Max and I were at the Guggen­heim in New York, spi­ral­ing our way down through a show of impor­tant paint­ings. It was one of those exhi­bi­tions that just wasn’t work­ing for either of us. But we like to dis­cuss what we’re look­ing at, just for the plea­sure of com­par­ing per­cep­tions. I sug­gested we talk about the fram­ing and ignore the art. An added bonus would be that any­one over­hear­ing us would be hard pressed to con­nect our insights to any­thing we appeared to be look­ing at. Could be fun.

Within a few paint­ings, we had it down. “There’s a beauty. Great carv­ing and it really jumps off the wall.”

“You think? Seems a lit­tle over the top to me. Maybe more of a tran­si­tion from the warm out­side to the cold reality.”

Now when­ever we hap­pen to end up in a museum together, we just nat­u­rally fall into our dis­cus­sion of the fram­ing. The art has taken a sec­ondary position.

In the mar­ket­place of ideas, some­what like the mar­ket­place for art, fram­ing has an impor­tant role to play. I sus­pect that poor fram­ing or no fram­ing could sig­nif­i­cantly lower the ini­tial esteem in which a paint­ing would be held.

Poor fram­ing of ideas is much more harm­ful. Even bril­liant and valu­able ideas that are poorly framed are highly likely to be lost. Bril­liant fram­ing can be so effec­tive in launch­ing ideas that often the fram­ing and the idea become inter­twined for­ever. Ronald Regan’s Cadillac-driving wel­fare queens, although com­pletely fab­ri­cated, changed the per­cep­tion of wel­fare for decades. Wel­fare had not changed at all. The fram­ing had.

What is the pur­pose of a frame? A frame sep­a­rates one thing from another. The known world ends at the frame, and what is con­tained within the frame can stand alone and be con­tem­plated. Have you ever seen a huge frame for a tiny pic­ture? All that mat­ted space cre­ates a kind of visual silence that beck­ons, “Step closer and see the tiny trea­sure I pro­tect.” Just imag­ine how a postage stamp might look in a twelve foot wide by ten foot high mas­sive frame. Who would be able to resist walk­ing up to that postage stamp and try­ing fig­ure out what could be so impor­tant about it that it deserves this much visual space?

Wouldn’t you like your ideas to receive the same atten­tion? What was Jus­tice Ruth Bader Gins­burg indi­cat­ing, as quoted in the NY Times recently, that when she speaks what she says is ignored until some­one else also says the same thing? Is it harder for a woman to achieve the space that great fram­ing might pro­vide? Maybe she needs to clear her throat before she speaks, or speak much louder, or be much fun­nier. Or maybe she needs to whis­per, forc­ing every­one to draw closer and to hang on her every word. Clearly, her cur­rent fram­ing strat­egy needs some work.

For those peo­ple, busi­nesses and orga­ni­za­tions that want to be seen the way they want to be seen, mas­ter­ful fram­ing is essen­tial. And in a crowded and noisy mar­ket­place, some­times you will need to cre­ate some quiet around your­self to be able to be heard. Sim­ple is pow­er­ful. A sin­gle idea may be all that some­one can get about you, at first.

If we work together, that’s one of the first things we’ll be dis­cussing. First, who you are and what you stand for. And then we’ll be look­ing for all the ways to put what’s valu­able and unique about you in a con­text that will frame you — sep­a­rate you from a noisy world so you are per­ceived the way you want to be.