Rule #4 - Create Frameworks

On building a house, ordering off menu and making clear, consistent decisions.

Welcome to the Happy Medium newsletter, this is part four of a ten part series sharing the Happy Medium 10 Rules for Staying Lean (and Stress Free).

1. Have purpose - 3 weeks ago.

2. Understand the point, cut everything else - 2 weeks ago

3. Justify ongoing costs - Last week.

4. Create frameworks - Today!

5. Create processes - Next week

6. Provide visibility

7. Trust

8. Culture

9. Understand before you act, but do act

10. Switching costs you

Rule #4: Create Frameworks

Reduce the complexity of predictable decisions by creating frameworks to abide within.

There is a famous, if not tired, anecdote about how Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day to avoid letting “what to wear” use up any of his decision making juice for the day.

Decisions come in all shapes and sizes - Some are important, some are urgent, interesting, deep, quick, tedious, and some are predictable. They all take up some amount of headspace.

Having frameworks for predictable decisions helps ease the mental burden, while ensuring that good decisions are made in a consistent, clear and aligned way. The more you can standardise your approach to decisions the more time and headspace you can reclaim.

So what is a framework?

A framework can be as complex as a financial model or as simple as a checklist, but at a basic level it it provides a guideline based on inputs (information you need to gather) and outputs (possible options for next steps).

Here are some examples of frameworks that you see everyday:

• A menu - the waiter doesn’t need to guess or remember what each item costs or what ingredients are included, and as a diner you can look at a menu and be empowered to make your own decision about what to order.

• A returns policy - eg. 30 days, unworn with tags attached. Easy for any staff member to check and process.

• The framework of an actual building - You can see where the windows, walls, and plumbing need to go, now you just need trades with the relevant skills to fill in the details.

These things seem so obvious and helpful - can you imagine a world where menus didn’t exist, you were at the whim of the shop assistant whenever you wanted to return something or builders just free-styled the house? Chaos.

Yet we often let these types of simple decisions go undocumented in our own businesses.

Frameworks empower autonomy & scale

Once the builder has set up the framework of the house, it’s visually obvious where the windows will go. In the same way, creating frameworks empowers your team to make decisions even if you aren’t around - which is really important if you want to scale your business beyond just you.

The more that you can identify opportunities for standardisation, the more time and headspace you will save. Additionally once you have things running smoothly and somewhat predictably, then you have laid the groundwork for automation. For example, if you have a consistent framework for how you handle late payers, then you can set up automated reminders that follow the rules you’ve created.

Photo by Barthelemy de Mazenod on Unsplash

Remember the 80/20 Rule

When developing your frameworks, don’t try to consider every possible scenario - you’ll end up with a framework so complicated, it defeats the purpose. Aim for something that will work 80% of the time.

Like our menu example from earlier, if 80% of customers order from the menu, you can easily deal with the 20% of people who want to order a special.

Frameworks enable consistent, calm decision making

Frameworks are not just an investment in headspace, but they provide consistency. Regardless of how you are feeling on a given day, which client you are interacting with or which team member has picked up the project, a good framework means you can make a good decision in any state.

When the mental load is high, being able to rely on a framework that you created in breezier times empowers you to make more fair and consistent decisions. For example, if you’re working with a team member to improve their performance, having a solid framework for assessing performance takes the emotion out of the judgement call. It means that you can be as fair with them as you would be with any other team member in any other context. Spending less time second guessing yourself means you have more energy to give to the actual interaction.

You can also trace back your decision if you need to revisit it months or years down the track, because the steps to get you there are well documented.

Creating frameworks

These are some good starting points for frameworks that can take the mental load off every day decision making

• Pricing - An easy win, a clear framework for pricing your work will save you so much time.

• Projects - For a great example of a creative framework, check out 99% Invisible, How to Write a Joke.

• Team Development - reviews, catch ups, role expectations

• Prioritisation - a consistent way to prioritise ideas and tasks (my personal favourite for tasks, and for ideas)

• Project/Portfolio Management - a framework for how things get done in your organisation, my personal favourite.

• Finance - framework for when to send, follow up and process invoices.

• Any decision you find yourself making frequently.

Creating frameworks to support every day decisions leaves you more time to focus on the decisions you enjoy making - like what will you wear today?

Probably not this?

This is part four of a ten part series on how to be lean, if you aren’t already subscribed, you know what to do. Missed a week? You can catch up here and get a preview of what’s coming up!

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📢 Something new!

One thing I am very passionate about is handing over tedious tasks to software. Over the years I’ve developed a bit of a go-to guide on the best software options out there that will actually provide an return on your investment of time, energy and of course $$.

The thing is that every business is unique and there is no one size fits all solution. Sometimes you need someone to get the gist of your business and point you in the right direction.

Introducing Software Matchmaking 💛

A 60 minute session to target a software solution that can support your business.

There are limited spots available up to the holiday break, you can book in here.

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