In my facilitation and coaching, I frequently draw upon a proprietary method called the Social Lens Framework. Simply put, this framework helps my clients achieve breakthroughs in seeing social norms, then choosing to work with them or against them. These breakthroughs help them formulate better strategies for their organizations.

Origin Story

The framework grows out of years of collaboration with Jeff Leitner rooted in our shared experience of Insight Labs, a philanthropic think tank he founded in 2010. The Labs helped nonprofits, government, and the occasional business tackle intractable problems by assembling a team of thinkers for an intensive half-day strategy session. These sessions achieved results for NASA, the U. S. State Department, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, TED, Ashoka, and other organizations you’ve heard of.

After I came on as a director of the Labs, our group started to notice patterns in how the interdisciplinary teams were achieving these breakthroughs. We synthesized these patterns into six attributes of all problems that anyone could see and understand. Over the years, I have shared these attributes in workshops with everyone ranging from corporate executives to high school kids. I built a comprehensive curriculum grounded in these ideas for a doctoral program at the University of Southern California, but I also draw upon them in one-hour strategy sessions with people I have just met.

All of this experience informs the Social Lens Framework, the version of the methodology I use with clients today.

The Six Lenses

This is the point where everyone asks, “What are these six lenses exactly?” Here’s a quick introduction.

The Actors Lens - Every problem has people and institutions who are either working to solve the problem or keeping it in place. When we look through the Actors Lens, we work to better understand the motivations and interests of these various groups. Then we consider how the actors or their relationships might change to yield different results.

The Limits Lens - Every problem has rules that shape the behavior of everyone involved. These include not just policy but limits of time and money or limits imposed by technology. When we look through the Limit Lens, we see how these formal rules shape behavior around the problem, helping to reveal the informal rules beneath and unlocking new possibilities for how to change them.

The History Lens - Every problem has a past. When we look through the History Lens, we consider the past as a series of stories. These stories often contradict each other, even when they are being told by the same group. Many times they include fanciful elements or outright lies. But the themes of these stories deeply inform behavior in the present day. This lens helps us better understand these themes, then explore if new stories could change behavior.

The Future Lens - Every problem has a future, but nobody knows what it is. Instead, we have a collection of hopes, expectations, fears, and assumptions about what will occur. The Future Lens helps us examine these ideas and how they inform current behavior. Behind them are often beliefs and attitudes that have nothing to do with what’s most likely five or ten years from now. Examining them helps us prepare for the real future when it comes.

The Configuration Lens - Every problem is made up of categories, from the highly technical terms of scientific discourse to the squishy boundaries of high school cliques. The Configuration Lens helps us zoom in on these categories and consider what behavior results from the ways we sort people and ideas. It’s often the most powerful lens because of the way it can completely reorder the world of a problem.

The Parthood Lens - Every problem is a part of something else. This includes its context, its environment, as well as other problems! Instead of just adding endless contextual data, the Parthood Lens brings it all info focus by considering the roles the problem plays in larger systems. These ecological relationships often explain things about the problem that can be explained in no other way and offer solutions nobody would ever expect.

Great, how do we start?

We start where you are. I often draw upon these lenses just by asking questions or prompting a client to consider an unusual scenario. The lens clarifies the mysterious behavior or unexplored option they needed to understand, then they get back to business. I have shared dozens of exercises along these lines on my Substack.

But when a facilitation or training project calls for a more comprehensive understanding of the lenses, I introduce the group to the science of social norms. Norms are the unwritten rules that shape human behavior in groups. There is a lot that psychologists and sociologists know about them, yet no one knows the norms of your problem better than you. Aided by the insights the lenses reveal, we can better articulate what norms are holding your problem in place, then choose which ones we want to change or preserve. It’s heady stuff, but I believe that with the aid of the lenses, anyone can develop a more strategic perspective on the norms around them.

If this framework piques your interest, the next step is talking to me about the specific needs of your organization. Hit me up at andrew@albnelson.com.