Frame the reason

Received an invitation for a meeting recently and there’s nothing but a vague title of the meeting? 

The convener or caller of the meeting may know what the meeting is all about... but those expected to attend may not. 

Fast forward to the actual meeting, and it’s worth explaining some more : why we’re meeting, what we’re going to do and how we’ll do it. 

When you’ve got a room (or zoom) full of people, they need to know what this is about and why they should care. 


FRAME the reason you’re all there, what’s behind, what’s ahead and what you’re expecting or hoping for. 

That frame is a structure, a context and a framework. It supports a system. 

And that meeting is a system. 

Frames are powerful Sensemaking tools, engaging people and switching on their curiosity. 

And they’re too often left out of the work we’re trying to do together. 

Remember, you might understand why ... but they may not. 

Thankfully it’s easy fixed - with a decent frame. 

Everything is an idea

Our opinions are ideas. 
Messages are ideas too. 
Statements and questions are. 

Movies are ideas. 
Products and services are as well. 
Blogs, posts and comments are. 

Our opinions and beliefs are ideas. 
Same with our impressions and perspectives. 

Ideas are everywhere. 

They’re how we understand what something is and how we communicate about it. 

Don’t be too upset if what you’re trying to communicate doesn’t change someone’s opinion immediately. It’s your idea, landing up against their ideas. 

We’re presented with so many ideas every day, it’s no wonder some of them don’t get through!

It may take a little while or some repeated attempts. 

Our world is a big mix of ideas, hitting up against one another, circling, collecting in groups, moving, swarming and changing shape. 

Get more of your ideas out into circulation and there’s more of a chance for happy collisions, random landings and repeated connections. 

It’s most certainly a numbers game. 

The skill of generation

One of my previous job roles was in healthcare, leading the Community Relations team at Peninsula Health. 

A big part of the role was crafting information about public health issues for the community, media, employees and stakeholders. 

I was helping the radiology team communicate about CT and nuclear medicine scans. 

The head Radiologist said ‘Give me an X-ray or a scan and I can write a report about it, but you’ve just made something out of nothing’. 

There were a few facts to work with, but yes, I’d generated the rest. 

This is a skill; to be able to take an idea or a concept and to make sense of it, to generate an explanation, a story, a blog (or a LinkedIn post!)

The more regularly you generate, the better you can get at it. 

While you might be waiting for all the facts to come in before you create, or you’re following a formulaic template to create it quicker, the best generation comes when you step into the shoes of your audience. 

You answer the questions they might have and expand on information that addresses their concerns and curiosities. 

This isn’t just generation for the sake of content creation. 

It’s generation ... with great consideration. 

Weaving it together

As information flows and bounces around, back and forth between people in a team, how are you helping to weave it all together?

These interlacing and interconnected threads of data, opinions, ideas and decisions need to be brought together. Not everyone sees what is obvious and not everyone is able to make the connections of information that help us make progress.

A key role for leaders in times of uncertainty and change is to make sense of what the heck is going on. Taking seemingly disparate threads and finding links, relevance and connections among and between them is part of that role of leadership.

Don’t let it happen via hope. accident or default. Because it may not happen at all.

Things can become more confusing and ambiguous when you believe it will just weave itself. Take an active role to thread, weave and connect information ... even if you think it’s obvious.

It helps ease the stress and uncertainty people may be feeling as it relieves a weight from our mind ... and our shoulders.

Summaries are super

In our overwhelm of information, meetings, emotions and the impact of change, to summarise ...is to care. We can’t possibly be listening as well as we might usually.

So don’t just finish your meeting, call or session. Make time to recap and summarise and bring it all together. Spend just a minute, or 3 or 5, summarising what happened, where we are at, what is next. 

It’s ok to repeat stuff. 

We don’t do it enough in ’normal times’, so it’s needed even more in these new normal times. As you bring things together, tying up lose ends for people, reminding and recapping, you’ll help them release some of the mental cognitive load they’ve been carrying.

You help do some of the sorting and storing work for them and their brain. It’s just a smart, leader-y thing to do. 

And it’s a caring thing to do, considering the emotional weights that can fill our mind. A synopsis, a digest ... a nutshell. 

Their brain will say ‘thank you’ even if they don’t. It’s a service most certainly worth the time and effort.