Why “framing” your solution is key to its adoption
The purpose of framing data
As a learning practitioner, you have the capability to make recommendations that will drive results for the audience you serve. So why aren’t your recommendations always followed? Often, it’s not what you say but how you say it. The purpose of framing data is to position your recommendations in a way that that will get leaders on board with your ideas.
Let’s take a look at the power of framing data, and related skills you need to possess in order serve your internal customers effectively, and frame opportunities in the optimal way so that they take advantage of the value you can provide.
Ask yourself this: “Which statement would be more impactful to the senior executives you serve?”
1. We need to do something differently, and I propose the following L&D program that will cost $100,000.
2. If we do something differently, we will save the company $500,000/year.
3. If we don’t do something differently, we will waste $500,000 every year.
Statement 1 is what we typically do. We know there is something that needs to be done, and we expect that leaders will recognize our expertise and take our recommendation. And when it’s a small thing, like purchasing microlearning for $5000, that may be ok.
But times are changing. Learning & Development must become a business advisor. Business advisors must frame their ideas in a way that will influence leaders based on business acumen. While we generally think of this as building a business case, there is an additional technique called framing that determines how you present that business case.
Statement 2 is called “positive framing” because it positions the idea in terms of “if you do what I recommend, something good that will happen”.
Statement 3 is called “negative framing” because it positions the idea in terms of, “if you don’t do what I’m recommending, something bad will happen”.
Both can be effective depending upon the leader you are trying to influence.
Determining which framing technique to use
There are 3 determinants for which framing technique to select:
• Organizational culture
• The beliefs and assumptions of the audience
• The situation you are facing
Organizational culture
If your organization is about driving future improvements, and messaging is all about how much better everyone can do, then positive framing may be the better approach. Focusing on positive benefits (higher revenue, higher productive, greater skill) enable others to see how the positive contributions lead to a positive future.
However, if your organization generally focuses on ways to cut costs and waste, then presenting your idea as one that can support those efforts means that negative framing may be a better approach. Focusing on the bad things that will continue or could get worse may be the best way to drive action.
The beliefs and assumptions of your audience
“Know thy audience” is critical in presentations, including here.
If you are presenting primarily to leaders who like the status quo and aren’t inclined to change, they probably need you to paint a picture of doom and gloom (if they don’t pursue your idea) to motivate them. That’s negative framing.
On the other hand, if the leaders you are presenting to are change agents, always looking for a way to improve, and never satisfied with “good enough”, then positive framing is a better approach.
The situation you are facing
The first 2 criteria could be overlooked if the situation you are facing is dire. For example, let’s say that some legislation was passed such that a product your organization produces is the only one on the market… for now. You have a limited opportunity to capitalize on the situation before competitors get in. So you might propose a learning program for how to position your products to take advantage of new requirements. You want your sales and marketing teams to be the experts on the legislation and how your product meets the requirements. And you could use positive framing of your program to show the additional revenue that could be gained during this window of opportunity.
Alternatively, if the legislation that was passed means that the products your organization produces are no longer compliant, then you have no choice but to change your products to make them so. You might propose a learning program for the product management, engineering, and manufacturing departments to understand the implications of the legislation, what competitive products already meet the requirements, and what opportunities exist to leapfrog those competitors. And you could use negative framing of your program to show the lost revenue that will occur if you do nothing.
Another framing example
Let’s take a look at another example of how to frame an opportunity that most of us know we have: the imperative to create a culture of learning. While some leaders intuitively know that you must change your strategy from one of “push” (pushing training programs, mostly classroom) to one of “pull” (providing personalized learning resources, mostly informal that people can use to learn while they work), others need more convincing. That’s a huge mindshift change for most organizations. However, there is compelling data for why this is critical.
Here are 3 ways you could frame it.
#1) Positive framing through industry statistics
According to Bersin & Associates, employees in companies with a strong learning culture:
Are 37% more productive than their peers at organizations that don’t value workplace learning
Are 58% more likely to have the skills in their talent pipeline to meet changing marketplace needs
Are 32% more likely to be the first to market an innovative solution
Have a 26% better track record of producing quality products and/or delivering stellar services
Are 34% more likely to respond faster to and satisfactorily address customer needs
All these translate into increased ROI for the company regarding greater productivity, increased profits, and decreased attrition.
#2) Positive framing through quantified cost savings
Personalized learning is a key component of creating a culture of learning. It’s what makes “pull” easy. So to promote the positive impact, you need to compare personalized learning to the costs of its opposite – role-based learning/learning paths.
Let’s say you do role-based training, and everyone who is in a certain role must take one 2-day classroom course and two 1-hour e-learning courses each year.
At a fully loaded salary of $80k, that’s an hourly rate = $41.67/hour.
| 2 day class @ 6.5 hrs/day = loss of 13 hrs productive time (excluding travel) @ Fully loaded hourly rate |
$542/employee |
| 2 * 1 hr eLearning course = lost of 2 hrs productive time @ Fully loaded hourly rate |
$84/employee |
| TOTAL COSTS | $626/employee and 15 hours |
Based our experience for years facilitating global role-based training, as much as 2/3 of the people assigned to training don’t really need it. You may have your own experience, based on class surveys about the relevance. And when you propose your percentage, make it conservative so it’s achievable and believable. Being conservative with numbers based on our experience, let’s use 50%.
If you have a culture of learning that changes from role-based learning to personalized learning, so people do only what they need, and 50% of the people don’t need to attend the mandatory requirements, you would add 15 hours of productivity per person at a cost of $626/employee for the 50% who didn’t need it. Because we have 5000 employees, if 2500 employees didn’t have to go to training they didn’t need, that would save 37,500 hours and $1,565,000 every year! If there was a cost to provide personalized learning of even $200,000, that’s a net savings of $1,365,000 every year.
The “saved” money and hours could be spent more wisely by applying them to content that is personalized to the needs of each individual so that their real skill gaps are closing, providing the company with the capabilities people need for the future of work.
And if your personalized learning approach included lots of informal skill practices that people could do to learn while working, then your continuous learning approach would hardly affect the hours saved.
#3) Negative framing
The World Economic Forum predicted that employees will need an average of 101 days of reskilling and upskilling in the period leading up to 2022 because the core skills required to perform most jobs will change by 42%. Those who haven’t acted already are behind. They further estimate we will need to reskill more than 1 billion people by 2030.
It’s just not possible to formally train as fast as people need new skills. With the “speed of change”, skill gaps are growing, while time available for training is practically non-existent. So if we don’t shift from “training” to “learning”, these are the 6 quantifiable impacts of skill gaps we can expect. (Each of them can be quantified for your organization.)
Loss of productive time
If you don’t have the skills to do your job, it takes you longer. You have to figure it out. You may have to ask someone to help you do it, which will also take up their time.
Long job vacancies
Nearly 60% of U.S. employers have job openings that stay vacant for 12 weeks or longer. The average cost HR managers say they incur for having extended job vacancies is more than $800,000 annually. CareerBuilder survey
Having long job vacancies means that someone, or several people, are doing the work of the person who is not there. That means that the person or people taking on the extra responsibilities are not doing either job 100%, and they are stressed, overworked, and potentially burned out.
Excessive turnover
Research now shows that the No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is the “inability to learn and grow”. 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends: Leading the Social Enterprise – Reinvent with a Human Focus
PwC calculates turnover costs as 1.5 x salary
Loss of competitive advantage
If people leave because of lack of development, they will often go to your competition. Not only do you lose their contribution, but your competition gains it – a double whammy.
Lack of engagement
If you don’t feel like the organization is investing in you, you are less likely to be engaged. That lack of engagement impacts lots of things. According to Gallup, that’s higher absenteeism and turnover, and lower productivity, sales, customer metrics, and profitability.
Lack of innovation
Recruiting guru Dr. John Sullivan places the loss from missing out on a single game-changer, purple squirrel or innovator at over $1 million each.
Without skills, including skills for what’s coming next, there will be a deficit in people being able to be innovative. Innovators are those who are highly skilled and have foresight. You need them to help you prepare for and deliver what comes next.
So as a result of not having a learning culture, and instead, using role-based, one-size-fits-all traditional formal training, we’re going to have significant skill gaps… and one or more of each of these significant impacts. So ask yourself these questions:
What if all our best, most innovative people end up at our competitors?
What happens if one of these problems exists at our company?
What happens if ALL of these problems exist?
What happens if they’re issues for us, but not our competition? What happens then?
A culture of learning that puts people in charge of their development and gives them personalized learning can eliminate that.
But if you don’t agree, you’ll want to become ok with our inability to meet objectives. Here’s what we need to tell investors. Here’s what we need when we lose 40% of our staff. Here’s what we need when people can’t do the work. Let’s build a plan for when that happens.
Summary
Hopefully you are beginning to see that you can neither positively nor negatively frame your programs without a deep understanding of your organization and industry, and without possessing overall business acumen. That is, you must develop curiosity and customer focus in order to serve your internal customers effectively, and frame opportunities in the optimal way so that they take advantage of the value you can provide.
But with those skills, you will be able to position your recommendations in a way that that will get leaders on board with your ideas so that they take advantage of the value you can provide.