No one cares about your framework – they care about leadership problems

_This article was the topic of a recent live event, hosted by the author. Watch and listen, **here.**_ A few years ago for Christmas, my dad gave me a beautiful antique atlas. It’s oversized and hardbound.

This is the kind of book that covers the whole coffee table when it’s open yet still requires a magnifying glass to read the names of towns. My dad gave it to us “because you all travel so much.” While the atlas is lovely and we treasure it…its permanent home is on a bookshelf out of reach of my young kids. It’s certainly not the tool we turn to when we need to figure out how to get to the closest grocery store from our hotel while we’re on a family vacation.

Because it’s _so_ robust, _so_ exhaustive, that while it has the right information, **it’s not packaged in a way that actually helps me navigate**. In my role leading our Partner Success & Services team at Big Think+, I’ve seen a lot of leadership frameworks. _A_ _lot_ _of leadership frameworks._ These frameworks usually reflect the personality and culture of the organizations they come from – some are quirky, fun, and exciting; others are refined, formal, and focused on maintaining a beautiful legacy. But across all these leadership frameworks, I’ve noticed a pattern: **they’re not enough to move learners to action.** Often they’re not even enough to get learners to _click!_ Consider a learning manager who spends months aligning stakeholders on a beautiful leadership framework.

Next, she works with her instructional designers to translate each tier of the framework into a digital learning experience for mid-level managers. She hits publish on the first module: She hits ‘send’ and the program kickoff email goes out to 150 managers. Six months later, she pulls the analytics report, dismayed.

Even with an email nudge campaign _and executive sponsorship,_ fewer than 20% of mid-level managers ever started the module, and program completion plateaued at 12%. Because no mid-level managers wake up thinking about “improving their mastery of the delegation competency.” They woke up thinking “_I worked_ _until 7 PM yesterday finishing something someone else should own – but no one on my team is ready to take this on, and I’m not sure how to get them there.”_ While the module might perfectly address the skills those managers need, they won’t _recognize_ a solution if it doesn’t speak to **their immediate problem.** Before you can consider a problems-centered approach, you have to know what your leaders’ real problems are – and how they layer onto your leadership principles or competencies. These problems could be gathered through engagement surveys, listening tours, or even your LMS data – what learners are already searching for on their own.

A good first step is to look at third party research reports from organizations like Gallup, as these macro trends are often relatable inside our organizations. Next, you’ll need to theme and prioritize these problems, ensuring that you’ve identified a set that is specific enough that a leader thinks ‘yes, that’s me today,’ but broad enough that leaders across the company would recognize themselves in it. Then it’s time to dig in and use these problems to help your leaders find your programs.