Frame

Tools and rituals for hydrated minds, distilled weekly.

How often do you actually control the frame in your daily interactions, and how often do you find yourself pulled into someone else’s?

I’ve been thinking about this, partly because some of you asked me to write about the culture of busyness (I will, promise), and partly because I’ve been revising the introduction to one of my PhD papers and have been noticing how deeply our work is shaped by the frames we inherit.

What is Frame Control?

The frame is the context and Frame Control is the skill of shaping, maintaining, or shifting that context. It’s context leadership. When you control the frame, you guide:

In other words: you decide which “story” everyone is operating inside.

Where does the concept come from?

My rapid research revealed: There’s no single inventor of Frame Control. But the popular version, the one used in business pitching and negotiation, is associated with Oren Klaff, whose 2011 book Pitch Anything made the term mainstream. The deeper roots apparently stretch into decades of social theory, two I have read about before, so referencing these:

An example.

Someone says: “Why are you late?”  Their frame: you’re at fault.

A frame-control response: “Welcome, let’s jump into the main topic.” You move the frame from blame to progress, and the conversation forward.

Many of you have told me you hate how people respond to “How are you?” with “Busy.”

The frame becomes stress. I stopped asking “How are you?” in professional settings with people I see frequently.

Firstly, I can already see on someone’s face and body language how they’re doing, so why invite the downward spiral conversation?

Secondly, I often ask: “Oh hi, good to see you! What’s the most exciting thing you’re working on today?”

Some people light up immediately and tell me. Others start thinking, as they must search for the excitement in their day. But either way, I’ve taken frame control:

And as I have been reading about Neuroplasticity and the Biology of Belief for years now as my go to “pick me up” literature, I see every question I ask as a contribution to the micro-rewiring of our society.

If they find me annoying with this question, they tend to stop coming over for undirected chats, which works perfectly well for me, I love silence when there is nothing to discuss.

PLEASE NOTE: Frame Control is not nudging, manipulating, or controlling people. It’s awareness, clarity, and directing YOUR flow so you’re not drenched by someone else’s emotional waterfall before you even start.

Exercising Frame Control in water research

Now, onto the bigger context I’ve been wrestling with, water scholarship.

Water research is dominated by what scholars call the “politics of crisis.” The familiar frame goes like this:

These framings have rhetorical power. They attract funding. They mobilise urgency. But they also:

Critical theorists remind us that crises are not neutral facts. They are framing devices. A “crisis” narrows the solution space: dams, desalination, mega projects, and other technological fixes that often generate their own hydro-social disruptions and can lead to stranded assets.

But when everyone repeats the same crisis statistics, the same doom narrative, the same “we’re running out” framing… we stop seeing what else water is.

In revising my intro, I’ve been brainstorming how to shift this narrative, how to avoid swimming in the same crisis-infused waters as everyone else and still making a meaningful “contribution to the field”.

Choose Your Frame.

Whether in the office or anywhere else, Frame Control is about choosing the story you step into.

You can accept scarcity, stress, crisis, and busyness as the default frames, or you can redirect the flow:

I saw this quote:

Anxiety and creativity are both just imagination.

One is energy spent on the worst-case scenario; one is energy spent on the best-case scenario.

You just choose where to direct your life force every day.

Others may join you, or they may not.

But at least you won’t be swept downstream by someone else’s current.

See you upstream and happy Friday, Team!

— Clouds

(P.S: The Water-Intelligent Living Series continues with the usual Monday email. Last but not least Part 4: Pollack.)