Frame Blindess


Shoemaker and Russo (in Hoch) discuss the hazards associated with "frame blindness" and how to guard against them.  Discuss three ways you can avoid "framing traps" and provide a detailed example of each from your life experience.  Could you have framed each situation differently? What did the exercise teach you about complex decision-making? What additional tools or "frames" might have helped you through the process? How was "risk" a factor in your examples? What did you learn about yourself through this exercise?



Of the various methods that Shoemaker and Russo (Hoch, et. al., 2001) state to avoid framing traps, I have typically used surfacing a frame most often when trying to suss out an issue.  I have found this technique the most effective in capturing and accounting for as many risk elements that can be conceived.  That said, risk identification is only as effective as the knowledge, experience, and imagination of the people involved in the exercise.  Frame stretching or expansion may help identify more areas of risk, but such an attempt may border on endless “what if” scenarios.  Aside from realizing I wish the dry erase markers could smell like the old marker pens (orange, cherry, blueberry), I do find that surfacing a frame provides the most complete picture of an issue compared to other brainstorming methods. 

Aligning frames as described by Shoemaker and Russo (Hoch, et. al., 2001) can be a challenging but necessary exercise to prevent frame blindness.  More than looking to insert common elements of frames, I tend to look strands or threads of commonality that permeate between frames.  I want to know what are the attributes between these identified elements and are they visible in other frames?  A problem does arise when there just isn’t any commonality between certain frames, although this can provide an answer in and of itself and forces me onto the next element. 

Appreciating emerging frames (Hoch, et. al., 2001) is perhaps the most challenging of the three trap avoidance techniques discusses here.  Like every tech blog, odds maker, or wannabe trendsetter, correctly identifying and giving proper weight to an emerging frame can be a difficult exercise.  Cassone (2014, p. 1) offers the concept of VUCA, which stands for volatile, unknown, complex and ambiguous.  This was originally created to describe a multilateral world events model.  Developed by the United States Army War College in the 1990’s, the term has been adopted by business leaders to describe “the chaotic, turbulent, and rapidly changing internal and external conditions faced by organizations on a daily basis” (Cassone, 2014).  The risk shown here is that a frame may emerge and soon be rendered obsolete or useless.  Worse maybe the constant churn and “burned calories” in trying to constantly identify such frames. 



Cassone, M. (2014). Characteristics of transformative listening enacted by organization development practitioners

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. E. (2001). Wharton on making decisions (1st ed.). New York: Wiley

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