What About Our Mental Models?

At the begging of the 20th century, Henry Ford build his success with a model that changed the practices of the time: a simple and cheap car. He broke the rules of the time: ‘Cars are for the elite’ and imposed an alternative model: ‘Cars are for everyone’. A little later, however, the market evolved, and clients wanted to have a choice. Ford, however, remained with his model of a cheap and simple car. Times changed; the world wanted something else. The same person who changed the world’s way of thinking, remained a prisoner of his own mental model. Ford’s company almost went bankrupt. (adapted after “Strategie Modele Mental’, by Philippe Silberzahn & Beatrice Rousset)

A mental model is a representation of reality based on the sum of our beliefs and assumptions.

I think, that many times in management, we are stuck in a thinking model that worked until a few years ago. For example, we have the expectation that young employees will behave the same as us 20 years ago and be motivated by the same things. However, we forget that when we were their age, we felt misunderstood, we wanted to change the world as well.

It’s difficult to change the way we think. And so, I propose to make the following efforts:
To create a TikTok account and to observe what happens there and try not to judge but to understand the way communication has changed.
To talk to young people and to listen, without interrupting them, to find out what interests them, what they do in their free time, what gives them energy, what makes them angry, what makes them happy.
To talk to elderly people as well, they also gained valuable experience we can learn from.
To learn something new every quarter (to try a different sport, to change the road to our office, to switch from Microsoft to Apple, to walk to our office once a month).
To read from other fields than our field of expertise.
To pay attention, in the park or at home, to the way our children talk, what about, what they do, how they play; everything without judging.
These are simple things that I propose. They are a starting point. A small leak will sink a great ship. Small changes can help us vary the way we think and see the world.