Framework Fetish: Why Strategists Must Think Beyond the Boxes 💀🖤

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There’s this industry obsession with oversimplification.

We’re all about condensing, condensing, and condensing some more, as though brevity is always the soul of effectiveness… But what if, in our rush to simplify everything, we’re slicing away the very substance that makes strategy work?

Look, I get it… our job as strategists is to take the chaos and distill it into something that feels like clarity. To strip down the noise and keep things simple, actionable, and, dare I say, inspiring.

The ultimate goal is always to produce an output that’s brutally simple but majestically strategic, right?

Yet, here’s where it gets tricky. Lately, I’ve seen a growing trend of frameworks and “shortcut guides” that do more than just simplify… they fucking oversimplify. And in doing so, they’ve sparked a low-key civil war among strategists across the globe. A framework can be a powerful tool, sure.

But it’s just that: a tool. It’s not the whole workshop, and it sure as hell isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

As Ryan O’Connell, Chief Strategy Officer at Junior (ex Ogilvy CSO), once said: “What really matters is who’s using the tool, not the tool itself. Anything that stimulates great thinking can’t be a bad thing—as long as there’s great thinking behind it.”

The real magic isn’t in the framework, it’s in the strategist’s ability to look beyond the four walls of a template and see the full landscape. Sure, frameworks are fantastic for presenting complex ideas in a structured, digestible way, but when we start over-relying on them – especially the oversimplified ones, we lose the nuance. We lose the rigour. And let’s face it: sometimes the messy, arduous process is where the actual magic happens.

Let’s be honest here… our industry fucking loves hacking.

We love the idea of getting to the solution faster, trimming down structures, and finding ways to get to a “BIG IDEA” in half the time. In some scenarios, shortcuts are gold. Tight deadlines? Pitches? MVP startup launches? Sure, a hack might be exactly what you need to cut through. Being clever in a crunch can be a superpower. Sometimes. But not always…

But when it comes to long-term brand growth and creating something with lasting impact, hacks often become a fast track to nowhere. That’s where the rigour comes in. Sometimes, you need to let the process breathe. Let it marinate. There’s nothing wrong with taking the long road if it gets you to a place that’s both creatively explosive and strategically sound. You don’t have to find the end point in one brainstorming session. In fact, for more complex briefs, the real depth and clarity emerge only after you’ve waded through the mess.

And that’s the thing right – strategy often looks like a mess. But that’s because the path to clarity isn’t a straight line; it’s a tangled web of insights, thoughts, ideas, and counter-ideas.

The mess is the magic.

And honestly, the process isn’t something that should be explained to every peer across the agency or even your clients. That’s not their business. The only thing that matters? The final output. The recommendation. The quality of the thinking.

So, here’s a thought… let’s stop trying to turn strategy into something that can be hacked in a sprint session. Let’s embrace the complexity, respect the process, and have a little more faith in the rigour. At the end of the day, the best strategies aren’t the ones that were cut down and diluted for the sake of brevity. They’re the ones that stood the test of messy thinking and came out on the other side with a sharp, unforgettable edge. In the pursuit of turning chaos to clarity, let’s embrace the chaos more and use the best tool – our minds!

💀 🖤

Cheers,

DANIEL JACOBS
http://www.thecreativestrategist.com.au
https://www.linkedin.com/in/denialjacobs/
Melbourne, Australia