Casuistry in the Age of Playbooks

Hi, 

The end of the year always brings reflection. It is one of the unavoidable truths of this time of the year. 

Every year, you prepare for the holidays, you prepare for the constants that accompany them: confusing political arguments, disregarded letters at the north pole, and every other holiday cliche you can think of. 

You go into the festivities confident that you know everything that will happen. Because well, they always happen. 

Then something mysterious happens, it is always different than you expected, for better or for worse. 

We walk in with absolute certainty, and we leave with a new lease on the holidays for about 2-3 months, and the cycle repeats. 

It is curious. We know what will happen, but the environment changes ever so slightly each year, which produces a new and novel experience. 

This week, I want to talk about Casuistry and playbooks & frameworks. 

Casuistry

I am going to try to explain this as well as I can without getting too in the weeds. 

Casuistry was a philosophical practice by the Jesuits in the Middle Ages that focused on the conscious side of absolute law. 

The purpose was to try and figure out the nature of the circumstances that drew someone to break an absolute law in order to get a better understanding of why the law was broken. 

A classic example would be as follows: 

Law: “Thou shalt not kill”

Outcome: Man kills another 

Reason: The now deceased man was threatening the life of the killer’s family.

The absolute law would say to never kill. However, most people would understand why you broke the law. 

The inverse is well obvious, someone killed for a bad reason. 

Both scenarios have a dead person, but the nature of the environment could not be more different. 

So that is the basics. 

Now let’s look at playbooks & frameworks through this lens.

Playbooks & Frameworks

If you spend any amount of time on twitter, instagram, or linkedin, you are more than accustomed to someone talking about their game changing playbook that will change your ability to run your business (or life), and all you have to do to get it is type a word in the comments. 

We all know it, we know it because it is done a lot, and it is done a lot because it is enticing. This week isn’t about the importance of a captivating lead magnet however, it is about our obsession with playbooks. 

I mean I get it, when you are setting out on an adventure the first thing you reach for is a map.

The problem is rarely ambition. The problem is a lack of direction. When the guru gods offer you a path, you jump at the opportunity to comment “clarity” and get that path you so desire. 

There is one enormous pitfall, unfortunately. A playbook will help you build someone else’s business… or life. 

People create playbooks based on what they have done, and what has worked for them. There are a lot of nuances that go into those perspectives. I will give you an example: 

I am an aspiring direct to consumer coffee mug entrepreneur. I have what I think is a really intuitive and innovative product. I have all of my logistics dialed in. All I have left to do is find customers. 

So, I go to YouTube and start watching videos on digital advertising, and I find a marketing coach who has spent over $100,000,000 on meta advertising starting all the way back in 2011. 

I am blown away. So much value, so many good tips and tricks for the funnel and making the ads. This guy knows everything. I get to the bottom of their most recent video, and there is a call to action for signing up for a program where I get every single step of their process to the letter.  AND it is only $3,000! I will make that back in a week with those skills. 

You buy the course. Copy every step to a T, and you aren’t getting the results you want. 

Confused, dejected, and sad you walk away. 

I did everything, why didn’t it work? 

When you think back on the program you realize: this guru started in the meta ads platform in 2011 when there was nowhere near the competition there is now. They were able to make their money before all of the privacy changes that disrupted the entire industry for years. The last thing you realize, all of their best practices for the current market are all based on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a day on advertising, and you only have a budget of $100. 

SCENE

So what does this example teach us?

When you are searching for an answer, and you are formulating your solution based on someone else’s experience, you have to consider more than just what they did. You have to consider why it may have worked for them more than just their targeting strategy or their funnel creation.

It teaches us that you have to look at the reality of your problem, and then apply applicable solutions, not just the best solutions you can find. 

Conclusion

Frameworks and Playbooks can be super beneficial. They can offer you clarity on a problem that you are facing. That peace you feel, is probably more about feeling seen than it about you having the perfect course of actions laid out ahead of you. 

There is one point with two lessons this week: Understanding someone’s rise benefits you more than someone’s successes, and if your solutions aren’t working it probably means you need to learn more about your problem not your tools. 

Happy week! 

Kyle