no means a bad thing. As a Futurist - working to help others question and realize their basic assumptions and views - it is one of the topics that intrigues me due to the speed of change in today’s environment (in every facet of life imaginable) and the need to develop the skill of “unlearning” as a tool to successfully engage opportunities and advance future aspirations. This covers areas as diverse as meeting the Millennium Development Goals to creating Opportunity Share in an organization for New Product Development to broadening one’s personal scope of thinking and actions in order to become a more productive global citizen. In other words, this topic could go on for awhile, because there’s alot I’d like to cover and discuss (albeit inbetween the other posts I’ve been planning over the last several days).

As Hughes and Beatty have noted:

“Reframing involves the ability to see things differently, including new ways of thinking about an organization’s strategic challenges and basic capabilities. It involves questoning or restating the implicit beliefs and assumptions that are often taken for granted by organization members. It plays a critical role in the formative phases of the strategic learning process from assessing where we are through learning how to get there.”

In other words, resilience in an organization (or life, or society, or group, etc.) requires the ability to reimagine the the core competencies, strengths, opportunities, threats, goals, and even purpose of the entity, and also must include the development of strategy that not only fits the discoveries, but also allows for new waves of reframing to take place on a continual basis. At the core of “reframing” is the idea that strategy is closely linked to “worldviews,” and the fact that we are likely to approach any situation through our own lens of “reality.” Of course, there is a level of inevitability to this human characteristic due to upbringing, social contexts, and connection to surroundings. However, human collective maturity requires that we move beyond our myopic ways of thinking and viewing, and globalization (economic, social, political, etc.) is a prime example of why this is vital. In this vein, Henry Mintzberg’s teaching on strategic planning and thinking could serve in understanding the concept of “reframing”:

“Mintzberg argues that strategy emerges over time as intentions collide with and accomodate a changing reality. Thus, one might start with a perspective and conclude that it calls for a certain position, which is to be achieved by way of a carefully crafted plan, with the eventual outcome and strategy reflected in a pattern evident in decisions and actions over time. This pattern in decisions defines what Mintzberg called ‘realized’ or emergent strategy.”

So, the concept of reframing can be extended to include life decisions, national and international policy creation, developing higher levels of action logics at work and in society, new product development in any business, faith communities, city planning - the list could go on and on.

Oh, and dealing with disruptions and discontinuties becomes much easier if reframing is part and parcel of any strategic thinking and planning process. Now that I’ve covered a bit of introduction to the concept, I hope to get more specific in terms of reframing topics and actual reframing events. Also, I welcome any discussion on the different personality types in regards to personal and corporate change dynamics (methodical and cautious vs. expansive and immediate) and the need for strategic planning vs. strategic thinking (both are important).

References:

Highes, R. L. & Beatty, C. B., (2005), Becoming a strategic leader, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Nickols, F., (2000), Strategy: Definitions and meaning. http://home.att.net/~nickols/strategy_definition.htm

Image: Bart (Flickr)