The Seven Stages of FrameWorks Learning
Adapted from Jeanne Ryer, Endowment for Health, New HampshireLearning to frame and reframe is hard. It's hard to think this way initially, and it's hard to do it differently even once you master it. Knowing that you are passing through some predictable stages can help ease the angst. Or at least that's what our framing colleague Jeanne Ryer intended, when she codified the following:
Denial, in which you can't believe that what you've done in the past doesn't work, even though you know better, and can only dimly see how you might do it differently.
Wonder and Ah-Ha!, in which suddenly everything you see is Framing! Framing! Framing!
Paralysis, in which you are afraid to frame because you know the bad frames are in you.
Assimilation, in which you hunker down, read and think more, and try to learn how to get yourself unstuck.
Awkwardness, in which your frame has the head of a cat and the tail of a dog, but you recognize it and keep trying.
Integration, in which you successfully reframe a piece and it works, and you keep doing it, and it works better.
Conversion, in which you realize that you had better share your knowledge with your colleagues and coalitions or their frames will undermine yours.
