The right framework for the job
A field reference for frameworks consultants use on real-world engagements.
93 frameworks across strategy, problem solving, organization, operations, innovation, markets, and finance. Each card describes what the framework is, when to use it, when to avoid it, plus tangible examples to see it in action.
Ohmae's 3C Model
Strategy has to hold the company, the customer, and the competition in view at the same time.
Read the noteBowman's Strategy Clock
Eight competitive positions based on price and perceived value, beyond the generic strategy choices.
Read the noteResource-Based View
Looks for competitive advantage in resources the firm already holds, rather than in the market position it picks.
Read the noteCore Competencies
Finds the deep proficiencies that are hard to copy and that can be reused across more than one product.
Read the noteSPACE Matrix
Places the firm in an aggressive, competitive, conservative, or defensive posture.
Read the noteScenario Planning
Builds several plausible futures and stress-tests a decision that has to survive more than one of them.
Read the noteBalanced Scorecard
Turns a strategy into measures across finance, customers, internal process, and learning and growth.
Read the noteHoshin Kanri
A planning cadence that connects company goals to the daily work of individual people.
Read the noteThree Horizons of Growth
Balances the current business, emerging opportunities, and bets that could replace both.
Read the noteGreiner's Growth Model
Six stages of organizational growth, and the crisis that has to be resolved before the next stage.
Read the notePESTLE and Its Extensions
Scans political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental forces, including the ethical and geographic extensions.
Read the noteBCG Growth-Share Matrix
Sorts business units by market growth and relative market share into stars, cash cows, question marks, and dogs, to decide where cash should go.
Read the noteGE-McKinsey Nine-Box Matrix
Rates each business on industry attractiveness and competitive strength, then sorts it into invest, hold, or harvest.
Read the notePorter's Five Forces
Explains how profitable an industry can be from rivalry, the power of buyers and suppliers, and the threats of new entrants and substitutes.
Read the notePorter's Generic Strategies
Cost leadership, differentiation, or focus. A choice of how to compete, with a warning about getting stuck in the middle.
Read the notePorter's Value Chain
Splits a firm into the activities that create value, so cost and differentiation can be traced to where they come from.
Read the noteAnsoff Matrix
Four routes to growth from existing or new products in existing or new markets, each carrying a different level of risk.
Read the noteSWOT Analysis
Sets internal strengths and weaknesses against external opportunities and threats. It earns its place only when it ends in choices.
Read the noteVRIO Framework
Tests whether a resource is valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and backed by an organization able to capture what it is worth.
Read the notePlaying to Win
Five linked strategic choices: the winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, the capabilities required, and the management systems behind them.
Read the noteOKRs
Objectives and key results. A few goals per period, each with measurable outcomes that show whether it was met.
Read the noteBlue Ocean Strategy
Uses a strategy canvas and four actions to change what an industry competes on and reach demand nobody is serving.
Read the noteSCQA
Situation, complication, question, answer. A structure for proposals and executive summaries.
Read the noteCynefin Framework
Sorts a situation into Clear, Complicated, Complex, or Chaotic, and changes how you respond.
Read the noteOODA Loop
Observe, orient, decide, act. A fast cycle for decisions that have to be revised as the situation moves.
Read the noteKepner-Tregoe
A sequence for gathering information, comparing alternatives, and examining risk before a decision.
Read the noteDesign Thinking
Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test, so a solution is shaped with the people who have to live with it.
Read the noteFirst Principles Thinking
Takes a problem down to the constraints that are actually true, then builds up from those.
Read the noteSix Thinking Hats
Looks at one decision from separate stances, including facts, feelings, caution, and creativity, instead of mixing them into one argument.
Read the noteTRIZ
Uses recurring principles of invention to get past trial and error when a design faces a contradiction.
Read the noteIssue Trees and MECE
Breaks a question into branches that do not overlap and together cover it, so each one can be tested and assigned.
Read the noteFishbone Diagram and 5 Whys
Lays out the possible causes of a problem by category, then keeps asking why to reach the cause worth fixing.
Read the notePareto Analysis
Ranks causes by size to find the few that account for most of the effect. The 80/20 rule, applied to data.
Read the notePre-Mortem
Assumes the project has already failed and asks the team to explain why, while the plan can still change.
Read the noteGalbraith's Star Model
Aligns five choices in organization design: strategy, structure, processes, rewards, and people.
Read the noteNadler-Tushman Congruence Model
Reads performance from the fit among the work, the people, the structure, and the culture.
Read the noteMcKinsey Influence Model
Treats role modeling, understanding, formal mechanisms, and skill building as the conditions of a change that sticks.
Read the noteBridges Transition Model
Follows the psychological path through an ending, a neutral zone, and a new beginning.
Read the noteBurke-Litwin Model
Shows how leadership, culture, systems, and other factors connect in transformational and transactional change.
Read the noteTuckman's Stages
Forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. A map of how a group becomes a team, and then ends.
Read the noteRACI
Names who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed, so a piece of work has one owner.
Read the noteHofstede's Cultural Dimensions
Compares cultures on dimensions such as power distance and individualism, often when two organizations have to work as one.
Read the noteCompeting Values Framework
Places culture on two axes: flexibility against stability, and an internal focus against an external one.
Read the noteMcKinsey 7S Framework
Checks the fit among strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff, and skills.
Read the noteKotter's 8 Steps
A sequence for leading large change, from creating urgency to anchoring the new ways in the culture.
Read the noteADKAR
Awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. The stages each person passes through before a change takes hold.
Read the noteStakeholder Mapping
Places the people around a decision by power and interest, so engagement goes where it can change the outcome.
Read the note9-Box Talent Grid
Plots people by current performance and future potential to guide development, succession, and retention decisions.
Read the noteSIPOC
A one-page view of a process: suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers.
Read the notePDCA
Plan, do, check, act. The basic cycle of continuous improvement.
Read the noteTotal Quality Management
An organization-wide approach to quality, aimed at long-term customer satisfaction rather than inspection at the end.
Read the noteOverall Equipment Effectiveness
Availability times performance times quality. A measure of how much of a machine’s scheduled time becomes good output.
Read the noteSCOR Model
A reference for supply chain performance across plan, source, make, deliver, return, and enable.
Read the noteKraljic Matrix
Sets a purchasing posture from profit impact and supply risk: routine, leverage, bottleneck, or strategic.
Read the noteEconomic Order Quantity
The order quantity that minimizes the combined cost of ordering and holding inventory.
Read the note5S
Sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain. A method for keeping a workplace orderly enough to see problems.
Read the noteDMAIC
Define, measure, analyze, improve, control. The Six Sigma cycle for reducing variation in a process.
Read the noteValue Stream Mapping
Maps how material and information move through a process, and separates value-adding time from the seven kinds of waste.
Read the noteTheory of Constraints
Finds the one constraint that limits throughput, and organizes the rest of the system around it.
Read the noteA3 Problem Solving
One sheet that holds the problem, the analysis, the countermeasures, and the follow-up, written to be discussed and revised.
Read the noteBusiness Model Canvas
One page for partners, activities, resources, the value proposition, relationships, channels, segments, costs, and revenues.
Read the noteValue Proposition Canvas
Matches a customer’s jobs, pains, and gains with the product’s pain relievers and gain creators.
Read the noteLean Startup
Build, measure, learn. Short cycles used to cut the risk of building something the market does not want.
Read the noteDoblin's 10 Types of Innovation
Extends innovation past the product itself, into the profit model, network, structure, process, channel, brand, and related types.
Read the noteWardley Mapping
Maps a value chain by how evolved each component is, from genesis to commodity, so a shift can be seen before it arrives.
Read the noteHype Cycle
Traces a technology from the trigger, through inflated expectations and disillusionment, toward broader productive use.
Read the noteAgile, Scrum, and SAFe
Iterative ways of building software and digital products, from a single-team practice to a scaled system.
Read the noteProduct Life Cycle
Introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. The stage changes what marketing, investment, and product work are for.
Read the noteJobs to Be Done
Asks what progress a customer is trying to make, and what they hire a product to do, to explain why people buy and switch.
Read the noteKano Model
Sorts product features into basics, performance features, and delighters by how each one moves customer satisfaction.
Read the noteStage-Gate
Runs product development as stages separated by go or kill decisions, so investment grows only as uncertainty falls.
Read the noteMoSCoW and RICE Prioritization
Two ways to choose what to build first: must, should, could, or won't, or a score from reach, impact, confidence, and effort.
Read the noteDiffusion of Innovations
Describes how an idea spreads, from innovators and early adopters through the majority and on to laggards.
Read the noteBrand Equity
How awareness, associations, perceived quality, and loyalty add up to a brand people will pay for.
Read the noteThe Challenger Sale
A business-to-business approach that teaches, tailors, and takes control of the commercial conversation.
Read the noteMiller Heiman Strategic Selling
A way through a large sale in which several buyers do not share one motive.
Read the notePrice Elasticity of Demand
How much quantity demanded moves when the price moves.
Read the noteMarketing Funnel
The drop from awareness toward advocacy, used to see where prospective customers leave.
Read the noteNet Promoter Score
Promoters minus detractors, used as a proxy for loyalty and for the likelihood of a recommendation.
Read the noteSegmentation, Targeting, Positioning
Divides a market into segments, chooses which ones to serve, and defines the place the offer should hold in those customers' minds.
Read the noteMarketing Mix (4Ps and 7Ps)
Product, price, place, and promotion, extended with people, process, and physical evidence for services.
Read the noteCrossing the Chasm
The gap between early adopters and the pragmatic majority, and the narrow beachhead strategy used to cross it.
Read the noteCustomer Lifetime Value
The margin a customer is expected to produce over the relationship, used to set what winning and keeping them is worth.
Read the noteMEDDIC
Metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identified pain, and champion. A checklist for qualifying a complex sale.
Read the noteDuPont Analysis
Breaks return on equity into profit margin, asset turnover, and financial leverage.
Read the noteAltman Z-Score
A score used to estimate the risk of bankruptcy within about two years.
Read the noteActivity-Based Costing
Assigns overhead through the activities a product actually consumes, so reported profit sits closer to real profit.
Read the noteDiscounted Cash Flow
Values a business from the present value of the cash it is expected to produce.
Read the noteWeighted Average Cost of Capital
The firm’s average cost of financing across debt and equity.
Read the noteEconomic Value Added
Operating profit after a charge for the capital used to produce it.
Read the notePrice-Volume-Mix Analysis
Splits a change in revenue or margin into the parts caused by price, volume, and mix, so the story behind the number is clear.
Read the noteBreak-Even and Contribution Margin
The volume at which contribution covers fixed cost, and the margin each unit adds toward it.
Read the noteNPV and IRR
Two decision rules from discounted cash flow: the value an investment adds today, and the return at which it breaks even.
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