Frame the Picture, Not the Room
In my office, I have a framed print of one of my favorite paintings, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. When we went to have it framed, the woman at the frame shop said “tell me about the room.” My wife responded “I think you should always frame the picture, not the room.” We did. It is in a dark frame with a pale green matte–a green about the shade of the pavement in the painting. When we got it back, that same woman at the frame shop said she had never seen that print come to life like that before.
Another point to my Proverbs 31 wife.
There is a leadership lesson here. When we frame an issue, we often try so hard to frame our message to appeal to the surrounding culture that it blends in instead of stands out. Many churches have faced this problem when they tried to be “seeker-friendly,” but this is not solely a church/ministry problem. Here’s the thing–if you frame a change initiative to appeal to the existing culture, it becomes no change at all. It simply gets absorbed as part of the status quo.
Effective framing is about presenting your message in a way that communicates something new to a culture, by highlighting its appealing characteristics, challenging false assumptions, and delighting people with a vision of the future that they would otherwise never have known.
This is hard work. It means you must know your message–know what you are trying to accomplish. But it also means you must know the culture so well that your message stands out, rather than simply blending in. Most leaders are comfortable, and even excellent, at blending in. It is a rare leader indeed who can present a message so it is appealing, engaging, and transformational.
Got a message that you need to make clear? Get busy framing it. Help people catch the vision and respond to your message.