Rhetorical Tools for Startups: Framing Your Way to Success
“What’s the key to winning a debate?”
The question came from my grad school professor, the late William Martel. As a former advisor to the US National Security Council and noted military strategist, he knew a thing or two about debates.
“The key is to ‘frame’ the debate,” he said, “If you can frame the debate on your terms, you gain a huge advantage.”
This is a classic technique in political rhetoric. Before diving into the specific what of an issue, you first tell the audience how they should think about it, by giving them a “frame”.
Take the abortion debate for instance: One side says it’s all about the right of babies to live, while the other side makes it all about the right of women to choose.
“Right to live” and “right to choose” are the frames, and which one you accept will heavily influence how you think about the issue, and on which side you ultimately land.
We use framing in our daily lives as well. Ever heard someone say: “Marriage is all about responsibilities,” or “Marriage is all about love”? That’s framing.
Framing for Companies
Framing is not just a technique for the political world; it can also be very useful for corporations and startups.
Just think about some of the most influential companies in recent memory, and you’ll see that many of them completely “re-framed” how we thought about a problem or a major area of our lives.
After Uber, getting around was no longer about ownership, but access — at our demand, anywhere, anytime.
After Apple, phones weren’t about communication anymore; they were about information, entertainment, education, navigation, and indeed EVERYTHING we value in modern life.
Or take another company that’s been in the news — Tableau — which changed how a lot of people looked at data analysis, by putting visualization (and the ability to create it easily without any programming skills) at the very center.
Recently, Apple has tried to “re-frame” how we think about smart phones, by making it all about privacy:
Giving people a “frame” is more powerful than giving them new information — because if you get them to adopt your frame, you change the way they process all future information.
This can be effective for virtually all audiences, investors included — because they love it when someone shows them a fresh way of looking at things.
How to Frame
There are two steps: finding the frame, then using the frame.
1. Finding the frame
You’ve spent years grappling with a problem or trying to make a product or service better, day and night. That hopefully means you have a unique perspective on the problem.
You may not have a entirely new take on the WHOLE problem (that’d be hard), but you may have seen something in a part of the problem that others have missed or neglected.
That could be your frame.
For instance, one of the startups we’ve been coaching works on smart hospital tech. There’s a whole lot you can say about smart hospitals, but this particular team zeroed in on a key figure—nurses, and how new technologies affect nurses’ workflows and schedules.
2. Using the frame
Once you’ve found your frame, you can start testing it in pitches and conversations, like this:
We’ve spent many years working on ________ (problem). And at some point, we realized that ________ (problem) is really about ________ (frame). If you don’t get that part right, everything else will be wasted.
You’re not saying that the problem in question is ALL about this, or ONLY about this. You’re simply drawing the audience’s attention to this super important aspect.
Here’s another way to do it — by contrasting your frame against those of other people (straw men or not):
When we look at ________ (problem), a lot of people think it’s about ________ (competitive frame 1), and some others think it’s all about ________ (competitive frame 2). But in our 40 years of experience, we’ve found that it’s really about ________ (our frame). That’s the key.
You could even make it about the future:
Everyone is obsessed with ________ (technology) right now. But if we imagine a future in which this technology is mainstream, it has to fulfill ________ (frame), or it’s simply not going to be a future people want.
Everyone else’s frame is for today. Your frame is the future.
Finding a good frame is hard. You’re probably talking to a lot of smart and well-informed people, and they’re going to challenge your frame. But that’s ok.
Find your frames. Test them. Revise. Then test again.
The ones that survive will be well worth your trouble.
