FRAMEWORK 1-1-1
As-Is / To-Be
Compare the current and desired states using consistent measures, then separate the observed gap from possible causes and solutions.
THINKING FRAMEWORKS
Use a framework, clarify your thinking.
Start with your question. Find a suitable framework and see how to use it.
Choose by work stage
Start at a relevant stage and choose a suitable framework. The order helps you find your place; it is not a required sequence.
1. Define a problem
1-1 Identify the problem
Compare the current situation with the desired state and identify the gap.
Possible result: A problem statement and evidence of the gap
1-2 Organize the problem
Separate the issues and turn a broad concern into a question you can investigate.
Possible result: A structured question and investigation scope
1-3 Set priorities
Decide which issue needs attention first under your constraints.
Possible result: Priorities and the reasons for them
2. Understand the market and customers
2-1 Assess the environment and your business
Examine external conditions alongside your business's resources and capabilities.
Possible result: Relevant conditions, capabilities, and evidence gaps
2-2 Understand customers
Examine customer groups, needs, and experiences using available evidence.
Possible result: Customer insights and questions to check
2-3 Understand competitors
Compare competitors' offerings, activities, and capabilities.
Possible result: A comparison and possible areas of difference
3. Develop and compare ideas
3-1 Generate ideas
Explore several possible responses before judging them.
Possible result: A set of candidate ideas
3-2 Develop an idea
Turn an abstract idea into a proposal people can discuss.
Possible result: A more specific proposal and its assumptions
3-3 Compare and choose ideas
Compare candidates against explicit constraints and criteria.
Possible result: A choice, tradeoffs, and unresolved checks
4. Set a strategy and a plan
4-1 Choose a strategic direction
Consider business, market, customer, and positioning choices.
Possible result: Candidate directions and the reasons to explore them
4-2 Work out how to proceed
Examine what your direction requires and what may prevent it.
Possible result: A possible approach, dependencies, and checks
4-3 Set goals
Describe the intended result and how you will check progress.
Possible result: Goals and measures for reviewing them
5. Review and improve work
5-1 Review results
Compare what happened with what you intended and identify lessons.
Possible result: Observations, lessons, and next questions
5-2 Map how the work operates
Make activities, responsibilities, and constraints visible.
Possible result: A shared picture of the current work
5-3 Explore improvements
Consider changes to the work and what each would require.
Possible result: Improvement candidates and validation plans
6. Manage a team and work together
6-1 Align on goals
Make the team's direction and each person's contribution clear.
Possible result: Shared goals and responsibilities
6-2 Improve working relationships
Examine communication and cooperation using specific observations.
Possible result: Issues to discuss and ways to work together
6-3 Support motivation
Explore work conditions and goals without assuming what motivates each person.
Possible result: Questions, support options, and follow-up actions
7. Structure and share information
7-1 Communicate information
Organize the information so others can understand the point and its basis.
Possible result: A structured explanation or proposal
All frameworks
FRAMEWORK 1-1-2
6W2H
Answer eight planning questions to align the purpose, audience, execution, timing, place, and resource limits of an activity.
FRAMEWORK 1-1-3
5 Whys
Investigate a specific event through successive causal questions, keeping each explanation tied to evidence.
FRAMEWORK 1-1-4
Circle of control
Sort specific issues by what your team can directly change and what depends on someone else's decision, then plan a response for each.
FRAMEWORK 1-2-1
Logic tree
Break a broad question into explicit branches so you can examine its parts and decide what to investigate next.
FRAMEWORK 1-2-2
Issue definition worksheet
Connect an observed gap to a bounded improvement task, a target, and explicit constraints before scheduling a solution.
FRAMEWORK 1-3-1
Urgency–importance matrix
Sort tasks by importance to a stated goal and urgency of their timing, then agree immediate work, scheduled work, delegation, and reductions.
FRAMEWORK 1-3-2
Decision matrix
Compare eligible options against shared criteria and make the effects of your weights and ratings visible.
FRAMEWORK 2-1-1
PEST analysis
Organize political, economic, social, and technological factors that could affect a defined business decision.
FRAMEWORK 2-1-2
Porter's Five Forces
Examine five sources of competitive pressure within a defined industry, recording mechanisms, evidence coverage and unanswered questions.
FRAMEWORK 2-1-3
VRIO analysis
Examine value, rarity, imitation costs and organizational support for specific resources, preserving uncertainty in each judgment.
FRAMEWORK 2-1-4
SWOT analysis
Organize internal strengths and weaknesses alongside external opportunities and threats to clarify the factors affecting a decision.
FRAMEWORK 2-2-1
Pareto analysis
Rank categories by one measure and compare their cumulative share before choosing where to focus your investigation.
FRAMEWORK 2-2-2
RFM analysis
Compare recency, frequency and monetary value under consistent rules, then plan how to test customer outreach.
FRAMEWORK 2-2-3
Persona
Organize a user role, goals, working context, difficulties, and decision criteria while keeping research evidence separate from assumptions.
FRAMEWORK 2-2-4
Empathy map
Organize what one person sees, hears, thinks and feels, says and does, struggles with and hopes for, keeping records distinct from assumptions.
FRAMEWORK 2-2-5
Customer journey map
Trace one customer's task through touchpoints, actions and experiences, keeping evidence and unobserved stages visible.
FRAMEWORK 2-3-1
4Ps marketing mix
Review product, price, place, and promotion together to make a coherent offer and identify what to test next.
FRAMEWORK 2-3-2
4Ps with offering and target analysis
Compare six explicit dimensions: target, value offered, product, price, place and promotion, retaining each claim's evidence status.
FRAMEWORK 2-3-3
Value chain analysis
Disaggregate a business into linked primary and support activities, then check cost boundaries and possible sources of customer value.
FRAMEWORK 2-3-4
Core competence analysis
Assess how a combination of skills, relationships, and processes creates customer value, resists imitation, and could support other markets.
FRAMEWORK 3-1-1
Brainwriting
Write separately, pass the sheets and build on earlier ideas while retaining each contribution's provenance.
FRAMEWORK 3-1-2
Mandala chart
Place a topic in the center of a nine-cell grid and explore eight related directions before choosing ideas to develop.
FRAMEWORK 3-1-3
Morphological Analysis
Separate a problem into dimensions, combine one choice from each, and record why some combinations conflict.
FRAMEWORK 3-1-4
Scenario Graph
Expand four factor pools and combine one item from each to create concrete, explicitly imagined usage stories.
FRAMEWORK 3-1-5
Osborn’s checklist
Use nine prompts to change a product, service, or process, then select variations worth testing.
FRAMEWORK 3-2-1
Idea concept sheet
Describe who an idea serves, the problem it addresses, how it works, and the smallest useful test.
FRAMEWORK 3-2-2
Storyboard
Describe a user’s actions, thoughts, and feedback across key moments to reveal gaps in a proposed experience.
FRAMEWORK 3-3-1
Pros and cons list
Compare the benefits and drawbacks of possible actions against a shared goal.
FRAMEWORK 3-3-2
SUCCESs checklist
Review a message through six lenses: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories.
FRAMEWORK 3-3-3
Value-feasibility Matrix
Compare value hypotheses and implementation conditions on separate axes, retaining unknowns and hard-limit failures.
FRAMEWORK 4-1-1
BCG growth-share matrix
Classify businesses by market growth and relative market share, then examine resource choices and uncertainty.
FRAMEWORK 4-1-2
Ansoff matrix
Separate growth options by existing or new products and markets, then examine their demand and capability assumptions.
FRAMEWORK 4-1-3
TOWS matrix
Combine evidenced SWOT factors into SO, ST, WO, and WT action candidates, then state their assumptions, resource limits, and validation steps.
FRAMEWORK 4-1-4
STP analysis
Segment customers by meaningful differences, choose a priority group, and describe a position to test against their needs and alternatives.
FRAMEWORK 4-1-5
Perceptual positioning map
Display relative positions on two defined dimensions, retaining data nature, sample size, calculation rules and unplaced objects.
FRAMEWORK 4-2-1
Business Model Canvas
Connect customers, value, delivery and economics across nine blocks, then identify the assumptions that need evidence.
FRAMEWORK 4-2-2
Business Model Flow Diagram
Show who provides goods, services, information and money to whom, with explicit directions, assumptions and agreement gaps.
FRAMEWORK 4-2-3
AIDMA model
Review Attention, Interest, Desire, Memory, and Action to identify missing information and obstacles before purchase.
FRAMEWORK 4-2-4
Gantt chart
Place dated tasks and owners on a timeline, then examine the calendar, dependencies and available person-hours.
FRAMEWORK 4-2-5
Organizational chart
Show roles and relationships with an explicit line meaning, keeping project coordination, personnel reporting and decision rights distinct.
FRAMEWORK 4-3-1
Roadmap
Work back from an outcome to stage outputs, enabling resources and explicit decisions, keeping tentative windows distinct from commitments.
FRAMEWORK 4-3-2
KPI tree
Connect an outcome to compatible counts and rates, specify the arithmetic, and keep targets and causal hypotheses separate.
FRAMEWORK 4-3-3
AARRR
Review acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral with explicit events, cohorts, observation windows, and denominators.
FRAMEWORK 4-3-4
SMART goals
Turn an ambiguous goal into a specific outcome with a measure, a feasibility check, a purpose, and a deadline.
FRAMEWORK 5-1-1
KPT retrospective
Separate practices to keep, observed problems, and changes to try, then agree how to check the next experiment.
FRAMEWORK 5-1-2
YWT reflection
Reflect on what you did, what you learned, and what you will do next, using a specific experience.
FRAMEWORK 5-1-3
PDCA Review Sheet
Connect a plan, recorded execution, a comparable check and a conditional next action in one review sheet.
FRAMEWORK 5-2-1
Business process inventory
List actual tasks, ownership, inputs, outputs, and time on a common basis before choosing a process to improve.
FRAMEWORK 5-2-2
Business process flowchart
Map a bounded business process with explicit actions, decisions, exceptions and return conditions, separating current records from a proposal.
FRAMEWORK 5-2-3
PERT chart
Build a task network, calculate estimated durations and float, and identify tasks on a critical path.
FRAMEWORK 5-2-4
RACI matrix
Assign execution, accountability, consultation and information for each deliverable, then check authority, capacity and actual agreement.
FRAMEWORK 5-3-1
Shortage, Excess and Imbalance Analysis
Compare resources and demand by session, then investigate allocation and practice differences before choosing a change.
FRAMEWORK 5-3-2
ECRS process improvement
Examine a process through Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, and Simplify, starting with whether the work is necessary.
FRAMEWORK 5-3-3
Business improvement proposal
Connect the problem and evidence to a proposed change, expected benefit, resources, implementation, and review.
FRAMEWORK 6-1-1
Mission, vision, and values
Clarify why an organization exists, the future it aims for, and the behaviors that guide difficult choices.
FRAMEWORK 6-1-2
Will / Can / Must
Compare stated interests, demonstrated capability and confirmed requirements for the same tasks, preserving gaps and unknowns.
FRAMEWORK 6-1-3
Need–Want matrix
Discuss organizational need and personal willingness separately, then agree priorities, support, and task allocation.
FRAMEWORK 6-2-1
Johari window
Compare what you and others know about work behavior, then agree a voluntary feedback conversation and a collaboration experiment.
FRAMEWORK 6-2-2
Cognition–Action Cycle
Separate both people’s actions and interpretations, then ask about assumptions before trying a clearer communication practice.
FRAMEWORK 6-2-3
Want / Commitment
Share what people want and what they can offer, then distinguish possible matches from mutually agreed and completed help.
FRAMEWORK 6-2-4
PM leadership theory
Examine performance and group maintenance behaviors using observations and team feedback, then choose an improvement.
FRAMEWORK 6-2-5
Stakeholder analysis
Identify people who affect or are affected by a change, check influence and interest separately, and plan communication around their actual needs.
FRAMEWORK 6-3-1
Herzberg's two-factor theory
Distinguish problems with basic working conditions from opportunities for achievement and growth, then plan and review both kinds of support.
FRAMEWORK 6-3-2
Will / Skill Matrix
Use stated willingness and demonstrated task skill to discuss support, retaining unknowns and explicit authority boundaries.
FRAMEWORK 6-3-3
GROW model
Clarify a goal, examine the current reality, explore options, and let the person choose an action and a way to follow up.
FRAMEWORK 7-1-1
Product proposal
Connect a user problem and evidence to a bounded solution, expected value, a validation plan, resource estimates, and the decision required.
FRAMEWORK 7-1-2
Event Proposal
Explain an event’s purpose, audience and experience, then make schedule, resources, budget and approval conditions reviewable.
FRAMEWORK 7-1-3
PREP communication
Organize a short recommendation as Point, Reason, Example, Point, and finish with a clear request.
FRAMEWORK 7-1-4
TAPS Communication Structure
Organize To be, As is, Problem and Solution around the audience’s concern, then make a bounded decision request.
More scenario matches do not mean a better framework. Choose for your specific question.How to use the library