From Form to Function: How To Think Your Way to Clarity
Level 5: Master Player
Future Guardian,
Ever feel like you SHOULD use or do a particular thing?
As a copywriter, I'm supposed to do things a certain way. I'm supposed to do certain things with calls to action. I'm supposed to structure all my copy in a particular way to get a particular person to take a particular action.
When I was in my 20s, I thought I was supposed to get into a serious relationship and work hard to stay with that person.
The other day, I found myself yet again procrastinating on securing the loose toilet seat because I didn't have the proper tool in the bathroom. My wife got tired of it, leaned over, and tightened the fastener with her hands.
5 years ago I got really into regular weight lifting, and got into the best shape I've ever been in my adult life. I let the pandemic tear that all down (maybe that’s just my excuse), and now life is completely different - I'm married and have kids. But I've been spending time trying to make that same fitness routine work because I thought that's what I really needed to do, that’s the thing that’s always worked.
Sometimes it's a small thing. Delaying fixing a loose screw because I need to go find a screwdriver or buy one at the store.
Other times it's your entire life. It's spending 7 years in a relationship that was terrible because I thought that's what I was supposed to be doing.
That's a focus on the THINGS.
The discussion of Function vs Form comes up frequently in the Guardian Academy, because as humans we so easily get stuck on the form, and fail to serve the function.
And even though we may be aware of this dichotomy, we are still confronted with the challenge of figuring it all out. This is made all the more difficult when we believe we’re doing what we need to do, when we believe “The Form” we’ve chosen is correct (or we may believe a form we’ve chosen is actually a function).
How do you figure out deep challenging personal questions when it feels like THE FORM is a critical part of the picture?
What if you run a business, and you feel like you have to keep running that business no matter what? But it's really hard. You can't make all the pieces work. But you keep pushing because you can't give up the business without giving up what you want in life.
Or a relationship. You feel like you have to keep this relationship going because that's what you want in life, even if it's going really poorly and you aren't happy.
These are hard discussions.
Because maybe those things, maybe those forms ARE important. Maybe they really ARE the forms you need.
Yet,
How do you think through it all to make sure you are serving The Function in the best way possible?
What are we really trying to solve?
I think no matter what, it's always useful to ask yourself "what am I really trying to solve?" Or put another way, "what do I really want?"
Without knowing the answer to that question, you are - as we like to say - trying to get Google Maps to give you directions without putting in an end destination.
No compute.
(Furthermore, you also run into problems if you don't know where you're starting from, but we're about to explore that).
Does everything come down to "Solvable Problem?"
Well ... if you're trying to figure out what to do, then I think yes. That's why I wrote about The Solvable Problem for Life1. It's not just about making money. It's about getting what you want in life. And to get what you want in life, you must know what you want, where you are, and then you can make moves which get you closer.
Knowing what we are trying to solve and where we are now helps us make the move that gets us closer, faster, and with the least amount of risk.
Nail stuck in a wall - Do I need to go find or buy a hammer? Or could I just walk into the next room, grab a butter knife and leverage the nail out in 30 seconds?
We go back to that kind of story often because most people look at a problem and START their problem solving with "what's the right tool to do this?" So it looks like "nail stuck in a wall? well I need a hammer now."
Ok? That's where we're at.
Where we want to be is making clearer, more useful decisions which get us closer to what we want, with minimal risk and maximum options.
A New Framework for Thinking
What happens if the solution to your problem LOOKS like a FORM?
What happens if you keep thinking "BUT I REALLY BELIEVE I NEED THIS HAMMER!"
Or to take an example from A Guardian on a recent Guardian Call
He found himself working in a store which employs autistic adults. He very much enjoys the work and it allows his gifts to shine.
But he was questioning ... is this where I really want to be? Is this the right thing I want to be doing? Do I want my own store? Do I want to work with autistic people?
All great questions to ask.
I've been there myself with email marketing. I transitioned from my own business to working as an email copywriter with other businesses for a few years. I knew there were aspects about what I was doing which fit my gifts very well, but I also knew I needed to do something a bit different.
How do you figure this out when there are parts of, or even all of a FORM which makes so much sense for your own game?
Ascend your thinking to get your thoughts closer aligned
The framework of thinking I'm going to give will allow you to validate the FORM you believe in, but in a way which will help you see the FUNCTION that the FORM is serving, such that you can make a clearer decisions about whether you want to use that form, or whether another form will be more in alignment with Your Game.
Let me make that a little clearer.
Think owning a coffee shop is what you must need and have to do?
I'm going to show you how to think about that problem in such a way that you can uncover the function that coffee shop serves for you and your solvable problem - and then you'll be able to answer clearly if you really want to be making that move.
This is ultimately an exercise in moving up and down "The Clarity Compass." This is a concept developed by Lukas (Resheske) Fisher2, which I've elaborated on several times as it's a highly useful framework for several things, including:
- evaluating decision making
- clarifying your next best step
Discover Lukas Here:
The Clarity Compass is the following:
Everything we think and do falls on this spectrum - Philosophies, Principles, Strategies, Tactics, and Tools. (In that order)
This idea has grown out of a business perspective (copywriting and marketing), but with First Principles thinking it applies to every aspect of life.
Your Philosophies are your foundational beliefs, both what you believe and what you don't believe.
Your Principles are things which you know to be true. They rarely change. They are discoverable, learnable.
Strategies are things you do which are dependent upon the environment you are in. As an example, a General is going to have a different Strategy fighting in the mountains vs on a flat plain.
Strategies are also informed/determined by your Philosophies and Principles.
Tactics are things you do which are relevant to the strategy, in the moment. They are ever changing, often reactionary. Set an ambush. Push the assault.
Tools are the things you use to execute the tactics.
Hinging on Strategy
To solve the problem where we may get stuck on the FORM, we're going to hinge our thinking around STRATEGY.
This is the fulcrum point between form and function.
This is where The Confrontation sits.
Why strategy?
It's a form right?
Quite simply, strategy is the highest level of thinking which is accessible to most people.
Most people gravitate towards form, and can comprehend and easily think about strategy.
One step higher up from strategy is FUNCTION. It's the “why.” It's Principle (which are known and measurable things informed by your Philosophies/Beliefs).
Strategy is the environment in which you bring your philosophies and principles into the world (though most people don't realize this connection).
It's a relationship.
It's email copywriting.
It's buying a house.
It's a coffee shop.
Moving up from strategy are principles, and then you are in function.
Between Strategy (Form) and Principles (Function) is the bridge you can craft to gain a much higher level understanding of yourself, and make decisions better so that you get closer to what you want in life.
Let's take our Guardian friend who works in the store which employs autistic adults.
The strategy involves the store, the environment.
So he can ask himself ...
What about his work in the store is important?
Why do this work in this store in this way?
The answers to those questions will raise him above The Strategy to Principles and Philosophy.
Because The Strategy is always informed by the Philosophy and Principles. Most people don't realize this, which is why (in my opinion) they get stuck there.
Strategies, Tactics, and Tools are all things you do.
They are FORM.
Philosophy and Principle is how you think, it's WHY.
That is FUNCTION
It's easy to get stuck thinking "I need a store helping these people," if it encapsulates so much of what you want to do in life, and fits your values and how you play your game well - but that's a FORM.
Dig deeper to ask yourself "why this work" and go higher to Principles/Philosophy to find the connections that explain why the store makes sense.
Find the things about the store that are you playing your own game (which is a Philosophy level concept).
You may find that the reason why can be fulfilled in a myriad of different ways. That The Function can be reached/served faster, with less risk, and more options in other ways.
Our friend may find that serving autistic adults is something which fits his philosophies, principles, and the way he plays his game very well, but that maybe owning a store is not the best way to do that.
To give a completely different context and example ...
I've been doing this exercise for myself in my business. I've been working as an email copywriter for the last 4 years or so. But the work I've done has always been much more than email copywriting.
Email is my strategy, it's my environment. So I asked myself deeply "why email?"
This revealed to me the Philosophies and Principles driving that decision, and did so in a way where I can say that my Philosophies and Principles can be applied to many different strategies, not just email.
To give you some clear context to work with in this example, here are a number of my key Philosophies, direct from my internal notes:
By the way, a great tool for figuring out your Philosophies and Principles is Bumpers3.
I believe in:
- Relationships
- helping people grow
- leading people to the right choice for them (not trying to convince them to take an action)
- making amazing experiences
- being useful
- being worthy of memory
- playing an infinite game
- playing my own game
- raising the floor
- slow is smooth, smooth is fast
- doing the right thing
- writing is where I play my game best
- creating inevitability/certainty of the outcome
- creating situations where I can't lose
Here are a number of my key Principles (as they relate to the work I do):
- The 85/15 Principle: you can only capture 15% of your customers within the first 90 days, the rest can take 2 years (or more) to come along, so you need a system that can engage people for the 2 years *well* in order for them to become customers
- The KLT Principle: people buy from those they know, like, and trust, so building a system that gives you an audience of people who know like and trust you makes sense
- The Relationship Principle: business is all relationships. no matter what you do, you're dealing with a relationship (so build a system that creates positive relationships)
- The Experience Principle: business is also experience - every prospect/customer goes through an experience (so how much do you engineer that?) (the experience of the relationship)
- The Control Principle: you can't MAKE people do anything (so building a system that depends on convincing people into an action is going against human nature)
- The Systems Principle: a system is perfectly designed to produce the result it produces
- The 3rd Order Consequences Principle: the greatest impact on getting what you want is not in the first or even second order of consequences for your actions, it's in the 3rd and subsequent order consequences. What you do today has rippling impacts down the line which are very hard to measure ... unless you intentionally craft a system from the end to the beginning with those consequences in mind.
Example: coercive aggressive front end selling like fake scarcity always has a negative downline impact. You might make more short term sales, but you likely lose customers in the long term (you just have no way of measuring the loss in your system because the data doesn't exist). It requires an understanding of human behavior and seeing alternative systems used to greater effect to know how that works.
Those Philosophies and Principles come together in email in a very specific way. For me email ends up being a clearly excellent choice as an environment to enact my Philosophies and Principles.
I continue to work with email because there are specific aspects of that strategy which I really enjoy, which I find more effective than others (in terms how of I play my game), and which I execute better than others.
But I gained that clarity of understanding by going up to the Philosophies and Principles.
I can also see that my Philosophies and Principles could be enacted well in a number of other Strategies (environments). I could enact them on Youtube, through direct mail, in person, at events, through books, etc. Email is a place I've chosen to go deep on expertise because it fits well for me.
To round out the example, Tactics in this case would be specific types of email automations, voice, word choice, formatting, flow of reader experience, etc. Tools would be things like the email automation software.
See how it all comes together?
I started with questioning the Strategy. Why this?
Why this business?
Why this relationship?
Why this house in this city?
I dug into that why to figure out the principles and philosophies driving everything. The clarity on those principles and philosophies then either helps me confirm with certainty my choice to work in a specific environment, or perhaps chose a different one (the environment = the strategy).
I gain clarity and certainty on my strategic form choices.
Now whenever I'm confronted with a FORM, I more naturally slide right back up to Philosophies and Principles. Does The Form I'm confronted with serve The Function? Does it fit my Philosophies and Principles? Is there a better Form to get me closer to what I want?
This is how you can take yourself back to THE FUNCTION.
Because more importantly than executing The Function with a specific form, is executing The Function in a way which gets you closer to what you want, faster, with the least risk, and the most options.
Want to work through this yourself?
Pick a Form in your life.
If you’re a business owner, choose your business.
If you have a challenge in your life you’re trying to get clarity on, pick the closest thing to “the environment” for that challenge.
Maybe that’s a relationship. Maybe that’s moving or buying a house. Maybe it’s going to school.
Pick one of those things, and then deeply ask yourself WHY.
What do you believe in that drives your interest in school?
What do you know to be true that drives the business you chose and how you run your business?
Get all of these ideas down.
And then look at your Philosophies and Principles independently.
Are there things you believe in and know to be true about yourself which are missing?
Get those ideas down.
Now look. Deeply at your Philosophies and Principles. Ask yourself, what do I really want? What’s my solvable problem for life?
And then, ask yourself how best you can move closer to what you want, in alignment with your Philosophies and Principles.
Does your business perfectly fit the bill? Is the school you’re looking at the right choice?
Great!
But you may still have questions. You may have MORE questions. You may find that some of the form fits, but not all of it.
It’s really hard to figure all this out yourself.
You may need or want a mirror. Someone, or a group of people you can reflect your ideas off of, who are good at being mirrors (and not just pushing their own ideas on to you).
Fortunately, if you’re reading this, you’re in one of those communities.
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy
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Great stuff. I created a framework to use with all this information so that I know If I am on track with the bumpers. Thank You.