How to Turn Your Ideas into Visual Frameworks
Throughout May 2024, members of the Creator Kitchen and I are participating in a community-wide creative challenge. We've each picked one goal to accomplish all month long, which must be creation-focused, ambitious, and measurable.
We're calling this challenge... MAYking It Happen.
(Sigh. I know, I know. Take it up with my Creator Kitchen cofounder and the Pun Master General, Melanie Deziel.)
We're MAYking it happen all May long to help our members experience more (please forgive me for this) maymentum.
(Thank you for flying Playing Favorites today. We know there are lots of newsletters that could trigger your eye-rolls, and we appreciate you choosing us....)
Anyway... TODAY!
I wanted to share a flurry of frameworks I've created in support of my own May goal, as I'm participating right alongside our members. But first, in case you wanted to set a similar goal for yourself (highly suggest it!), here are those traits with some examples of what they do and don't mean:
1. Creation-focused: tied to the actual creation of net-new work.
"I will promote my posts."
"I will write four new posts that open with a personal story."
2. Ambitious: going beyond what you'd do anyway.
"I'll write another two posts again this month."
"I will write four posts instead of two this month."
3. Measurable: it can be clearly identified as achieved or not.
"I will work on my newsletter."
"I will publish the first four issues of my brand new newsletter."
This means you could...
Level up an existing thing to improve your ongoing work.
Do a new thing you've been meaning to try.
Do a thing every day to establish or re-ignite a creative habit and find a groove.
Try something intimidating in the smallest possible way.
...or something else! I'm learning how the tiniest of constrained goals really improve creative momentum. It's aMAYzing.
(We'll be coming through your inbox shortly with free snacks and refreshments en route to our destination of Facepalm Island.)
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A total of 27 members have declared goals which exhibit these traits, and we're sticking to them and keeping each other accountable all month long. Mine was to create visual frameworks from ideas I've written about or have documented in my notebook, focused on turning more of my thinking about storytelling and resonance into true IP -- intellectual property I can own and use to fuel ... well, everything. These frameworks will support my client engagements, episodes, videos, social posts, speeches, and eventually, The Next Book.
(It will happen, I promise. In the meantime, thanks for supporting my original.)
Visual frameworks and I have a fraught relationship. I love them, but they're hard for me to create. I need them for my work, but I usually shy away from dedicating the time needed to messily make one. One of my largest projects ever was an e-book that was almost entirely framework-based, The Creator's Compass (listed second here). I loved it, but it took me FOR-EV-VER to complete, and I felt very drained after. And the fact that the Idea Impact Matrix is something I've become known for is a darn miracle to me. (That one took dozens of hours of work and tons of collaboration with Mel.)
So this May, I wanted to get better at that skill. And it's working! Here's what one member said which totally and completely confused me:
Kate is the CEO of a coaching and consulting business run by a notable author, and she's a notable author and YouTuber herself. She knows a thing or three about a thing or three. But in this case, I was certain she was wrong.
Me? Good at frameworks? Hardly! I've always struggled.
So, let me try to explain how I've built my frameworks this May and share a few of my favorites.
May this help you.
(Please return to your seat and fasten your safety belt. We're experiencing some unexpected rough puns.)
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The Primacy and Recency Effects
Where do you invest your time developing a piece or an experience? Here's what I'd strongly urge you to try so you can be more memorable:
Invest more heavily in the first and last moments with something.
The primacy and recency effects are connected psychological phenomena which suggest that people recall an experience most vividly because of their first and last moments with something.
And where do we tend to fall flattest when we create stuff? The opens and the close. The intros and the outros. So this is a concept I have often found myself discussing with clients and audiences, and it's even become a recurring segment in my new podcast. (I call it First, Last, Favorite, and we zoom into those three areas of a given story with a guest to understand what made it work and/or how it might improve.)
NO, I am not suggesting you open a piece with any of those basic BS "hooks" on social media.
NO, I am not suggesting you optimize your way towards the perfect ending CTA.
YES, I am saying you should invest a larger percent of time in the intro and outro, start and finish, open and close -- not as appendages sitting separate from the rest (as with the hook or the CTA) but as strong sources of value and originality. They should be seamless parts of the experience, built to increase its power.
If you only have five hours to create something, invest an inordinate amount of time on the open and close.
How to Defend + Own Your Ideas
I don't have a name for this one yet (open to suggestions -- hit reply!), but I really love it. Others seem to enjoy it too:
Forget being viral. I want my essays and episodes to be forwardable and my frameworks (apparently) to be printable.
The following is a visual means to evaluate the myriad ways you can explore, explain, defend, and OWN your ideas publicly.
Bottom-left: my insight is that our businesses grow better when we prioritize resonance over reach. If I say, "You should prioritize resonance over reach," I'm TELLING you, in LITERAL fashion. To tell someone something literal, in our line of work, is to impart an insight. That's the table-stakes piece of our work. Are you sharing an insight? Are you able to tell them, in literal fashion, something they need?
Okay, so how do I defend and own that? I need a bunch of ways to explain it, including a bunch of stories in my bag. I could offer an analogy, which might seem like a means to "show" someone, and I could argue that. But an analogy is a comparison you deliver as a statement, so I consider it more like telling someone something -- but it's not literal, as with an insight. It's FIGURATIVE. (Top-left.)
"Reach is like people glancing at you. Resonance is like people running all the way into your corner."
There may not be a literal glance. There may not be literal running over.
As we move to the right of the framework, we aren't sharing statements but stories. An analogy is a comparison I tell you to deliver an insight, but stories are journeys TO the insight. They're more immersive, feel more personal and emotional, and convey a greater sense of forward progress, so you can almost anticipate the ending and subsequent insight as the consumer of the story.
So I might try to illustrate what I mean (bottom-right). Not getting it when I merely state my insight? Here, let me SHOW you what this looks like when an entrepreneur or creator embraces my insight of putting resonance over reach. In the Bottom-Right sit all my literal illustrations. They did this. They look like you. Perhaps you can do it too. There, in the bottom-right, I have several signature stories I've developed and can tell everywhere.
(Here's the visual again so you can stop scrolling back up...)
The last and often missing piece is the top-right: allegories. Illustrations (bottom-right) are a means to show something to others in literal fashion. An allegory is not literal. The Matrix is an allegory, inspired by another (the allegory of the cave). The Matrix isn't literally saying, "In the future, society will look like humans-as-batteries to power machines." No, it's saying something about society underneath the literal. Beware of our reliance on technology, as we become slaves to it. Or maybe they're saying something else: Society is just a grouping of rules and systems created by the more powerful, and you exist plugged into their world, as they suck your productivity and life away from you to remain in power. Wake up, and see this for what it really is. Reclaim your life!
Allegories are like analogies in that they offer a comparison, but it's not a statement you give. It's a story you share.
To teach my idea of resonance, I might tell you a story about watching a kid's show with my daughter or seeing a turtle at the aquarium (my signature stories I refer to as Elena and Myrtle, respectively), and though this seems irrelevant to my message on face (the stories aren't about content or marketing or differentiation), they bring you on a journey, arriving at the insight in an unforgettable way that hits deeper than even an illustration could.
We need all of these, but arguably, we tilt in one direction or another. Use the framework to evaluate yours.
"Why Should I Care About You?"
My latest framework for May answers that question. Why should anyone care about you, your brand, your project, your piece?
You can structure the story you tell or answer you give to resonate.
Align - Agitate - Assert - Invite
ALIGN: What are their goals? What's their current situation?
AGITATE: But where do they struggle? What questions plague them?
ASSERT: So what is YOUR idea for something better, your premise? It's not what just anyone says about this. It's YOUR vision.
INVITE: Now what? They have the urge to act already, just point them to the right, next step.
The first two are their status quo. The second 2 are your vision for something better. They pivot around that crucial element of any effective story: tension.
"Hey Jay, what do you do?" (The polite version of, "Why should I care about you?")
Our attempts usually focus on ourselves, which is a mistake:
"I'm a writer, podcaster, and consultant who talks about using better storytelling to differentiate a business."
Meh. Or I can say:
ALIGN: "You know how lots of experts today are creating content to try and grow their business?"
AGITATE: "Well general expertise today is commodified. I can get it anywhere. Not only are TONS of experts publishing, but lots of people claiming to be experts do grimy things that somehow get attention. Worse, genuine experts often feel a pull to TRY those things, because what else works?"
ASSERT: "I believe you can stand out through substance, not stunts, but it starts by understanding the idea of resonance and caring about it more than reach. How do you communicate in ways that ensure others care?"
INVITE: "So I consult and run a membership to help smart experts become more influential voices through stronger ideas and stories."
I can do it quicker too:
I work with experts (align) who ALSO hate all those grimy tactics people use online to get attention (agitate). I help them learn to resonate deeper than others using stronger ideas and stories instead of random stunts (assert) through my consulting and membership (invite).
"Why should I care about you?"
You can wing it, or you can practice it. This structure can help you intentionally design your response to resonate. Because this work isn't about "getting in front of" others. It's about ensuring they care.
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So to Kate and to you, I'd say, I'm not "the best" or even "good" at making frameworks. But I am getting more practiced, and that's what counts if we want to do anything meaningful at all. I realize now that my previous mistake was trying to start with a visual too soon. Now, I start with the purpose and the variables, then move to the categories, then later, place it on a visual and mess around.
For example, to create this framework below...
Here was my process...
I want to help you tell stronger stories to teach something.
In a previous essay, I'd listed a few ways to teach something in a bulleted list. But how do they all relate?
Some are literal ways to teach, some are figurative.
Oh, and some are like telling you something, some are like showing you something. Great, I've established two groups, with two sets of opposites. Each category gets its own spectrum. Two spectra = a matrix. I will drop them onto a visual now.
Then I start playing around with the inside terms (highlighted yellow). It got SUPER messy here. What is "telling figuratively" vs. "telling literally" vs. "showing figuratively" vs. "showing literally"? Well, I know "showing figuratively" is an allegory. That was easy for me. I know "showing literally" is an illustration. Done and done. The left side of the matrix was a bit less clear, so I played around a bunch until I landed on analogy and insight.
Then I started to question ALL OF IT. I began to change the terms inside and even the labels of the two spectra. Uh oh.
Then I noticed that the left and right sides were each different in another way. What is my issue with so much business communication and content? We tell, not show. Ah ha! Those are STATEMENTS. What do I want? To help people show, not tell. Those are STORIES. That's the right side. Okay, now I can reset my terminology now that those little blue indicators are crystal clear to me. I regained confidence as a result, and used the labels you see now.
So now I can use this to plot where others are + where they want to be. Mostly, you're on the left side when developing your ideas (statements), then MAYBE you move to the bottom-right (illustrations), but even then, you're likely looking for quick examples and need to develop those into true signature stories to illustrate your insights. And we can then move up to allegories. Effective storytellers have both literal and figurative stories in their bag at all times.
None of this removes the mess, but the combination of my process and plenty of practice helps me direct the mess.
Oh! That's a good concept.
Maybe I need a framework for that too...