How can successful companies like Starbucks, McDonalds avoid frames becoming blinders?
Strategic frames provide focus and fit new information into a broader pattern. By continually focusing on the same aspects, frames can constrict managers’ peripheral vision, blinding them to novel opportunities and threats. As their strategic frames grow more rigid, managers often shoe-horn surprising information into existing frames or ignore it altogether. Consider NatWest Bank (National Westminster until 1995). At its foundation, National Westminster’s executives committed to a clear set of strategic frames–retail banking is stagnant and UK suffering irreversible decline. The bank diversified into the US, Europe, Far East and Soviet Union and expanded into new financial services. When the Big Bang deregulation heightened competition, rivals such as Lloyds TSB refocused on their domestic retail business. NatWest, in contrast, responded by accelerating geographic and product diversification. Critics blasted NatWest throughout the 1990s for waiting too long to divest money-losing dist
