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Chapter 9 Mental Models

Why the best ideas fail

New insights fail to get put into practice because they conict with deeplyheld internal images of how the world works, images that limit us tofamiliar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline ofmanaging mental models surfacing, testing, and improving our internalpictures of how the world works promises to be a major breakthrough forbuilding learning organisations.None of us can carry an organisation in our minds- or a family or acommunity. hat we can carry in our heads are images, assumptions, andstories. !hilosophers have discussed mental models for centuries, goingback at least to !lat"s parable of the cave.#ur $mental models% determine not only how we make sense of the world,but how we take action.

Although people do not [always] behave congruently with their espousedtheories [what they say], they do behave congruently with their theories-in-use [their mental models]. Chris Argyris of Harvard.

&ental models can be simple generali'ations such as $people areuntrustworthy%, or they can be comple( theories, such as my assumptionsabout why members of my family interact as they do. )ut what is mostimportant to grasp is that mental models are active they shape how we

act. *f we believe people are untrustworthy, we act di+erently from theway we would if we believed they were trustworthy.

hy are mental models so powerful in a+ecting what we do *n part,because they a+ect what we see. Two people with di+erent mental modelscan observe the same event and describe it di+erently, because they"velooked at di+erent details and made di+erent interpretations. spsychologists say, we observe selectively. This is no less true forsupposedly $objective% observes such as scientists than for people ingeneral. The way mental models shape our perceptions is no lessimportant in management.

The problem with mental models lie not in whether they are right or wrong by denition, all models are simplications. The problems with mentalmodels arise when they become implicit when they e(ist below the levelof our awareness. )ecause we remain unaware of our mental models, themodels remain une(amined. )ecause they are une(amined, the modelsremain unchanged. s the world changes, the gap widens between ourmental models and reality, leading to increasingly counterproductiveactions.

s some organisations have demonstrated, entire industries can develop

chronic mists between mental models and reality. *n some ways, close-

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knit industries are especially vulnerable because all the membercompanies look to each other for standards of best practice.

/ailure to appreciate mental models has undermined many e+orts tofoster systems thinking. The inertia of deeply entrenched mental models

can overwhelm even the best systematic insights. This has been a bitterlessons for many a purveyor of ew management tools, not only forsystems thinking advocates.)ut if mental models can impede learning free'ing companies andindustries in outmoded practices 0 why can"t they also help acceleratelearning. This simple 1uestion became, over time, the impetus for thediscipline of bringing mental models to the surface and challenging themso they can be improved.

Working with mental models in practice

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