How framework thinking helps big decisions

When making large-scale changes in your organization or community, how can you make sure you’re making the right decisions without threatening your core values? Har Ye Kan of HYK Consulting joins Vince in this Coffee Klatsch to explain the advantages of strategic visioning and framework thinking when taking your organization to new horizons.

Top Takeaways:

  • Strategic visioning can help you and your team innovate without losing sight of your core pillars.
  • Framework thinking, a term coined by Bill Johnson, helps guide your implementation of new practices without threatening your core values.
  • Both of these can be helpful tools for making macro changes in your organization and community.

Learn more about Har Ye Kan on her LinkedIn page.


Transcript:

Vince Boileau: Hey friends! Welcome to the Coffee Klatsch. This is a Boileau video series where we bring on people that we find interesting to talk about new ways of thinking and insights. And today I’m joined by Har Ye Kan from HYK Consulting. Welcome to the show.

Har Ye Kan: Thanks a lot, Vince. It’s great to be back again.

VB: This is our second episode with Har Ye. If you want to learn a little bit more about her, I encourage you to go back and check out our previous episode. We’re going to talk about “strategic visioning.” What does this mean and, specifically, what is the framework thinking approach to strategic visioning?

HYK: “Visioning” is a verb. It’s a process. It’s never-ending. It’s gonna be dynamic, and it’s creating that process to encourage people to imagine, to think outside of their boxes. Strategic visioning is a little different, because it’s also about imagining those possibilities and then finding the ways in which they can be implemented in the most meaningful and most purposeful and most, sort of, tractable ways. It has to be unique and tailored to every organization, and without that strategic visioning that happens up front, you don’t really know what your north star is, and those are kind of the values that are enshrined really through framework thinking. “Framework thinking” is really a phrase coined by Bill Johnson. It really starts with defining: what is the need? Why are we doing this? Why do we need a vision? There are times when you need to make decisions: what can you say yes to? What can you figure out in terms of the gray areas? And what are some of the fundamentals that you just absolutely cannot compromise on to then get you to the action, the details, and then the final implementation?

VB: Help me understand the framework. So we’re talking about defining “vision.”

HYK: Yes.

VB: Mission, values, those types of things. What are the “2×4’s” in this framework?

HYK: In terms of a “2×4,” I would say there are three fundamental elements to that framework. One is just a vision statement. And then it comes down with a set of guiding principles — it could be three, it could be four — to define who you are and what you want to do. And then finally it’s the framework. You really draw what are some of the bones of the place so that we’re defining what is the basic structure and the sandbox in which we can play with, and what are some of the areas in which there’s flexibility for change to be able to support that.

VB: In the business world, I think one of the tools that does this well is EOS, and we’ve talked about — a lot of it already exists in that structure and I love the idea of ten-year vision, three-year vision — all of these things are defined — and you could fit them on one page and you have, then, a framework upon which you can actually build a business.

HYK: And that’s the beauty, right? When you have it on a one-pager, it is concise, it is clear. You’re forced to be in that discipline. But I’m also glad that you brought up the one-year, the three-year, the five-year, ten-year. A vision is a long-term process, right? You also need to check in at various points to sharpen that vision.

VB: In making a macro change for an organization, there’s just so much to get done, you run into fatigue, you know, almost immediately, and you’re like, you start to lose sight: “Well, why are we doing this again? This is hard.” Right? It’s like, well, if you’ve got that vision, if you’ve got that definition of success — “No, we must do this, otherwise we will not be successful in doing our five-year or our ten-year. Have you defined a purpose for HYK Consulting?

HYK: Yes, I have: to create and steward communities that’s thrive — not just economically, but environmentally, as well as socially. But the other piece of it, too, is in that process it’s to help them see the potential in themselves as a community and to see the potential in the place where they live and to then harness that into something bigger and create that community purpose.

VB: That’s awesome. Well, there it is: strategic visioning. Thanks for joining us today.

HYK: Thank you.