Jeremy
He’s Myron Weber.
Myron
And he’s Jeremy Thomas. And this is Mental Supermodels, the podcast that explores the theory and practice the art and science of mental modeling for decision making and problem solving.
Jeremy
Mental supermodels are practical techniques that influence your mindset when approaching these complex problems and driving decisions.
Jeremy
All right, Myron, here we are again. Episode five. I’m excited about it. We’ve been going through our 6 stage framework that bridges strategy and execution. And to be honest, I find myself that frameworks themselves can be a little boring. And that’s why our real purpose, our intention is to bring a little spice to it. And we do this as we’ve said before, we do this by focusing on mindset and practical mental model techniques. Basically, our supermodels to serve as a guide to sometimes just get started when you’re stuck and to keep the momentum going. And an area where I really see this happen and where I experience it myself is what we’re going to talk about today. It’s the stage where you find yourself taking on a goal, yours or someone else’s. And the tendency is to jump right into looking for a solution and then figuring out when you can get it done. Basically going from goal to solution to prioritization. And we have our framework that serves as a guide. But the real world, as we know, isn’t so nice and neat. It’s not step by step to get from point A to point B. So, what I’d like to talk about today, which Myron I know you’ll have some good thoughts on, is the process where and it always makes me think about my favorite blues singer from Clarksdale, Mississippi, Mr. Muddy Waters. It’s the process where you have a clear understanding of the goal itself. But solution solution is a process. And we’re not even at that point yet. But the question is, what level of detail do you even need before you can determine what the priority should be. And definitely before you can start implementing something. So we have to get from our goal to our prioritized roadmap by traversing some muddy waters. And I’d like to introduce you to this area where we really need to find some clarity. It’s what we call the Map stage.
Myron
Yes, indeed, the map stage. And I know you’ve done a lot of work developing the ideas in this 6 stage strategy to execution model and as we get ready to jump into the map stage, there were some questions that came to mind for me. And one of them is very simply, why is the map stage called the map stage? And as I thought about that, and I’ll throw out some ideas that you can react to and tell me if I’m on the right track with what you had in mind. So first of all, whenever I think about maps, I think of the saying that’s attributed to Baron von Clausewitz, the Prussian military commander who was both a theorist and a practitioner of the art of warfare. He said the map is not the territory. Now, that’s a simple statement that is really profound because in hindsight, it’s obvious, and yet it entails a lot of really interesting things. I’ll just quickly hit a couple things that that that makes me think of as applied to mental modeling, Number one, the map is not the territory, the model is not the reality, and we need to keep that in mind and not over-literalize our mental models. They’re abstract representations. But number two, that’s a good thing. The fact that the map is not the territory is good because I can fold the map up and put it in my pocket, but I can’t do that with the territory. Meaning as applied to our mental supermodels, we need models in abstractions to be able to understand things clearly and communicate them and have a shared understanding. And so getting the right level of detail or the right structure to the model is important, which is, I think the third thing I would withdraw out of that, which is when constructing a mental model, form should follow function. And a great example of this is the London tube map, which was the first underground system map and it’s been adopted by, I think, every city that has a subway system, because the genius is that map doesn’t try to represent the actual geography. You can never take that map and a compass and navigate your way around the surface streets of London. It’s a representation of the lines and how they connect. And so the form of that mental model follows its function. So, the last thing then about why is the map stage called the map stage to get back to that. I thought about the word map, and it can be a noun; I have a map. Or it can be a verb; I’m mapping the route. And I think that for the map stage, if I’m understanding it correctly, it’s really more about the verb because we have a goal and we are mapping the possible routes from the current state to get to that desired state. So that was my thought and I’d love for you to react to any or all of that and then take us into the nuts and bolts of the map stage.
Jeremy
No, I think that’s good. And I appreciate that you kind of made this distinction between a noun and verb, because we are looking at this as more of a verb. We’re mapping during this stage. And I think, first of all, let me define the purpose of the Map stage for us. And, you know, I define a goal as a state of improvement that can be achieved through the act of delivering upon some specific objectives. And we get our mix of ideas and value and solutions through the Map stage. So I first want to break it down into three key activities. And this is where the verb part comes in because it is an actionable stage here. So I want to break it down into three key activities that will still need some mental modeling techniques to work through. So it’s not like this is three steps. But first, we have a problem or an opportunity that, if solved, supports our goal. And we can have multiple opportunities that all work towards this goal. Secondly, there’s an expected value that must be delivered to solve that problem. And then third, there’s a solution that provides the value. And linking these three activities together, which effectively links your goals to the prioritized road map that we’ll get to. But these three activities are linking that together. And, in effect, this is the mapping process. Now, what I actually find hard about this process is figuring out what the right level of detail should be. Maybe the goal is clear, but maybe it’s high level, it’s more of a theme that I need to address, so I need to come up with some ideas to consider. Some might be good, some might not be so good, but it’s this process of starting with an idea that leads to a bigger concept, that becomes a bigger business case potentially. And each one of these has some type of solution to them. And each solution has its own level of detail that needs to be evaluated before it can evolve to that next level. So, Myron, it’s one thing to talk about steps and activities in our framework and in this stage we call the Map stage, but give me a way that I can think about what we’re really doing here during this stage. What are your thoughts?
Jeremy
Yeah, good question. I guess my first reaction to that is, number one, the application of this certainly can be done by an individual working on their own. But really, what makes this a challenge is that most of the time it’s being done within a group setting, within a team setting, which has the benefit of being able to get lots of ideas, but you also have to get everyone on the same page. And I think that’s hard to just jump in and go straight to here’s the answer. And so I’m thinking that you kind of have to go through some successive levels of understanding. And coming from the programming world, we have the concepts of conceptual design, logical design and physical design. And I’m wondering if there’s something that we could draw out of that mental model approach that’s applicable to the Map stage. Now to explain what the conceptual, logical, physical approach is, I take I take a pretty pragmatic approach of it. I’ve seen really detailed definitions that folks try to put on what should be in each of those. And maybe the folks who do that are smarter than me or more ambitious and I’m just lazy, but I’ve always taken a pretty simple approach and said that the distinction of the conceptual, logical and physical is really about the audience. And that makes it more broadly applicable and maybe how we can tie it back to the Map stage. To me, the conceptual design on a software project should be understandable to the entire project team — the executives, the non-technical subject matter experts, as well as the technical team. And should be useful for everyone to be able to discuss the design. Then the next level down of the logical design should be understandable by those who have some technical understanding or aptitude — the project manager, the developers, the designers and the technical team. And then the physical model really needs to be understood and useful to those who are actually building the software, the database, etc. Is there anything, Jeremy, that you would draw out of that that you think we could apply to the Map stage?
Jeremy
Yeah, I like where you’re going with that. And listening to you, I was relating it back to the approach that I was taking and we could probably blend some of this a bit. You mentioned conceptual, logical and physical is sort of this evolutionary process. And I had looked at it as an idea to a concept to a business case, which I guess maybe that’s still looking at it similarly in that there’s an evolutionary process to it. And my point of view on it is that in the end I’m looking for something that enables us to, at the end of this evolution, something that enables us to prioritize it is the way I’m looking at it. And once you get to your physical model, maybe there’s something similar once you hit that physical model, you now just have more details that you’re now able to actually build. And I’m looking at it maybe as the evolution leads me to a business case that has enough detail in it that I’m now able to prioritize it for a roadmap. I think either approach here we’re kind of looking at it similarly in that we’re evolving the level of detail needed to then get us to the bigger next step. Does that makes sense?
Myron
You know, I’m tracking with what you’re saying, but I guess the thing I’m still trying to understand as we blend together the ideas you were talking about and what I was saying is, does the concept of those different audiences that I talked about with the conceptual, logical and physical, does that have any bearing on the map stage in a team context? Or does that not really have a parallel to what we’re talking about?
Jeremy
So you’re basically saying like a different audience per step here. So if you have conceptual, you might have one audience that you’re talking to and then logical you’ll have another audience you’re talking to?
Myron
Well, the audience for the conceptual is everyone. And then the logical design is a subset. So you may have non-technical, executive stakeholders; subject matter experts who are part of the discussion of the conceptual design, but then when you take it to the next level of detail, to the logical design, they may not understand everything there and it may not be targeted at them. And then the physical is the most specific. And so it’s not different audiences entirely. It’s subsets of the overall audience that we progressively go through. And I’m not sure if that matches to the the group or the team in the map stage. It might be more about the progression of understanding kind of the way that you were laying it out. I’m just looking to see if there’s a parallel there and if there’s not, then we can move on.
Jeremy
No, I think if I were to think about the parallel, I think the audience is interesting to think about, because you can start with a broader scope or a broader audience. And as you start evolving, you’re narrowing your audience because you’re narrowing the details and naturally the audience with those details becomes smaller. But if we’re starting kind of at a bigger picture like we always do, it sounds like that’s what we’re doing here as well. We’re starting with a broader audience that brings a broader set of knowledge and information. That we can then bring down to a narrower audience with a more focused set of knowledge and information and then another level of that, narrowing our focus and details even more, but kind of capturing it from a broad lens first as we kind of narrow down the details. That’s the way I’m interpreting what you’re saying.
Myron
Yeah, if we could kind of walk through how this works in practice as I’m envisioning it and as you’ve done this and can kind of tell me how it really works. But you start with the goal, or you have a goal or multiple goals. And we’ve talked about the Map stage is the verb. We are mapping the possible routes from where we are to where we want to get to. So first you could use different methods or ways of describing it, but brainstorming or ideating like coming up with what are all the possible ways. And then you’ve got to refine that down to a smaller set. And then you have to identify candidates for what you might come up with a hypothesis or a test case for. So maybe it’s not so much refining the audience as refining the set of possibilities. And to go back to the map metaphor. A physical map or if you’re going to go on a journey you might say, well, I could take the back roads, I could take the freeway, I could take the train, I could fly. So you’ve got all kinds of possible ways you could go. And then you narrow that down to a smaller set and then you come up with maybe the final options and then you do a more detailed analysis of those options. So it’s less about refining the audience, but refining the ideas is another way that maybe we could look at that.
Jeremy
Yeah, that actually makes sense to me, because it is more about narrowing, refining the ideas and refining the possibilities. So maybe that is more so than the audience itself. But a couple of things you said that I actually want to key on here that I think was important is you had made a comment about like multiple ways to refining the set of possibilities. And I want to point out that one thing that’s really important about this stage is the willingness of the team to explore and recognize that this stage is about exploring, to find multiple options, multiple routes, because, of course, you can have multiple routes. And if we get back to the map part a destination can have multiple routes to get there. So you’d made this comment in there about multiple possibilities or multiple routes. And I just wanted to point that out that it’s not as simple as saying we know exactly what the solution is and we’re just trying to define that solution. There is this evolution to it and there can be multiple ways to get there. And that’s where this idea of refining the ideas, I think, can lead us down that path. We can start with this concept and move it into something logical, move it into something physical, but it’s an exploration process. And we can have multiple approaches and multiple ideas at each one of these levels. But each one is important in terms of refining those ideas. Because brainstorming can, I think lead to a bad practice because people will use brainstorming as just a way of throwing a bunch of ideas out there that are now not really in any level of refinement. They’re just out there. And then you try to find solutions to them. And what we’re talking about is taking this broad level of information and running it through a refinement process. And I think that’s what’s important about what you were saying about from conceptual to logical to physical, is that it is in essence a refinement process. Is that how you see it?
Myron
Yeah. Yeah. And can I just key on one thing you said there about the process and how brainstorming can go wrong? Another key thing is leadership. It’s very important that whoever is leading this process be transparent. I’m sure you’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, probably everyone listening has seen it where a manager, an executive, or someone leading a process like this actually kind of already knows how they’re going to do it, but they go through a charade of getting input from people. And that’s demoralizing to the team and doesn’t necessarily lead to the best outcome. It might, but just be transparent. Don’t don’t get fake input from people if you have already decided how you’re going to do it.
Jeremy
Yeah, and I think that’s where the team itself is important. One that is willing to explore together and not just have someone that overruns the conversation. This the evolutionary process. If they’re trying to skip the evolution altogether because they just immediately want to jump to the end. That’s what we’re really trying to avoid here, is that person or those people that just want to jump to the end because they have some biases of their own or they feel like they have the knowledge and they know what the end result or the end solution should be. We’re trying to use this as an approach to say that person can’t just jump to the solution. There should be a refinement process. And we’ve talked about principles before, and it’s a mental model technique, but it can also be a principle that you can work into the organization to say as a principle, we’re going to incorporate this mental model technique of an evolutionary refinement process before anybody just jumps to a conclusion and defines a solution.
Myron
Yeah. And one thing I would add to that, coming back to a question you asked earlier about how do you know when you have enough detail. I’m thinking of this in a couple of ways. So if we take the conceptual, logical, physical design approach as our as our metaphor, there are projects where you do the conceptual design and the logical design and based on the logical design, the developers may know exactly what needs to be done. They don’t document a physical design. The code is the physical design. The database is the physical design. Because based on the logical design, they know what needs to be done and they go do it. Now, let me take the map and the journey metaphor to illustrate the same idea, if you think back to early in your career, maybe the first time you ever went on a business trip and how much time you spent planning that trip. And then time goes by, and especially if you’re traveling back to the same place you’ve been to before, you spend almost no time planning that trip. You know exactly what needs to be done. And if we take that same idea and I think about how would we know whether we have enough detail in the output of the Map stage. It would be can we answer the question of what are we going to do, how are we going to do it, and how much is it going to cost, and what’s the result going to be. If we can answer those four questions then you’ve gone far enough. So if you’re doing something that’s familiar that you’ve done before, you don’t have to do a lot to be able to answer those four questions. But if it’s something complex or new or uncertain, then those four questions become really important and you have to put in the level of effort necessary to answer those. Now, I want to make sure I’m not leaping ahead, though. I don’t know if we do all that in the map stage or if some of that comes in the prioritized stage, Jeremy. So you can kind of help me understand where that line gets drawn. But at some point, you have to know the answer to those four questions for each of the proposed alternatives.
Jeremy
Yeah, I think that’s good. And our next stage is the Prioritize stage. So where we’re sitting right now is between our Discover stage, where we’ve defined these goals and then our Prioritize stage where we have enough information, enough details to prioritize something. And I kind of want to be clear that we’re not saying that we have enough detail to prioritize like a complete initiative, for example, because we might not have. And if I go back to your three levels, each of those levels of the conceptual, logical and physical modeling here in your data model example, each of those can have enough level of detail to where you can answer these questions. Before you can move to that next level of detail. And I want to re-explain it here, because I think it’s important to understand that. We’re not saying that you need enough level of detail before you can prioritize, you actually need enough level of detail before you can move to your next evolutionary step within the Map stage. So the conceptual stage or an idea step, conceptual step or an idea step. You know that you have enough detail for that one, if you can answer a certain set of questions. Do you have enough detail to now move it to a logical stage? Then before you can go to the physical model, you should have some questions you can answer. And I don’t know if, Myron, you have some specific questions you’re thinking about right now. Like what’s an example of a question you can ask to say that I know that I have enough detail for my logical model to where I can now move it to a physical model. And I feel like that’s where we’re going with this here is that how do you know that you have enough level of detail even within the Map stage. As you’re kind of iterating and evolving, you want to know that you’re going from idea to concept to business case. Each one of those has a certain level of detail requirements. And you should be able to ask some questions that each one of those steps to know that you can now move it. For example, from an idea maybe you want to prioritize your ideas.
Myron
Right, right. So if I move away from the mapping and journey metaphor and move away from the conceptual, logical physical, and let me just take it to another way of looking at it, which is a scientific method. What we’re really doing in the map stage is coming up with hypotheses. For how we can solve the problem, how can we get to the goal so the various routes that we are mapping are really hypotheses that we are proposing on how to solve this problem. So that’s where the effort to say what are the hypotheses and how would we test them. And what is the method necessary to test this hypothesis is part of what I think is essential in this process. And that also has to go through these filters. If this is something you have a lot of experience with, then the amount of testing that you need to do on the hypothesis is less. But if it’s something unfamiliar or complex, then what kind of testing of the hypothesis is necessary? Most of the time we’re not talking about laboratory experiments. We’re talking about practical ways of testing like a proof of concept, pilots, or other ways of testing. Or even getting expert opinions. Whatever those methods are to test the hypothesis. To me, that’s part of how you walk through this map stage. Yeah?
Jeremy
Yeah. And thanks for bringing up the hypothesis part of this, because that is a big part of starting. Because a lot of times you’ll get stuck and you’re not even sure where to start. And sometimes it just starts with a hypothesis. You don’t have to start with the right answer, which I think a lot of people feel like they just have to start with that. They have to find the right answer right away. And two concepts here that I want to tie us back to is hypotheses and evolution. Maybe we’re focusing on scientific methods here, but if I go back to the three key activities that we’re doing during the map stage, we can apply both hypotheses and evolution to that process. And I’ll just kind of go through them again. So first we talk about how we have a goal, but our first step here in the map stage is we really want to define a problem or an opportunity. And that kind of starts our hypothesis. We might have this idea or this hypothesis that in itself is defining a problem or an opportunity that if we can solve that, it supports our goal. And then secondly, and this is the evolutionary part, there’s an expected value that must be delivered to solve the problem, but that value might not always be clear. So again, we might have hypotheses that we might say here are some thoughts that we have on value. Different levels, different types of value that could solve the problem. And we might go through a process of evaluating that, testing those ideas, and then if we feel like, all right, this is a good value, if we could bring this value, then it definitely solves our problem, which then supports our goal. So then we go to that third set of activities, which is the solutioning part. And that’s the solution that actually provides this value in our second activity. And the solutioning part itself has a hypothesis part to it — hypothesis and testing. Because we might not know what the right solution is immediately. So we have to say here are a few solutions that we now want to test and see which one provides the value that we’re now looking for. So if I can just go through that again, I’d like to get your thoughts on it, Myron. But first activity in our map stage is to define a problem or an opportunity that if we solve it, supports our goal, but it’s not always immediately clear how to even define this problem or opportunity. So it requires a hypothesis and some testing to even refine our problem definition down first. Then once we feel like we’ve refined the problem definition, then we move into our second set of activities, which is really understanding the expected value that must be delivered to solve that problem. And we can have a few different routes that we can take, a few different ideas that we can take, but it needs to go through a refinement process. Then once we have a clear idea of what our value is that we want to achieve, now we can start looking at the solutions, different options to evaluate that could provide that value. And we’ve basically just taken it through an evolutionary process, a refinement process, using hypotheses and testing through these different sets of activities and if I’ve overcomplicated it, let me know what you think, but Myron, what are your thoughts about viewing it that way?
Myron
Well, I don’t think you’ve overcomplicated it because as you just explained, it was was really helpful for me in understanding it. Now, I’m going to simplify it even further just to make sure I’ve got this right. So coming out of the Discover stage we have a goal, which says we want the world to have this new state of being that’s different from the one that we have right now. The problem part of what you just described is really answering the question, well, why aren’t we already there? If the natural state of things led us to there, we would already be there. Well, what has prevented us from already being there? And that then naturally leads to the value part which says, what the benefit of being there as opposed to here and what’s it worth to get us from here to there? We’re mixing all kinds of metaphors here, but if you take the the travel metaphor, you’re not going to charter a private jet to go somewhere that doesn’t offer you a lot of value once you get there. So that value statement is important in understanding what types of solutions you should consider. So each of these leads from one to the other. Understanding the goal, which we have coming into this, helps us understand the problem, which is why aren’t we already there. Then the value — What would it be worth to get there? Which leads to how much should we spend on solving this, which then helps us refine the categories of solutions that we can consider. Is that tracking with what you had in mind?
Jeremy
Yeah, that’s just the way that I’m thinking about it. So I think that you’re right, we have kind of gone through a few different metaphors, but I feel like they all lead back to the same overall concept and techniques that could be used to ultimately evolve and refine the solutions, because at the end of the map stage, what do we need to take to the Prioritize stage? It doesn’t have to be a specific solution. It could be an idea and now you want to prioritize the ideas that you can then take to the next level of design or solutioning. Then bring it to another level of detail that can be prioritized. And then once you get to the end of that, then we’ll move in to our next stages. But ultimately, we’re just trying to go through this evolutionary process to get out of the Map stage into the Prioritize stage.
Myron
Excellent. Well, I think this is a good start into the Map stage and we will have more to say about this in upcoming episodes, but I definitely understand more clearly the purpose of the Map stage and the activities that go on within it. So thank you very much, Jeremy.
Jeremy
There’s a lot that happens during this stage and I think we’ve brought a lot of thoughts and ideas and concepts initially to kick it off. And we’ll spend more episodes talking more about some details during the Map stage. But it’s a busy stage. And it’s really important because you’re doing a lot of exploring during the stage. And there are multiple possibilities, routes you can take, ideas you can take. But during this episode, we just wanted to bring up a few key thoughts that we want to leave you with that we’ll definitely build on. I think in the next in the coming episodes we’ll build upon some of these ideas. But this was just to get some initial thoughts out there and then we’ll take them further down the road.
Myron
So this is episode five. So, mentalsupermodels.com/5 will have the show notes. Also, we have the article that Jeremy wrote explaining the 6 stage strategy to execution model on the website. And we’ll put the link to that in the show notes as well.
