I love frameworks.

They’re simple and elegant. They look good on paper. They give you the “sense” that you know what you’re doing. But sometimes, they’re useless when you try to fit the messy reality of B2B SaaS into ‘neat’ boxes.

It took me a while to articulate this feeling.

For the past few months, I enjoyed packaging B2B SaaS messaging solutions into ‘beautiful’ frameworks. But then I realized that was a mistake.

Let’s take software taxonomy for example. That’s how you group, connect, and name software capabilities.

I used to think that there’s “one right way” to organize capabilities. But then I discovered many other ways of doing that depending on the software particularities and user habits / language.

I’ll give you an example …

Think about management software.

It’s an end-to-end platform, meaning it supports the entire event from start to finish. From setting up the online registration and managing vendors to post-event feedback & reporting.

This set up alone is perfect for a step-based organizing principle … Create, invite, register, manage, check in … But there’s a twist. And I can vouch for it because I’ve been in the events management industry for way too long.

Power users often don’t think in “steps” but in phases. They understand the product faster when you group capabilities based on before, during, and after the event, rather than arranging them in rigid linear steps.

I’m using this example to show that we can’t approach solutions with a rigid prescriptive framework.

We never know what we might encounter.

Yes, frameworks are structured ways of thinking about how to solve a problem. They provide key components, steps, or principles. They help organize complexity and support decision-making. But they might fail when making contact with the messy reality of a B2B SaaS company.

That’s why I stopped using prescriptive frameworks. When you start with an end solution in your mind, you can’t approach the reality of a specific B2B SaaS company with an open mind. You’ll just try to fit what you encounter into a rigid, universal, formulaic solution.

This realization made me change my approach to frameworks.

I don’t use them anymore as prescriptive tools. Instead, I design frameworks for exploring and understanding the reality of a B2B SaaS company. And then, I create a personalized solution (using clear principles) based on what I’ve discovered.

In other words … I’m using structured thinking to understand a specific situation, then build a solution that fits that reality.

Frameworks can blind us. Or they can be the very means that help us make contact with reality. This post is an invitation to see frameworks less as fixed solution templates (especially in consulting & advisory) and more as flexible discovery tools.