2024.09.16

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Mental Models 101

A mental model is a catch-all term for any concept, framework, or worldview you carry around with you. We can see mental models at both the individual level and in teams and organizations.

As individuals, mental models guide our perceptions and behaviors. People operating with a mental model of “better safe than sorry” often take actions to minimize risk or will spend lots of time making detailed plans about the future. Those who align with “all’s fair in love and war” typically believe that any strategy and tactics are permissible in certain situations – regardless of the consequences.

Mental models also guide team and organizational behavior. For example, “be outcome blind” might be explicitly used to remind people to focus on the process. But often, an organization or team will operate using unstated mental models. For example, an organization may have a bias toward hopping on every opportunity that comes along, regardless of strategic or tactical advantage, because implicitly it is optimizing for “regret minimization”.

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Mental Models as a Tool

When it comes to work, think about mental models as lenses to look through to get a different perspective or to help you focus in a particular way.

Leaning into that lens analogy a bit … consider eyeglasses, sunglasses, telescopes, microscopes, binoculars, night vision goggles, cameras, safety glasses, etc. Each has a lens to look through and the results of what you’ll see vary with the type of lens used and the situation you apply it to.

Use a microscope to look at cells and you’ll be able to see them clearly. Use a microscope to look at an elephant and you’ll be missing it almost in its entirety – even though you’ll still be seeing something. If you don’t know you are looking through a microscope at the elephant, you’ll make very different decisions than you would if you were looking through your regular unfiltered eyes or prescription eyeglasses.

The mental model you look through in a given situation will impact how you see it.

An economist, botanist, and architect will each view a forest through the mental models of their various disciplines. None is right or wrong - but some may be more useful in a particular situation.

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Importance of Mental Models for Leaders

There is huge power in being able to identify and understand the mental models that you and others are using and to add useful ones to a toolkit that you and others draw from as the situation warrants.

When you are able to identify and understand the mental models you have subconsciously running, you can be intentional about whether or not you use them going forward. Your thoughts, behaviors, and decisions are no longer influenced by something you are unaware of.

Being able to spot others’ mental models in play is a huge asset, making you instantly savvier when it comes to interpersonal dynamics, conflict, and communication. Often the underlying source of disagreement is that individuals are operating under different mental models, but are not aware of it.

Intentionally adding mental models to your toolkit as a leader and teaching your team to use them – through modeling or direct instruction – is an efficient route to better discussions, better decisions, and less friction.

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Your Personal Mental Models

Take some time to reflect on the mental models you are using. As you become more and more aware of your own mental models, you can decide whether they are helpful to you, or whether you'd like to retire any and try something new.

If you have a strong belief about something, it’s probably actually a mental model. Anytime a "should" pops up, or other "rules", or the "right way" to do something, there is a good chance a mental model is in play.

Questions to Ask Yourself

1. What are your personal mental models around each of the following?

• stress
• your capabilities
• rest
• saying no
• your well-being
• fulfilling your potential

2. Which mental models of yours did you actively choose and which were conditioned into you over time?

3. Which mental models do you want to keep and which is it time to change?

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Identifying Mental Models at Work

Now that you are aware of mental models at the individual level, you can start inferring others’ mental models from their words and behaviors. The interpersonal dynamics you experience with colleagues are often the result of mental models – sometimes well-aligned and sometime at odds.

Questions for Reflection

1. Which mental models do you observe within your workplace overall, or your team specifically around each of the following?

• conflict
• transparency
• deadlines
• how the work gets done
• being a team player
• taking breaks or time off
• leadership
• risk taking
• generations(i.e., boomers, gen x, millennials, gen z)
• genders

2. As a leader, which mental models are you explicit about valuing and which have you left your team to infer that you implicitly value?

3. Which mental models are useful to your team in the present and which might be a relic from another time?

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3 Mental Models that Can Help with Decision Making

Mental Model #1 | Second and Third-Order Thinking

When considering various courses of action (projects, policies, etc.), it’s usually straightforward to lay out the immediate (aka first-order) consequences.

It takes more cognitive work to consider what might come later – the second- and third-order consequences. The future is an uncertain place. Thinking through that can be a challenge. It’s important to try anyway.

Here are two techniques for helping people adopt the second/third-order thinking mental model.

1. Ask “and then what?”

This technique is simple but incredibly powerful. Keep asking it a few times.

A warning - some people will hate it. Either to be asked it or to have to consider it.

2. Future Fives

Consider the consequences at various time periods after the outcome is reached: 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months, 5 quarters, 5 years.

If a different length of time is more applicable to your work, feel free to adjust. Future Fives has nice alliteration and gives reasonably different time frames to consider but there isn’t anything scientific about it.

Mental Model #2 | Inversions

The mental model of inversions has you look at the decision from the opposite side or an outcome/endpoint instead of the beginning.

Inversions can help you identify threats or obstacles so you can plan accordingly. They are also useful in identifying blind spots.

Here are two techniques to work with inversions.

1. Worst Decision

• What is the worst decision/outcome in this situation?
• Why is it bad? Be very specific with the reasons.
• Come up with a good decision/outcome, only by looking at the reasons you identified in the worst decision.

2. Backward Chaining

This is about thinking through the problem backwards. First you really specifically define the end goal well and then work back on what it would take.

• If [end goal] were to happen, what else would have to be true?
• How do you achieve [that thing that would have to be true]?
• And if [that thing] were to happen, what else would have to be true?
• How do you achieve [that additional thing]?
• And so forth …

Mental Model #3 | Impact - Confidence - Ease (ICE)

This is a mental model that gets people focused on three main factors as the basis of comparing alternative courses of action: impact, confidence, and ease.

It’s a mental model that gets people focused on those three factors as the basis of comparing alternative courses of action.

Each factor is scored on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the best.

For each project/alternative that you are considering, create a score out of 30 by asking:

• How much impact if we achieve outcome?
• How much confidence that we’ll succeed?
• How easy (low resource, low time) is it to try?

Projects with lower scores are dropped from consideration and you can focus on deciding between the higher score options.

If there are other factors that are routinely important in your organization’s work, you could easily come up with your own version of ICE. You can also add weights to the factors and turn it into a full-on matrix/rubric.

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Summary

• A mental model is a catch-all term for any concept, framework, or worldview you carry around with you. Mental models guide our perceptions and behaviors as individuals.
• For leaders especially, it is useful to identify and understand the mental models that you and others are using and to add useful ones to a toolkit for you and others to draw from as the situation warrants.
• Three mental models that are useful to help with decision making include second- and third-order thinking, inversions, and Impact-Confidence-Ease (ICE).

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