The messiness of growth, change, and human dynamics makes leaders long for clean solutions—answers with structure, process, and predictability. That’s when the consulting frameworks roll in.
And with them, something the learning strategist Dwayne Britton calls becoming McKinzered — borrowing off-the-shelf methodologies from companies everyone has heard of, without asking whether these frameworks actually fit their people, culture, or context.
As Dwayne puts it, “It’s this over-reliance on really kind of buttoned-up consultant speak, which I think can be like snake oil.”
Manageable spoke to Dwayne Britton – a leadership and learning expert known for his candid, human-centered approach to organizational development – about frameworks that offer the illusion of control and how to build a company culture that doesn’t become a straightjacket.
The Framework Trap
Frameworks aren’t the enemy per se. Used well, they provide valuable scaffolding for leaders and their teams. The trap is in assuming that a framework built for one company will work the same way for another. That’s like assuming a map of New York will help you navigate Tokyo. It’s not just misguided—it’s potentially damaging.
Britton sees this trap play out in Learning & Development circles all the time. “The reality is, a lot of training is still going to be messy because you're working with humans that bring their own stuff to the content,” he explains, when asked about the right fit of methodology versus a human-centric approach.
You can build a beautiful training program designed by the best minds and based on the most respected research. But if it doesn’t resonate with the individuals in the room—if it doesn’t reflect their lived experiences, their cultural context, their fears and aspirations—it won’t stick.
“The messy, human aspects of development — navigating politics, building relationships, knowing when to step up — don’t always fit neatly into a skill framework,” says Dwayne.
Because culture isn’t built in conference rooms. It’s built in the in-between moments that Dwayne calls “the cracks”: the conversations after meetings, the way teams recover from failure, the stories people tell when leadership isn’t listening.
The Instagram Effect in Business
Frameworks offer the illusion of control. During scale-ups or periods of transformation, the growing pains of a company make the ground feel unstable. Decision-making gets harder. Communication gets messier. Culture starts to fray. Leaders reach for what seems like a safety net: a polished methodology that promises to organise the chaos. But what looks like structure can quickly become a straightjacket.
“At the end of the day, there are just human variables that you're not going to be able to count on,” Dwayne says.
That’s the issue with most borrowed logic—especially in L&D, but far beyond it. It assumes the world is clean when it’s not. It values repeatability over relationships. It systematizes complexity, but often at the cost of stripping out the human core of culture—the stuff that actually matters.
Britton likens this to how Instagram has changed travel: “Everyone wants to go to Santorini now, right?” Companies, too, want to follow the well-trodden path. They chase the culture of Netflix, the processes of Amazon, the design thinking of IDEO. But in mimicking others, they often lose what made them unique.
“Businesses that had really unique cultures that really defined them... start becoming that only on paper,” Dwayne warns.
The danger isn’t just ineffectiveness—it’s cultural homogenization. A slow erosion of identity, where once-distinctive organisations blur into a generic corporate landscape, losing the very qualities that made them special—and successful—in the first place.
The Human Variable
Culture is messy. People are unpredictable. And the more organisations try to squeeze culture into clean boxes, the more they risk losing what makes them human. “The messy stuff... it’s the stuff that is significant and real,” Dwayne notes. But it’s also the stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into a PowerPoint deck.
This doesn’t mean companies should throw structure out the window.
It means they need to get more comfortable holding a paradox: the need for order and the need for openness. The best leaders don’t try to eliminate this tension—they manage it.
“It’s the tension within the polarity, right? And in the middle, that’s where the reality is. It’s never either/or,” Britton says.
👉 In the words of Farley Thomas, Manageable's CEO:
"In my experience, many organisations don’t critically evaluate the tools they adopt. They treat them as plug-and-play solutions, assuming that because a model worked elsewhere—or came with the credibility of a big consultancy—it must be right for them. But just because a framework is popular or useful at one company doesn’t mean it’s useful in your particular context.
Take something like the Skill-Will Matrix. It sounds logical on the surface, but when you start to unpack it—placing people into boxes like “low skill, low will”—you realise how little nuance it actually offers. What kind of team are you building if you’re working with that kind of segmentation?
And if they are low-performing… Why are those people even there?
Companies embed frameworks that aren't necessarily into their ways of working without ever asking the most basic questions:
Does this model reflect how our people actually behave? Does it align with how we want to lead? Does it even make sense?
Often, tools come from people who are quite removed from the day-to-day realities of work. Consultants advise others on how to work—but that’s not the same as doing the work yourself. That gap between theory and lived experience can be a problem, especially when the model becomes more authoritative than the people using it."
Frameworks That Breathe
So what does the balance look like?
It starts with recognizing frameworks as tools—not evangelical truths and designing learning programs that articulate a company’s bespoke point of view.
“A good learning program gives people opportunities to deep dive to make it more relevant and connectable to them as individuals,” says Dwayne.
At the end of the day, the goal isn’t to ditch frameworks — it’s to use them as a starting point, then shape them with company-specific language, rituals that reflect the team’s identity, and real examples drawn from lived experience.
“For me, that’s how culture gets shaped with people — not imposed on them,” says Britton.
One way to do this is by developing a clear Learning Philosophy. While working at On as Head of Learning & Development, Dwayne created the S.P.A.R.K. philosophy — a framework designed to protect what made the company special as it grew.
“It’s a framework based on five guardrails that ensure learning experiences resonate with On’s values and business goals, while respecting personal agency and how adults learn,” Britton writes on his blog.
Rather than override what was already working, S.P.A.R.K. prompted teams to reflect, adapt, and stay anchored to shared principles. It helped build a culture where diverse thinking could thrive, and team members (whom On called “Explorers”) could maintain their individuality.
Unlike generic, borrowed frameworks that flatten culture into sameness, this approach offered light-touch guidance — preserving On’s distinctiveness while still supporting its evolution.
“A well-polished learning philosophy sits between the organization’s brand goals, talent strategy, and all L&D programming,” says Dwayne. “It anchors how a company approaches development and answers the important question: What do we, as a brand, actually believe about how people grow?”
With that clarity in place, even off-the-shelf tools like Radical Candor or the Skill-Will Matrix don’t get blindly adopted — they get translated. Reframed in the company’s language, values, and tone.
The result? A shared lens that allows teams to remix frameworks, not just repeat them.
The Way Forward
Every organisation wants a strong culture. But strong cultures aren’t engineered—they’re lived. They emerge from trust, shared experience, and human connection. No off-the-shelf framework can manufacture that on its own. But it can help if used correctly.
The smartest companies use frameworks thoughtfully, not dogmatically. They create structure—but only the kind that makes space for what’s real, what’s human, and what’s uniquely theirs. As leaders and managers, let’s be thoughtful. Let’s be critical. Not because frameworks are bad—but because culture, context, and people always come first.
At Manageable, we’re doing things differently.
We encourage teams in organisations to reflect, adapt, question, and shape the tools to fit their own cultures and challenges. We believe in creating frameworks that are useful because they’re alive, not because they’re tidy.
If you’re interested in learning more about what Manageable can do for your organisation, book a call.
