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A business framework is almost as important as business strategy itself. Their integration is key to success.
When in the workplace, the business's strategy should drive all activity and decisions. It may not be top of mind to the individual; to that end allegiance to the business strategy may be practically idealistic. 'Thing is, strategy happens whether by design or otherwise.
That's where the business's framework comes into play.
By Design or Otherwise...
A business's framework is the organization's structural alignment to enact its strategy, and express its potential value. That framework may be well designed or it may not be. Outcomes impact culture, morale, productivity and more, all of which exhibit the possible value to the market and customers.
To better understand, let's compare and contrast business strategy and the business's organizational framework. A classic example thereafter will filter down into definitions and my own take on frameworks.
Strategy and Framework
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Business strategy is to the market and the customer what an organization's framework is to the operation and the employee. Together, they satisfy all aspects. Misaligned, they fundamentally battle, creating mediocrity and suffering for all.
Strategy is an idea. It's a code. Strategy is to life as a skeleton is to a body. It's the promise and potential of the body. Strategy isn't the product or service. A framework itself, strategy is the willful energy driving the organization's capability to make and fulfill.
That's where the business's framework comes in. Strategy needs an embodiment framework for its life source. The framework is fulfillment, e.g. organization design, workforce strategy, accounting, production, marketing and customer service, etc.
All organizations deserve the benefit of the doubt for their frameworks. It's really difficult to build and sustain a business. In spite of best intentions, the framework may not be so well designed. Emphasizing again, orchestrating a business about a strategy is really hard! Reasons for this may be a changing market, upgrading technology to fulfill operations, new business ventures, competitors, talent acquisition, etc., etc. Frameworks are just as susceptible to timing and variability as is strategy. Change is inherent to framework stability.
Sometimes that framework is well designed to carry out the strategy. That makes the workplace sensible and primed for success.
Frameworks, by design or otherwise, create workplaces which allow and/or disallow the full promise of the business's strategy.
Strategy Behind the Framework
Strategy is what makes the business unique, and sustainably so. Choices made by way of essential guidelines differentiate the business from its competitors. While operations and processes may be copied, the integrative approach of choices made provide lasting, competitive strength.
Strategy is considerable, overarching, and fundamental all at once.
Take equality, human rights and freedom in the United States, for example. The Declaration of Independence asserts: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." [1] Americans hold these words collectively as an ideal - a strategy by which to live.
More practically, yet still at a high level, Trevor Noah's 2022 interview with former President Barack Obama spoke to the idea of democracy and freedom and how difficult they are to absorb day-to-day, i.e. the framework of actually living. Noah said, "when you sell freedom, [people think], I can't eat freedom. I can't buy a house with freedom. I can't... You know?" [2] On one hand strategy is a grounding factor, but it doesn't have tangible results - in the hand, by the eye's perception, etc. That's where a follow-on framework comes in.
The best way to rear strategy and see to its continued development and success is a nurturing and still nimble framework.
A Classic Framework
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The United States Constitution is the foundational framework to enact the country's strategy, or make equality, human rights and freedom go, if you will. Incidentally, we refer to those who wrote the United States Constitution as the country's Framers. They began the framework:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. [3]
The United States operates on a system of checks and balances between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government.
Make no mistake. That framework stands for the strategy, and not the other way around. Freedom must have actionable means to ensure its viability, just as a product or service must have a business model to enable a business to thrive.
It is for this reason there is political discord no matter one's political inclination or preference - was that a comment on governmental politics, or the office politics you experience in your workplace? Rhetorical question...
A final point, politics, as we know them, is the push and pull of the framework. Politicians do not redesign The Constitution on a daily basis; they argue how its institution in society will operate. Similarly, a business's organizational framework may be legitimately debated. The operative activities enacted down to the individual employee level in light of market forces, etc., give reasons to ideate constant change.
All in all, how do we implement strategy? The answer is the framework. More importantly, strategy comes first.
Framework Defined
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Merriam-Webster.com defines framework as "a basic conceptional structure (as of ideas); a skeletal, openwork, or structural frame; a frame of reference; the larger branches of a tree that determine its shape." [4] From that definition, we get the sense of a practical foundation on which something may be developed. The sense is still unclear when it comes to business.
Consultant, David Gray, wrote in the 2021 MIT Sloan Management Review article, 'What Makes Successful Frameworks Rise Above the Rest', "Any kind of coherent thinking involves some form of conceptual framing. Conceptual frameworks are mental representations that order experience in ways that enable us to comprehend it." [5] This is more business-speak, the framework I'm getting at for an organization. The actual and conceptual unite in this near-actionable definition.
Let's get even more definite.
The CEO of the management consulting firm, Applied Frameworks, Jason Tanner, blogged in 2020, "Business frameworks range from strategic to team level application. While some frameworks support achievement of goals by individuals, most business frameworks leverage collaboration by groups of people working together to achieve a common goal." [6] There. That's it!
Frameworks are material and substantive organization of people, resources and ideas.
My Framework
My ongoing exploration and experience with strategy has a framework likened to Tanner's definition.
When an independent consultant, I created a Strategy-to-Value hierarchy (see above) that explains business frameworks quite well. The foundation is, no surprise, strategy. It drives everything above it.
Anecdotally, communication was a stickier, easier-to-understand word than the more befitting alignment. Alignment represents an actionable, integrated, embedded framework of activity in support of and beyond the strategy.
As neither strategy, nor frameworks are perfect, problems will arise. They must be thoroughly defined, understood and vetted.
Every organization has business processes designed to resolve timely or situational problems in the organizational/operational framework or, by a twist of fate, even to the strategy itself.
Ultimately, desired value to the customer results. It is the framework of the business that determines the degree to which strategic, intended value can result.
The Workplace Experience
Here, I think it's important to add just one more section. Why is the link between strategy and frameworks important to the individual employee? How might I stress how the organization's framework and its integration with strategy impact the person, the human resource, the 9-to-5'er, if you will?
Value served in the marketplace is a desired result of any business strategy. It logically follows. Strategy must be the basis of any and all business functions at the organizational level all the way down to the individual pursuit.
Bottom line, the workplace experience involved is predicated upon the business's framework. If the business's framework is misaligned with the strategy, then execution will never represent intent. The opposite is true, too. Alignment affects everyone in the organization. In this light, I think Brian J. Robertson referred to organizational frameworks best in his 2015 book, Holacracy:
The human capacity to sense dissonance in the present moment and see the potential for change strikes me as one of our most extraordinary gifts—our restless, never-satisfied, creative spirit that keeps us always reaching beyond where we are. When we feel that sense of frustration at a system that’s not working, or a mistake that keeps getting repeated, or a process that seems inefficient and cumbersome, we are tuning in to a gap between how things are and how they could be. I call this a tension, because that’s often how it is experienced, but I don’t mean the word in a negative way. We might label this state a 'problem' that 'should' be fixed, or we might label it an 'opportunity' to harness. [7]
So ask yourself. How is the business framework in your workplace aligned and constructed to address problems and collaboratively achieve common goals?
[1] “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives, 1 Nov. 2015, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.
[2] Barack Obama - Protecting Democracy and the Commitment to Facts | The Daily Show. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqaODYJ702s. Accessed 18 Nov. 2022.
[3] “Full Text of the U.S. Constitution | Constitution Center.” National Constitution Center – Constitutioncenter.Org, https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text. Accessed 17 Jan. 2023.
[4] Definition of FRAMEWORK. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/framework. Accessed 15 Jan. 2023.
[5] Gray, David. “What Makes Successful Frameworks Rise Above the Rest.” MIT Sloan Management Review, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-makes-successful-frameworks-rise-above-the-rest/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2023.
[6] Tanner, Jason. “The Power of Frameworks for Business.” Applied Frameworks, 5 Oct. 2020, https://appliedframeworks.com/the-power-of-frameworks-for-business/.
[7] Robertson, Brian J. Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World. First edition, Henry Holt and Company, 2015. Via Apple Books, https://books.apple.com/us/book/holacracy/id939621800. p. 13.