Introduction: The FACE IT Framework: Turn a Book into a Decision
A common reaction to business books is to passively absorb them and then continue with life. No change occurs. The book remains on the shelf, and the decision that led to reading it is still pending. This is the gap between reading and applying what you read.
I created the FACE IT framework to bridge that divide. A book becomes a decision-making tool rather than just a source of information.
What FACE IT Stands For
FACE IT has six steps: Focus, Apply, Connect, Elaborate, Innovate, Test and Track.
Each step moves you closer to action. None of them ask you to read faster or read more. They ask you to read with a decision in mind.
Focus
Start with a specific question, not a general topic. “How do I improve my hiring process” is a focus. “Leadership” is not.
A sharp focus tells you which parts of a book matter. It also tells you which parts to skip.
Apply
Pull out the ideas that address your focus question. Set aside everything else, even if it is interesting.
This step is where most readers get stuck. They highlight everything and apply nothing.
Connect
Look for links between the book and what you already know. Connect the new idea to a past decision, a current project, or another book you have read.
Connection is where insight forms. A single idea rarely changes a decision. A pattern across several ideas often does.
Elaborate
Write out what the idea means for your specific situation. Be concrete. Name the project, the person, the deadline.
A vague takeaway like “communication matters” will not survive the week. A specific one like “I will send my team a written recap after every meeting” will.
Innovate
Ask what you would do differently if you combined this idea with something unrelated to the book's field. This is where intersection thinking earns its place in the framework.
A hiring idea from a sports book might solve a problem in your sales process. The best insights often come from fields that have nothing to do with your own.
Test and Track
Try the idea. Set a window, such as a week or a month. Track what happens.
This is the step that separates reading as a hobby from reading as a tool. Without it, the first five steps are just a longer form of note-taking.
A Worked Example
- Say your focus question is “How do I run better one-on-one with my team.” You pick up a management book and apply the framework. Focus keeps you reading only the sections on conversation and feedback, skipping the chapters on organization design that do not serve your question.
- Apply means you pull out two or three specific techniques the author recommends.
- Connect links one of those techniques to a mistake you made in a past one-on-one, which is why it lands so clearly this time.
- Elaborate turns the idea into a concrete change, such as opening every one-on-one with a question about obstacles instead of status updates.
- Innovate asks what a completely different field, say improv theater, might add to that same conversation, since improv trains people to build on what someone else just said rather than redirect the conversation.
- Test and Track means running the new opening question for four weeks and noting whether your team's answers get more specific.
By the end, you have not just read a book. You have changed a habit and have a way to know if it worked.
Common Mistakes When Applying the Framework
The most common mistake is skipping straight to Elaborate without doing Focus first. Without a clear question, elaboration turns into vague notes that sound good but point nowhere specific.
The second mistake is skipping Test and Track entirely. Ideas that never get tested stay theoretical, no matter how well they were connected and elaborated. A framework that stops before the testing step is really just a more structured way of taking notes.
Why This Matters Now
Executives and founders read constantly. Yet many still make decisions on gut instinct alone. The problem is rarely a lack of reading. It is a lack of a system that turns reading into action.
The FACE IT Framework gives you that system. It works across both strategic reading, where you apply one book to one decision, and syntopical reading, where you draw on several books at once.
If you want to practice this framework live, it is one of the core tools we work through in the Applied Knowledge Is Power workshop, running September 23 and 24 on Zoom.
