A Reminder about Framing
Did you say that you don’t need negotiation training?
This quote caught my eye today from a NYT article about smartphones
In politics and advertising, framing is regarded as essential because what you call something influences what you think about it. That’s why there are battles over the tags “Obamacare” and “death panels.” `(emphasis added)
In fact, framing is an agenda control tool. And it is a very important negotiation concept that goes beyond “tagging”. Want to know more? Let me know in a comment.
FOLLOW -There is a very good example of framing going on right now regarding Mitt Romney. Romney frames himself as a job creator and manager. But due to apparent inconsistencies in his remarks and documentation of what he did, he is being framed as disingenuous (less than fully truthful about his past). Rachel Maddow does a pretty good job of framing the discussion in her show. Check it out.
This is getting a bit of media play. BI frames this as Clintonesque.The obvious difference is that Clinton dissembled about stuff that most people thought was not essential to governance (sex). Fred Wilson chimes in with a more nuanced idea of What Mitt was really up to. But notice how Fred writes as an expert rather than as a framer of debate. It is honest, but less effective unless one accepts Fred as a referee (cloaking him with authority).
Is there a better way out? Well, Mitt needs to stop whining and re-frame the issue. Either it doesn’t matter when he left because Bain has always been great. Or it matters because Bain became less great after he left. If you are Mitt and you pick Door nr 2, you have no choice but to make the distinction and frame what was great about Bain BEFORE you left. Not just say that you left before things went to hell. Get the difference?
2d FOLLOW - How about this effort by Elon Musk to frame why he started Space X? “You want to have a future where you are expecting things to be better not where you are expecting things to be worse”.