Today is February 16 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “Are you aware of the mental models you use to make decisions?”
Mental models are frameworks from which you view life.
They help you understand why you are thinking what you are thinking.
Mental models, however, are both difficult to identify and perhaps even more challenging to change.
In their March 2015 Harvard Business Review article ‘Red Ocean Traps,’ researchers W. Chan Kim and Renée Maugorgne wrote “Though mental models lie below people’s cognitive awareness, they’re so powerful a determinant of choices and behaviors that many neuroscientists think of them almost as automated algorithms that dictate how people respond to changes and events."
One of the more famous mental models is known as the law of the instrument identified by Abraham Maslow in his 1966 publication The Psychology of Science.
This mental model is defined as having an over-reliance on a familiar tool. In popular culture people are familiar with Maslow’s observation "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
One example of the law of the instrument would be the mechanic who specializes in transmissions. When you drive your car, with a radiator problem, into the garage you are more likely to have a new transmission put in than to have the actual problem fixed.
When confronted with unfamiliar problems, a person with one mental model, a hammer, will resort to old techniques of questionable effectiveness as opposed to formulating new and better techniques.
Do you have difficulty finding solutions to problems? Are you aware of your mental models? Is your only tool a hammer; and if so, do you treat everything in your life as if it were a nail?
As you go about your day consider asking yourself "What have you done lately to help yourself develop additional mental models so that you are prepared to provide yourself with alternative solutions when the next issue arises?"