Frame The Debate: You Do Not Upgrade; You Advance Your [ERP] Investment

I first learned of “Frame the Debate” from Jonathan Vinoskey. There are several examples of this from the US political scene: Tax Relief, Leave No Child Behind Act, Pro-Life, Patriot Act.

It is brilliant and, though it has been cultivated for political reasons, it is still useful for the rest of us …and in a good non-political way.

It is especially useful when discussing ROI justified IT investments so your company can advance further, or when attending a conference to learn from advances being shared, to stand on the shoulders of others’ experiences and to learn how to get more out of IT investments already made. …Do you notice the language? Hard to argue against…

As Linguist George Lakoff puts it (see link to his book below):

“By defining a concept such as tax relief, the right wing of the Republican party not only set the terms of the debate, they seized the high ground. By defining tax cuts as tax relief, the right also defined those who were against tax cuts as essentially bad people.”

Just for the record:I am not commenting on the contents of these political initiatives, merely pointing out that the use of words are important, especially if the discussion will be boiled down to one-liners — such as in the media/press …and sometimes at the executive office when discussing funding of IT projects…

Yes, as a user, department head or IT manager/CIO, you can can help improving your chances of justifying funding starting with changing words / vocabulary. Of course this is not about “putting lipstick on a pig” (see reference below for what this means) – leave politicians to do that.

Executives are humans like you and me: They have only 8-12 hours of work-time per day — of which your proposal gets a fraction of time; They need to sound off requests and needs or hear what others are doing with people in their network — where you likely won’t be be present; If what is presented, or asked, sounds hard / expensive / risky, or needs more time than there is available, executives are prone to parking it / pausing it / asking for another meeting or discussion etc., etc.

There are people, and perhaps executives, who doesn’t have to do this, due to their herculean work effort, experience and brilliance — but even such people still would look at your proposal more positively if you put it more positively, or rather, make it harder to counter easily.

So what can you do?

Here are some words to consider.

• You advance using a great ROI (return on investment)
  – you do not upgrade, you do not migrate or re-implement.
  (One exception: If the vendor pulls the plug on support for your old running system, then it is an OK argument as negative as it may sound)
• Attending conferences are about learning from advances being shared, standing on the shoulders of others experiences, learning how to get more out of investments already made
  – not a training event to get you out of the office because you worked hard and Oracle/Miracle invited and your friends will be there too or John/Alice got to go last year.
• IT is an investment into progress, competitive advantage (make sure it is!), business insight
  – not a cost, not a department, not software and hardware, etc.
• Learning programs there to attract and grow people, to consistently communicate values/vision/fill-in-the-company-words, to  secure legal compliance
  – not attrition prevention, necessary mandates,  centrally funded training costs, what your competititors are doing, etc.
• And a simple one: The setup isn’t rigid, it is flexible!

Please add your own!

Of course there is more to it than putting a few smart words on “the pig”. You have to positively see your projects differently. You probably learned about ROI and lowering TCO (Total cost of ownership) and automation, efficiency and all that. Use those terms, but do it right!

The key is to keep it short and sweet. Example: ROI justified IT investments so your company can advance further [stop] towards unlimited flexibility using standards-based integrated market-leading solutions [...you should have stopped].

And yes, you should try to gain the high ground if you can. Can’t you just hear your executive answer his networking peer at the golf club: “Well, we smart-source, not outsource”, “Well, I have just approved advancing our ERP implementation to the next level”.

If you have a beneficial project but don’t know what to call it – post it as a comment and we’ll try to all give some suggestions. Brainstorming is a great way to get to the best framing.

Best of luck – Please do also let me hear if you had some use of it.

References:

• Book by George Lakoff: “Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate“
• Jonathan Vinoskey: Blog on Learning, Talent and more
• Dictionary: “Putting lipstick on a pig“.

PS: Thanks to Jonathan for the lead and some of the examples!