I’m a hunter of frames. Not the kind I wear on my face or that hold photos of dear loved ones, but frames in terms of new ways of defining and looking at things.

I love the energy that new frames instantly generate. It’s as if a new window of possibility suddenly opens and you wonder how you never saw it that way before as you sit in the wonder of the new vantage point.

Here are a few frames that I unearthed over the past few days thanks to various communities I participate in related to organizational development, innovation and brand design. These are the types of frames that can release and harness constructive (and destructive) energy that’s blocked for any number of reasons  to reenergize a brand, spark  and reshape an entire organization, city or country.

A: Strengths vs. B: Superpowers

Strategic planning typically includes defining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This makes good sense. But there is something magical that happens when instead of thinking about strengths, you call them your superpowers. If you sit with the two ideas for a moment you will feel the difference in your gut and mind.

Let these questions roll around your brain for a while: What are my/our strengths? vs. What are my/our superpowers?

There’s something powerful that happens when you start envisioning yourself or your company as a superhero with superpowers fighting for something that matters. It’s the power of personification and creating a visual picture that’s exciting to think about.

This is just something you have to try out for yourself to truly appreciate. Even better draw yourself/or your company as a superhero and name an enemy. The founders of software success story 37 Signals, in their book Getting Real, do practice this exercise with their personal information management product Backpack, with the enemy of the product personified as structure and rigid rules. What or who is your enemy?

Another reframe is this next one related to branding and innovation.

A: What needs are we able to address that no other brand is addressing? vs. B: How do we differentiate from our competition?

According to esteemed professor Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School, comparing your brand to it’s competitors is a recipe for failure, especially if you are a new company attempting to battle it out with established giants.His ground-breaking work on disruptive innovation provides solid proof that comparing your brand to the competition shouldn’t be the primary focus.

Extreme focus should be on the customer and on uncovering their unmet needs. This  mindset has reshaped and reenergized P&G in recent years, and has led to many innovative and successful products including Febreze.

Finally, here’s a frame that has fueled the success of online retailer Zappos.

A: Promotion vs. B: Customer Experience

Surprisingly, in many organizations today marketing is still considered the promotions department. Marketing dollars are spent to interrupt people to build awareness and generate sales. Certainly this still works to some degree, but it’s a lot less successful than it used to be. Word-of-mouth marketing is more effective and Zappos has capitalized on it by investing in the customer experience—essentially letting the customers do the marketing for them. They ask these five questions to continually improve their experience:

1. What do customers expect?

2. What do they actually experience?

3. What emotions do they feel?

4. What stories do they tell their friends?

5. How can we create more stories?

As a result,  Zappos has instituted free shipping both ways to reduce the risk of buying shoes online. And while some companies attempt to limit the number of calls to their call center to keep costs down, Zappos encourages telephone calls and measures success based on the customer experience, not efficiency.

If your brand or business is feeling lost, stuck or sluggish, look for ways to reframe it using the ideas above, and watch how the energy returns to your brand, your company and yourself.