NickVenturella.com 1-13-23 - Frameworks

Frameworks

January 13, 2023

Happy New Year, Investors! This is our first Investors newsletter of 2023.I’d like to take a quick moment to welcome all the new subscribers, there are several – thank you in advance for your time and attention. I hope you get some good takeaways from this newsletter, and feel free to reply with thoughts, asks, and feedback. This is your newsletter and you should have a say in it. 🙂

Onward…

I want to talk about frameworks today. 

Frameworks are tools, usually a set of guides that help you work within boundaries toward a particular outcome. Think of frameworks as a set of guardrails…like bumper bowling:  the bumpers help keep the ball in the bowling alley, but they don’t guarantee you’ll get a strike and hit all the pins down. That bit is up to you. However, the bumpers give you a better chance of getting a higher score by eliminating the possibility of a gutter-ball.

Frameworks work similarly.  They’re often a set of tools that help you stay out of the proverbial gutters of life/work. They help you focus on what you needs accomplishing, and increase your ability to accomplish it.

As I’ve transitioned last week from one customer marketing tech job to another (check out my LinkedIn profile to learn more), I’ve been reading the book, “The First 90 Days,” by Michael D. Watkins.The book provides a lot of mental models that serve as frameworks to help the reader determine an appropriate path forward when transitioning into a new job, so the person transitioning can increase their chances of success early in their new role.

A foundational piece of this overall framework is Watkins' STARS model, which is an acronym for

  • Start Up, 

  • Turnaround, 

  • Accelerated Growth, 

  • Realignment, and 

  • Sustaining success

These are all stages you, as an individual transitioning into a new job, may find your new organization in -- it's a framework for determining your starting point at a new company.

For example, the STARS framework can help you determine if your task in your new role is to develop new processes and procedures because it’s a young organization that just hasn’t had those things in place, but now needs them given its growth trajectory (the Start Up category)? Or, if the team you’re stepping into is established and productive so you need to figure out how to sustain that level of productivity (Sustaining success)?

The STARS framework applies to business to help one determine where they're starting and what their pathway forward might need to be to achieve early success, but I think the model can also apply to the current stage in life in which you find yourself (outside of a career perspective). 

Simply being able to determine what stage of your lifecycle you’re in can allow you to apply additional frameworks within that stage to increase your chances of successfully dealing with and working through that stage of life or work.

Watch this short video for a few more examples of what I’m talking about, and if you like frameworks that can help you think through solutions for yourself in your life and/or work, I recommend Watkins’ book.Be well!

----------Updates----------upcoming Madison, WI-area live music performancesHop Haus Brewing Co.Verona, WISat. Jan. 28, 20236 - 8pmHop Haus Brewing Co.Verona, WISat. March 4, 20236 - 8pm----------First new guitar build of 2023Check out my nickVguitars listing here:The Bourbon Barrel GuitarNew NickVguitars trucker-style hat available on my sites:

Stay positive. Stay healthy. Be kind.Sincerely,Nick VenturellaStrategic/Creative ProfessionalNickVenturella.com