Getting to the Root – Establishing the Frame
Previous Posts in this series:
Getting to the Root – Introduction
Your frame of reference provides context for everything that follows. It sets the boundaries for your thinking and allows you to uncover your underlying motivation. Having a solid frame of reference gives you freedom to explore openly within.
Here is a reminder of the question areas as a whole:
Why?
First, we need to establish the relevance of this goal and your motivation to achieve it…
- What purpose does this serve?
- What will be enabled as a result of this?
- When it comes to reflecting on success, which voice is louder, mine or other people?
- If I was not to do/achieve/have this, how would I feel?
- Do I want to do this? Do I feel like I should do this? Is choice out of the question?
- How does this thing form part of a wider vision of the future?
- What am I not doing if I am choosing to do this?
What?
Once we have uncovered our why, we then need to unpack the what. This is all about defining what needs to be achieved to satisfy our why.
The why serves as the frame and material of our blank canvas, exploring the what is about sketching out our vision…
- What does the thing look like as a whole?
- How does it break down in to its composite parts?
- For each part, what are my requirements?
- Revisit the why questions…
- What aspects are musts and which are nice to haves?
- Where is the flex?
- What is only a choice the first time I do this?
- i.e., I can’t change this down the line without incurring significant cost.
- How much can I/we spend on this?
- How much flex do we have?
- Is the flex bounded by the requirements?
- What rules, regulations, or frameworks apply?
- Is this time bound in any way?
What’s Next?
The frame is set, so now it is time to grab your colours and start to shape your masterpiece. We will do this by exploring a broad range of How? When? Who? Where? Questions
Enjoy, for now.