What I mean by a frame is a set of assumptions that determines:
- What counts as the problem,
- What counts as a solution, and
- What is not visible at all.
Frames are not wrong or right. They are more or less useful depending on the conditions they are applied to. A frame that worked well in one operating environment can become a constraint when conditions shift, not because it was badly designed, but because it was designed for a world that no longer exists.
The critical feature of a frame is that it is invisible from inside it. The assumptions do not present themselves as assumptions. They present themselves as reality. This is not a failure of intelligence; it is how frames work. The instruments by which an organisation perceives its situation are built from the same assumptions the frame is made of. So when the frame stops fitting, the organisation does not detect a flaw in its perception, it detects a problem in the world, and reaches for the solutions the frame already has available.
This is why competent execution inside the wrong frame makes things worse, not better. Every improvement entrenches the direction of travel.
Perception of this inappropriate frame often lags well behind the problems that are caused by it.
Related
- Frame failure — when a frame no longer fits its conditions
- Why the frame cannot see itself — the epistemological trap
- The diagnostic pattern — how to recognise this in your situation
- What my frame cannot see — the frame applied reflexively to this work itself
- Productive collapse — the institutional consequence