Fast Frames

“Fast Frames”

On these pages, I describe frameworks that I have found useful for dealing with problem solving, change, strategy, and other management challenges.describe the image

All these business tutorials are flash video – some are PDFs – some are both. (If you need players, click here.) And they’re now all available on YouTube.

Note: On the PDFs, you’ll need to set the View to “full page,” and Page Down when you're ready for the next page.

We hope you enjoy these quick models.

Determining your approach to addressing any particular issue (2 minutes)

  • This delightful little model comes from Russell Ackoff, a crusty professor of organizational systems theory at the Wharton School who died in October 2009 in his 91st year. You can read more about this astounding man starting at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_L._Ackoff.

The change curve (3 minutes)

  • A traditional view of what happens to organizational and individual performance when change is introduced into the organization.

Complexity (30 seconds)

  • This is a Flash animation derived from a set of overhead transparencies put together by the late Don Burnstine, an old IBM friend. The main message to me is that it can be useful sometimes to break down the “whole” into its component parts to understand the basic structure we're dealing with. This is not to lose sight of the beauty of the whole.

The Consciousness-Competence matrix (5 minutes)

  • How do we go about changing a “habit” that no longer works for us into a new “habit” that doeswork for us?

CoRe/HBO/Team (5 minutes)

  • This framework talks about three features of a hierarchical organization that are used to help ensure an operation works smoothly and energetically.

The modified Grief Curve (5 minutes)

  • Building on the five stages of grief published in 1969 by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, this model looks at the flow of emotions we all go through during change – something that all organizations introducing and implementing a change initiative need to understand and plan for.

Creative Problem Solving (11 minutes) - The Pentacle Path: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

  • This 11-minute video describes an approach to business problem solving – and creative problem solving in particular – that is boht powerful and easy to use. One user describes it as “simple, straight-forward, complete, actionable and understandable.” The flash video version is split into three parts (related to my flash conversion software), so you have the choice of that or the “whole” version on YouTube if you can access it.

Managing the Stimulus-Response sequence (coming soon)

  • From the Vowels of Personal Power book, this little model describes how to prevent oneself from being emotionally hijacked by events and comments from others.

The Rights and Obligations matrix (coming soon)

  • When two parties – normally in a business context – are struggling with their relationship, this is a useful way to lay out what rights each party has with respect to the other, as well as the adjoining obligations that make the relationship work well.

Project Risk Assessment (coming soon)

  • Based on Warren McFarlan’s work back in the 1980s, this is a useful upfront test for non-technical executives to gain some sort of handle on the risk of a project coming in on time, on budget, and to specification. Used thoughtfully, it gives the executive or board member some questions to ask the project director about the nature of the project and the resulting risk profile, and what they are doing about it.

If you need a reader...

For the PDFs, you’ll need a reader (go here for the free Adobe reader).

For the flash videos, you’ll need a flash player (go here for the free Adobe flash player).

In both cases, be sure to “un-check” the box asking you to install McAfee Security Scan Plus (unless you really want it).

Tip: if you choose the PDF versions, when they open in your PDF reader, set the view to “Fit Page” or “Click to show one page at a time” (in Adobe Reader) – the pages are set up to give some sense of animation of the diagrams.

[BACK TO TOP]