Mental Models – Help or Challenge
Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian researcher considered the pioneer of antiseptic procedures. In the mid-19th century, he noticed that in the case of women giving birth with midwives, the new-borns had a lot more chances of survival. In contrast, in hospitals, obstetricians, who were only men back then, were not washing their hands before a surgery, going from one operating table to another without disinfecting themselves. This apparently small fact was the cause of death of so many children at birth.
Semmelweis drew the attention of doctors regarding the necessity of disinfecting their hands. All doctors were revolted to such extent that they marginalized and defamed him; even his wife left him. Semmelweis had a mental breakdown, he was taken to a psychiatric hospital, where he was beaten and died a few days after his admission.
The doctors, who were the ones in the know, who saved lives, did not accept that there was another way of doing things. Their own knowledge blocked their minds and their beliefs were also their limitations.
I am going to give another example:
At the start of the 20th century, cigarettes where a masculine attribute. It was considered vulgar for a woman to smoke. Even so, in the last century cigarettes were used as a weapon in women’s battle for emancipation, as a symbol of independence, of freedom and affirmation. The biggest contributor to this change was Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, often referred to as “the parent of public relations”. In 1930 Bernays promoted cigarettes as a means of relieving a sore throat and thinning your waist! (I recommend here the movie ‘A Century of Self’)
Let us look at a fact: when we run into a problem, we, Europeans, have a meeting to find solutions. The competence of ‘problem solving’ is very much appreciated by companies. The Japanese, in contrast, meet and spend a vast amount of time to define all the perspectives of a problem. The quality of defining a problem is essential for them, while the speed of problem solving is what matters to us, in the West.
All of these are examples of mental models; some helped us evolve, others slowed us down.
Mental models are representations that each of us has about the world around us. The world is extremely complex, and in order to understand it, to function and to make sense of it, we needed to bring some order to it, to establish some principles, categories. That is the way our mental models were formed. They are of great help, however, as Ignaz Semmelweis’s case shows us, they can also prevent our evolution.
If we think about what happened in many large companies before this crisis, we can say that many people were totally dissatisfied. A 2018 study showed that only 34% of employees in the US were ‘engaged’, the rest being demotivated. I often heard people say that they cannot take it anymore, that they do not feel appreciated, that they are very stressed, on the verge of burnout, wasting away inside the company and inside themselves. Most people dreamed (still dream?) of becoming their own boss, having their own company, with minimal risks, a few employees and a lot of money, if possible. Of course, some were successful, but the percentage is small.
And yet, if we think this through, the large companies are the ones that produce the highest number of jobs, which supported employee development for years, which payed their taxes to the government, which contributed to a better standard of living.
I believe that we should change our perspective here and reposition ourselves. Before looking into the change of firms, I propose we look at refining our own mental models and I would start with something simple, as an exercise.
Let us take, for example, the weekend during this period of state of emergency. I think this is a good opportunity to change the way we spend our free time. Usually, at the weekend we would go to the mall, park, shopping, at a restaurant, terrace, to a club, visit our parents, and so, we would be outside our homes a lot. We were trying to live as much as possible, to shove in the 48 hours as many activities as we could. To be with many people, outside our home, outside ourselves.
Now, we need to use our creativity to escape from our own mental models regarding the way we spend our weekend, to let go of our certainties, patterns.
I can imagine that these mental models that we have about our weekend formed a puzzle. We liked it, it was the construct of our mind, of course. Now however, it is time to break the puzzle to small pieces again, to add or subtract some pieces and to form another puzzle.
This exercise requires openness to trying something new. We can spend time with others on the phone, online; we can drink something together online, watch a movie indoors. But, most importantly, now we are inside ourselves, voles nolens. It is a good place though, it is time to make friend with ourselves.
You could say: I know this, there is nothing new. Yes, but the questions I invite you to ask yourselves is: do you live according to what you know? How much of it do you implement? Our mind can trick us and give us destructive thoughts, thoughts that would prevent new approaches.
Also, some will probably say: this does not work for me. How about telling ourselves instead: How can I do this so it works for me, too? You can educate your mind to search for new connections, to accept other paths of doing something.
If we think that we are in a certain way, that we know everything, and we do not let a small opening for the light to come in, if we do not question our mental models (that maybe served us right for a while, but times have changed now), we will not change anything about us.
