# Frame Framing is the moment where you turn signals into meaning. We all frame. The move is to do it **consciously**, and keep at least one alternative alive long enough to test. ## Start here if - People agree on facts but disagree on meaning. - You suspect hidden assumptions or different success criteria. - You want to surface trade-offs without forcing consensus. Try next: - [[Two Frames Table]] - [[Ladder Check (7 min)]] - [[Sensemaking Map]] ## Run one small move - If the room is defensive: [[Defensive Reasoning - Model 1 vs Model 2]] - Surface assumptions: [[Assumptions and Alternatives]] - If people disagree: [[Diagnosing the Disagreement]] - If the issue is "we're aligned but…": [[06_Lenses/Frame/Shared Mental Models]] - If expertise is blocking clarity: [[Curse of Knowledge and Shared Understanding]] - If uncertainty is being solved with debate: [[Constraint Scan (20 min)]] - If feedback is involved: [[Radical Candor as a Feedback Lens - Deep Dive]] ## What "good" looks like You can state: - your current best explanation - one plausible alternative - what evidence would change your mind When that's true, go to [[Decide]]. ## Interpretive models These are the primary lenses Owlery uses to make interpretation explicit and examinable. - [[Ladder of Inference]] — the cognitive backbone; how humans move from data to action through selection, meaning, assumptions, and conclusions without noticing - [[Mess vs Problem]] — a mess is a system of interacting problems; a problem is something that can be solved; confusing the two produces the wrong moves - [[Sensemaking vs Decision-Making (Boundary Model) - Deep Dive]] — where sensemaking ends and deciding begins; the boundary matters because the tools are different - [[Cynefin Framework]] — situating the situation in the right domain before choosing how to interpret it ## Shared meaning and alignment Framing fails most often not because one person is wrong, but because two people are using the same words to mean different things. - [[06_Lenses/Frame/Shared Mental Models]] — what shared understanding actually requires; why "we agreed" doesn't mean "we mean the same thing" - [[Curse of Knowledge and Shared Understanding]] — why expertise makes it harder to communicate clearly; what to do about it - [[Shared Model Sync (15 min)]] — a short session for resurfacing meaning divergence before it becomes misalignment - [[Shared Model Drift Under Ambiguity - Deep Dive]] — why models drift even when teams are trying to stay aligned ## Surfacing assumptions and disagreement Most stuck situations are not disagreements about facts — they are disagreements about frames. - [[Exception Finding]] — the fastest move for loosening a fixed frame; find where the pattern doesn't hold - [[Diagnosing the Disagreement]] — is this a disagreement about facts, values, priorities, or meaning? Each requires a different response - [[Two Frames Table]] — make two competing interpretations visible side-by-side so the group can examine them rather than argue from inside them - [[Model 1 to Model 2 Translation Prompts (5 min)]] — converting defensive reasoning into inquiry; the practical move when a conversation turns positional ## Status and safety as framing conditions What gets named as "the frame" is shaped by who feels safe enough to name it. - [[Status Risk in Knowledge Sharing]] — why high-status voices set the frame by default; the conditions underneath uneven interpretation - [[Authority Gradient and Loudest Voice Wins - Deep Dive]] — the mechanism; how authority gradients collapse the frame to one perspective - [[Psychological Safety Signals - Deep Dive]] — safety is the precondition; you can't surface competing frames without it ## Feedback and candor as a framing practice Giving and receiving feedback is a framing act: you're offering an interpretation of someone's behaviour and its effects. - [[Radical Candor as a Feedback Lens - Deep Dive]] — the care + directness model; where most feedback goes wrong is in the framing, not the content - [[Ladder of Inference - Why It Happens]] — the mechanism behind feedback drift; how we arrive at conclusions about people without checking our rungs - [[Adult-Adult Knowledge Sharing - Deep Dive]] — the philosophical stance for framing conversations without hierarchy or judgement ## The inference backbone A lot of "disagreement" is actually people standing on different rungs of inference. Owlery makes those rungs visible so the loop stays adult-adult. - Lens: [[Ladder of Inference]] - Quick reset: [[Ladder Check (7 min)]] ## References - Framing effects (Kahneman & Tversky context): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology) - Chris Argyris, Ladder of Inference (widely used summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_of_inference ## See Also - [[Sensemaking Map]] — the closely related map; sensemaking and framing are different operations on the same raw signal - [[Feedback Conversations Map]] — the full cluster for feedback as a framing conversation - [[Psychological Safety Map]] — safety is the precondition for honest framing; without it, frames get filtered before they're named - [[Bias vs Noise]] — the cognitive science of framing errors; how individual judgment fails systematically at the interpretation step - [[Teach-back for Interfaces (10 min)]] — the fast check: does their frame match yours before you commit to a shared interpretation