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Jeremy
He’s Myron Weber.
Myron
And he’s Jeremy Thomas. And this is mental supermodels.
Jeremy
So, what are mental models? And how can you use them in practical ways to make them super? In our kickoff episode of Mental Supermodels Podcast, Myron and I are going to explore what they are and how mental models can fit into your toolkit for problem solving and decision making.
Myron
Hey, Jeremy, can I tell you a story?
Jeremy
Haha. Yes, please do.
Myron
OK, so sometime ago, I think it was around 2008, a large company, a Fortune 100 company, actually asked me to help them design a solution for data permissions. Essentially to carry the permissions with the data as it would leave the ERP system to flow through a data warehouse, through budgeting and forecasting system, through to other systems, so that the permissions that were assigned in the ERP would flow with the data. So not really to get into the details of that, but what happened at the very beginning was that the project was very poorly defined. There was there was that goal and really nothing more. And so I showed up at the kickoff meeting with a diverse group of stakeholders prepared with a presentation in which I walked through the steps of building a mental model for the solution that was intended. And as the meeting progressed, one of the executives in the meeting was amazed and said, I’ve never seen anybody build a mental model like this. This is this is amazing. How did you ever think of this? And what’s interesting is I could have gone in and said, well, we’re going to develop use cases, and no one would have been amazed. Use cases are a form of mental model. I could have said we’re going to do a PRD, a product requirements definition, I think that’s what that stands for. That’s a form of a mental model, right? I could have done it and no one would have been amazed. And yet just the fact that I called it by the generic term of mental model, because we weren’t far enough along for any of those other things, they thought that was pretty amazing. So ever since then, I’ve really been intrigued by sort of the concept of mental modeling and why to some people, myself and I know it’s true for you as well, is it tends to come a little more naturally, and yet we also get better at it over time. So that’s why I’m excited to be doing this, because being able to share mental modeling and the process and sort of getting some of the mysterious nature out into the open and helping other people get better at it is really my goal for the Mental Supermodel podcast.
Jeremy
And just to go back to what you were saying, I find that a lot of people, when you sit down and you start talking to them, they’re just ready for you to start asking them questions and they just want to start talking. They’re just ready to start talking, but not really thinking. And I wonder if that’s maybe what you saw then is that they sat down and they’re like, all right, just ask me what you want to know. And I’m just going to start telling you and we’ll just start writing things down. But you have to frame up what you’re thinking, right? You have to, as things are coming in, you have to know where am I going to bucket these different thoughts. And I just wonder if that’s what people might find amazing is that that’s different in taking this approach about thinking through something instead of just spitting it out and writing it down. And I also want to say that I know that we all use frameworks and methodologies and models as guides to standardize our approach to processes, drive strategic thinking, strategic planning. But what about structuring and focusing the way that we think? And I think that’s why we talked about the mental models aspect of this, because there are so many templates out there that people use or try to use, but they get stuck with what’s that next step? What do I actually do with this template? Or there are frameworks out there that people use, but they’re not really sure where to go from step to step; how to actually move through it. So we’ve talked about mental models because it’s a way of actually thinking your way, taking an approach to getting to that next step. But I do want to kind of have you set the stage here. Because I tend to sometimes throw frameworks and methodologies and models out there kind of loosely. But there’s some differentiation there. And can you just talk about how you see the differences on those?
Myron
Yeah, I guess in the way that I approach that, I see the concept of the model being the broad category and these other things as subsets, but let me explain why. Let me kind of dig into it. I get very literal about the word model. And so I think before we talk about mental model, let’s just say what do we mean by a model? In the way that we use model in everyday life we talk about it like a fashion model, a model airplane, for products. Right? Products are identified by their make and model. What kind of car do you have? What’s the make and model? Right? And so there are climate models, there’s something like a model student. Right? When you think of who’s the best student, well they’re the model student. Right? So these are all different ways that we use the word. And how would we summarize that? What are these various usages have in common? I would say that if we just think of the synonyms, right, it’s a representation, it’s a generalization, it’s an abstract understanding of something, it can also be a type or a classification or, like the concept of a model student, it can be an idealization. So it can actually have a have a value judgment as opposed to simply an objective assessment of something. But I think there are also questionable uses when people call something a model that’s really not a model. So I don’t want to take every usage of the word model and say that it’s appropriate. Sometimes when people talk about, for example, in their business or their IT security model. Well, they don’t mean the model, they mean the actual implementation. They may have started with a model and they implemented it, but they continue to call it the model when it’s actually the implementation. So I would say let’s leave aside some of those questionable uses. And basically a working definition of a model would be that it’s representing — a mental model now, taking it from model to mental model — it’s representing information in words and pictures, a system. And we’ll talk in a future episode maybe about, well, what does that mean? What is a system? But for now, we’ll just say that a mental model is understanding information, words and pictures — a system. And that can be an actual system. It could be a hypothetical one. But the model is not the system, it’s a representation of the system. Sorry I got a little long winded there.
Jeremy
No, no, it’s good to make the distinction because, like I said, I sometimes throw those words around loosely, but and people hear about data models and the word models is used a lot. But I think the way that we’re talking about using them is a representation of something that just helps you understand it better.
Myron
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And in even just in this process of defining what a mental model is, a lot of what we’re doing is making distinctions in the words about their meanings and, in fact, making distinctions is a really important skill in mental modeling.
Jeremy
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up.
Myron
Can I tell you another story? This is not a story about me. This is a story about William James, the American pragmatist philosopher around the turn of the 20th century. So 120ish years ago, I don’t know exactly. I should have looked it up. But the story is, and this is pretty well attested that it actually happened, William James was at the park for a picnic with friends. And because he was known as a smart guy, they came to him to adjudicate a dispute. And the dispute was there was a squirrel on a tree and the squirrel was a little bit afraid of people so that if you approached the squirrel, it would always want to be looking at you so it could see you and be alert for danger. And so if you walked around the tree, the squirrel would go around the tree so that it could be facing you all the time. So the dispute was if you approach the squirrel and you walk all the way around it and the squirrel continues back around the tree and you’ve gone 360 degrees, have you walked around the squirrel? And one group of people said, well, no, because the squirrels facing you the whole time. And the other said, well, you’ve obviously gone around the squirrel. And so William James made a profound statement, which is when faced with a problem make a distinction. And so he distinguished that if by around you mean facing the squirrel’s head, then it’s one of its flanks and then its tail and then its other flank and then back to its head, then no, you haven’t walked around the squirrel. But if you mean to the north of the squirrel, then to the east of the squirrel, then to the south and the west and then back to the north, then yes, you’ve walked around the squirrel. So, William James and the squirrel is all about making distinctions. And that is a really, really important skill.
Jeremy
And I think what’s important about it is that there are some distinctions that are obvious because they’re so far apart, right? Like the distance between its so far apart. But if it’s very similar, I think that’s where the distinction comes in. And it’s important to make the distinction because confusion can happen. If you don’t make this distinction, you’ll have two people like with the William James story, you have two people who see the same thing differently because it’s so close in distinction, but you have to actually understand how it’s different, otherwise you now have two people that see the same thing but have two different interpretations of it. And without the right distinction, you now have two stories instead of one.
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. A squirrel in a park is a trivial example, but we see the same thing in business all the time. We see it in many spheres of life. But our focus is on business. How often do you see people arguing about something? And really the argument could be solved if they defined their terms more clearly. So if instead of going to William James to settle the dispute, the one person could say, “By my definition of around, which is to the north west and back to the north, then I’ve walked around the squirrel.” And the other person could say, “That’s not my definition of around. But OK, I see your point.” Right? I mean, just define the terms and a lot of things become much, much clearer.
Jeremy
Can I share a story about the RACI chart? It’s not nearly as exciting as a squirrel.
Myron
But it’s a great example of applying making distinctions in a business system.
Jeremy
Yeah. And to take a practical approach to it as well is what I try to do. And if you don’t know what a RACI chart is, most people do, but if you don’t know what it is, it’s a chart that you want to use to define roles and responsibilities. You want to understand who’s responsible for something, whether it’s in a big initiative, a project, or it could just be a complex process that you have in a company and you really want to understand who’s responsible for what. And RACI basically stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed. Those are the four key roles that you’re looking to define, which initially sounds easy. We have all of these people and I’m just going to say you’re responsible for this and you’re responsible for that. But then it gets complicated because now you want to say you’re responsible and accountable. And I find that across those, the Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed, that the Consulted is a little easier. But let me also state here that actually makes me think of something. You’ll find that there’s a lot of people that have opinions. And that’s one thing you’re trying to weed out here, because there’s no “O” RACI, right? A lot of people will have Opinions and they’ll have suggestions, but in order to really nail down who’s to do what to avoid confusion, groups and teams will define a RACI matrix or RACI chart. If we actually go backwards, the Informed is a little easier because there’s usually somebody who’s higher up the chain that just needs to know what’s happening. So they’re going to be on the status reports. They’ll be informed. That’s a little easier. Consulted, those are the people that you want to make the subject matter experts, the people who have deep knowledge in a business, of operations, of processes. You’ll consult them and get their advice as you’re working through problems. So the Consultant is a little easier because you know who you can go to who has this information. The Responsible and Accountable are where I’ve seen people just give up on creating a RACI chart, because they’ll be like, oh, this is easy, I’m filling out names. And then they’ll get to Responsible and Accountable. And then it gets hard because you have to make real distinctions. What’s the difference between that? Who’s responsible? Who’s accountable? And is there even a difference? Some people would say there’s not.
Myron
I’ve seen the same thing of people giving up because it gets too hard, especially that distinction between Responsible and Accountable or not wanting to be accountable. I mean, the responsible person doesn’t want to be accountable or the accountable person doesn’t want to have their name put on something. And so, as you said, the Informed, that’s pretty easy. In most cases, the Consulted can be relatively easy. And even just putting down a list of who should be consulted often is very clarifying, like, oh, yeah, we need to get this person’s input. And then someone who might have an opinion and want to squawk, you just say, no, we don’t need to consult that person. We’ll keep them informed if necessary. But yeah, we’re not here to get their opinions. They’re not in the Consulted box. But you’re absolutely right. The Responsible and Accountable are difficult. And people tend to want to load a bunch of names in there. Right? You need one person who is Responsible and one person who’s Accountable. Not a committee.
Jeremy
And that’s another good point. They do just want to load a bunch of names in there and you can’t have five people accountable for something. And another part of the RACI chart is you have to break down components so that they can be distinguished. Who can make decisions? So who is accountable? You can’t have five people accountable. If there are five people, then you need to break down the parts into smaller pieces so that you can have one person accountable for something. And again, if it’s in a project, you can understand how to break down different parts of the project. If it’s processes in a company, there’s decision-making points and you’ll say, well, we have three people that ultimately make this decision. Well, then maybe they’re Responsible. But you need somebody Accountable. The way to just mentally think about this, because I think people get caught up in the Responsible and Accountable distinctions. The way to think about it is that if you’re responsible, then you’re the one that’s doing the work. You’re responsible for doing it, right? You’re the one that’s Responsible for consulting if something needs to be if you need information and you know who the who the subject matter experts are, you’re responsible for making sure that you go to them and consult them on it. You’re responsible for informing those that need to be Informed. But if you don’t do anything, then the person who’s accountable is the one who gets in trouble. I want to go back to the mental thinking part of this. Think about who will get in trouble if nothing gets done? That’s the person who’s accountable. Which might not be three people. There’s going to be one person. It’s always going to roll up to one person who’s accountable. So think about that. If it doesn’t get done, who gets in trouble? Is it the CIO? Is it the CFO? Somebody up the chain is going to be in trouble. Responsible is going to be the people that are going to be doing the work, getting it done, and working with the others on the team to Consult and Inform. So again, that’s the approach that I usually take.
Myron
And I guess I would make even another distinction and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, because I think you’ve done more hands on development of RACI charts and matrices in businesses than I have. But when I think about it, it really needs to be at the level of a set of actions that produce a definable outcome. Right? So we can’t do a RACI matrix effectively and say, well, we have a RACI for our department. Well, what does that mean? Right? It’s got to be for some action or set of actions that produce a concrete outcome that can be defined. And if you have to put more than one person who’s Accountable or more than one person who’s Responsible, then that’s probably multiple outcomes and should be two separate lines on your RACI chart; not combine into the same line. That’s the way I think about it. What do you see?
Jeremy
No, I think that’s exactly right. I know in future episodes we’ll talk about defining things that are more specific and measurable, but that’s exactly right. You’re going to have components of the RACI chart in very deliverable, specific or measurable, actionable components that the Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed roles can be aligned with. Because if you start loosening that up, that’s where confusion happens and nobody knows who to go to or who to talk to or people don’t realize they’re responsible. Somebody’s surprised that they’re getting in trouble because something didn’t get done. But you do have to make it specific. The way you said it is, I think, really well put. That it has to be a very distinguished set of actions that you are applying this to.
Myron
So if I could put you on the spot, if you have any examples that come to mind of when a RACI matrix is used effectively, what are what are the good outcomes? What happens or how do you use a RACI effectively? And what are some of the things that you’ve seen go wrong in the real world with RACI?
Jeremy
You did put me on the spot, but recently I did work on a project recently where there was an operational process. So there was a process flow that a department was having trouble with. It was basically like an order and receiving type of process. But they were struggling with people dropping the ball. So they had defined this lengthy step by step how the flow works. Order intake here, then this happens, then you have approvals along the way. Somebody places the order it’s received and it comes back. And they had defined this long process, but yet they weren’t getting the cycle time improvement. The whole intention here was to reduce the cycle time from order to delivery for this. But it wasn’t being reduced and it was when I was talking to them and I was just trying to understand where’s the breakdown? You always want to find where’s the breakdown? Where’s the bottleneck in these problems? And we would find that it’s easy to place an order. Somebody can just place the order, but then because of the way it was defined, there were people that weren’t really sure where to take it from there, because you have an order that’s like an internal approval. So it’s not really an order. It’s not placing an order with a vendor. It’s an internal approval. So then it would be, well, who’s going to actually take that approval and move it to the next step?
Myron
So the Responsibility and Accountability were not defined.
Jeremy
Exactly. They didn’t know who was responsible because it could be one of a few different people that could take it from there. Because the way they defined it was at a department level. They would say it’s approved and now this department takes it to the next step. Well, in that department, everybody’s just pointing the finger. They don’t know. And nobody would step forward and take responsibility and say, I will take all of these types of orders. I will take them and make sure that they go through the next level of approval before it gets ordered. So because it was at a department level, we then worked to break that down, to put specific names. Going back to what you had said, a RACI chart has names on not departments. So that’s one thing that we did was we took the department names out of it and these generalized roles. We took those off of there and put specific names. And that in itself takes a little bit of negotiating because now you’re saying, well, there’s three different people that could technically do it. This person’s really busy. But how do we decide who does it? Maybe we go back and forth between a few different people depending on who’s busier or who’s not busy. Well, now you have someone who’s accountable for making sure that the right person of those three. You’re breaking it down to say, OK, well, you have three possible people. And if somebody is out, then who does it next. If somebody is busy, then who does it next? Well, who’s accountable for making sure that at least one of those three people moves it forward?
Myron
Yeah, absolutely. And in many cases, I think that just defining a process at that level is adequate. And I think it is OK in certain instances to have a primary name and then an alternate on the RACI that says if this person is not available or who’s the alternate that would step in. But even then, if necessary, you define another subprocess on the RACI chart that says if the first person is not available, what’s the process for assigning an alternate and who is responsible for that? And who’s accountable? If there’s a good enough communication and process within the department that that’s not necessary, fine. But in many cases, even down to that level of, well, how it gets routed to the alternate needs to be defined as a process.
Jeremy
Yeah, and people don’t like to go into that level of detail very often because it’s time consuming and it’s difficult and it’s complex and everybody’s busy. But I have seen it happen, too, where alternates have been assigned but the alternate doesn’t know that the primary is out of the office. So something comes in and they don’t even know. So who’s to blame? Because the primary and the alternate are the Responsible parties. Who’s the Accountable party? Right? So that’s the distinguishing comes in. You have to know who’s Accountable and who’s Responsible.
Myron
Yeah. And I think that’s a great a great way to kind of look at how do we know in practice that a mental model like a RACI matrix is working. And one of the signs is less finger pointing. Things get done. Or if something doesn’t get done instead of finger pointing, the responsibility, the blame is clear. And that is why it works.
Jeremy
And what I found is that sometimes there’s some apprehension. People don’t want to be assigned something specific, which can be natural. But I have found multiple times over the years that once you do have this definition in place and people see how more efficiently things work, they buy into it. They usually have to see it in practice and have to see how much more efficient it is. And ultimately the cycle times are reduced. And that’s the real measure here, because ultimately you want to reduce the time it takes to do something. You want to remove the bottlenecks. And communication is a big part of that, but just understanding the distinguishing factors between who is supposed to do what builds a more efficient process. And once people see it, then they buy into it. A lot of times when people hear RACI matrix they think KPMG or McKinsey. Big management consulting firms coming in and just building a model that nobody will ever use. But if done right, there’s practical uses for these things. They don’t have to be overly complex. You can put practical use to it. And you don’t have to build a RACI matrix for a whole project or something large. It could be for something small. You can have a small bottleneck in a project where you’re having problems and you can just put a RACI chart over that small part of the project to distinguish who should be doing what, because there’s some confusion maybe. And I think that’s a good use of a RACI chart, is to just find out where there’s confusion, where there are issues that you need to define more specific roles and just try using it there. Again, if you want to make it more practical and simplified, you can start small. You can start simple and just find some small area of a process or of a group or of a project and just try using a RACI chart just over a small part of it.
Myron
Great. Well, I think that’s an excellent practical application of the technique of making distinctions. So let’s move toward wrapping up. Right now it’s mentalsupermodels.com. And you can look for Myron Weber on LinkedIn or Jeremy Thomas on LinkedIn. And we’ll put those in the show notes for this page on mentalsupermodels.com for the first episode. But to wrap up, I want to encourage everyone listening to think about how you can apply what we’ve talked about today. So let me hit the highlights here. So, when faced with a problem make a distinction. Just bring that into your mind when faced with a problem. Make a distinction. And you can remember the squirrel on the tree. Did you walk around the squirrel? So that’s really important. And then the RACI matrix as, I think, a really good practical application of that. So go out into the world, into your company, into your department, into whatever it is you’re doing in your life and practice making distinctions. And in particular, if you’re seeing a business problem, where something isn’t working well. Would a RACI chart help with this. And then go look at the examples that Jeremy is going to put up on the website and go out and do it. Or other ways that you could practice making distinctions. Clearly defining terms, people arguing about something. Is it really a semantic distinction? And it bugs me when people say, well, that’s just semantics. Yes, semantics matter! It’s how we define the terms. So ultimately, mental modeling is simply the discipline of seeking to understand systems in a structured way so that when you act with intention, you increase the likelihood of achieving your desired outcome. That’s why mental models matter, and that’s why the world needs more mental supermodels.
