Jorge 0:00

If you can proactively shift your mental models, you can look at things from a different perspective from a radically different perspective and perhaps make different decisions or at least consider different possibilities.

Narrator 0:20

You're listening to Traction Heroes. Digging In to Get Results with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.

Jorge 0:30

Hey Harry, it's great to see you.

Harry 0:32

Nice to see you too, Jorge. Thank you so much for your grace as always.

Jorge 0:36

Folks can't see me, but I'm smiling. When we first, fired up this meeting, you were wiping the sweat off your face. It looked like it's hot there.

Harry 0:50

A little bit. Yeah, it's unseasonably warm here in Santa Cruz. I think the thermometer hit 101 yesterday and not sure what it's today, but yeah, and of course I was out waxing my car which I'm not sure is the brightest thing to be doing on hottest day of the year.

Jorge 1:09

For folks who, who are not on the Imperial system, that's around what, like around 39 degrees Centigrade? Anyway, it's in there. it's up there, right? It's pretty hot.

Harry 1:20

It's up there. Yeah.

Jorge 1:22

All right. But folks are not tuning in to hear about the weather in Santa Cruz. Why don't we get right into it? As usual, I've brought a reading. I think I usually give a disclaimer. It's this is pretty long, but then I find myself editing it afterwards. So just bear with me.

Harry 1:39

Okay.

Jorge 1:40

Here we go. "Humans think using mental models. These are representations of reality that make the world comprehensible. They allow us to see patterns, predict how things will unfold and make sense of the circumstances we encounter. Reality would otherwise be a flood of information, a jumble of inchoate experiences and sensations. Mental models bring order. They let us focus on essential things and ignore others. Just as at a cocktail party, we can hear the conversation that we're in, while tuning out the chatter around us. We craft a simulation of reality in our minds to anticipate how situations will play out." I'm going to skip a little bit here and jump forward in the text. "We use mental models all the time, even if we are not aware of them. But there are moments when we are acutely conscious of how we size up a situation and can deliberately maintain or change our perspective. This often happens when we need to make a high consequence decision, such as whether to switch jobs, become a parent, buy a home, close a factory, or build a skyscraper. In those instances, it can become apparent to us that our decisions are not simply based on the reasoning we apply, but on something more foundational. The particular lens through which we look at the situation, our sense of how the world works, that underlying level of cognition consists of mental models." And now I'm going to skip ahead a little bit more. "The mental models that we choose and apply are frames. They determine how we understand and act in the world. Frames enable us to generalize and make abstractions that apply to other situations. With them, we can handle new situations rather than having to relearn everything from scratch. Our frames are always operating in the background. But we can stop and deliberately ask ourselves which frame we are applying and whether it is the best fit for the circumstances. And if it's not, we can choose another frame that is better, or we can invent a new frame altogether. "Framing is so fundamental to human cognition that even those who study the workings of the mind rarely focused on it until relatively recently. Its importance was overshadowed by other mental capabilities, such as sensing and memory. But as people have become more aware of the need to improve their decision-making, the role of frames as fundamental to choosing and acting well has moved from the background to center stage. We now know that the right frame applied in the right way opens up a wider range of possibilities, which in turn leads to better choices. The frames we employ affect the options we see, the decisions we make, and the results we obtain. By being better at framing, we get better outcomes."

Harry 5:04

That is so cool. I feel like I should have read it somewhere. Don't tell me what the title is yet. And I should have known you were gonna bring mental models back. I feel, like we didn't pummel that one into submission when our last conversation about mental models turned into a conversation about mental modeling. And then a funny thing happened this morning, but before I tell you about it, and it's related to mental models, but before I share that with you, what book is this? Have I read this?

Jorge 5:40

You may have. This is a book called Framers and the subtitle is Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil, and the authors, whose name I'm going to struggle to pronounce properly, so apologies beforehand, are Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and Francis de Véricourt.

Harry 6:04

I have not read that and I, I'm a huge fan of the concept of framing for so many different reasons, one of which was that when I did my TEDx talk, I think it was in 2014, I ended up introducing a framework that was really a diagnostic thinking framework to enable better problem framing. But be that as it may, let me tell you what happened this morning when I was sitting pre caffeinated, I saw something pop up in LinkedIn. I think I had about sixteen neurons firing and not all of them well, and somebody had posted, and I wish I remember who it was right now, posted something about the why it was that China was able to build things so quickly. Did you see that? And how the United States is so slow. And I thought, that's interesting. And I dove into it and it was really... The book that it was talking about, I guess this was surfaced from some work that a fellow by the name of Dan Wang, recently published. A book called Breakneck, and China's Quest to Engineer the Future was the subtitle. And if you were to boil it all away, the LinkedIn article basically said, "Look, if you want to understand this in its most basic way, think about the fact that China is basically a country run by engineers, and the United States is basically a country run by lawyers." And I was like, that had never occurred to me before. It was just like somebody picked the frame up and moved it three feet to the left, and all of a sudden everything became clear. And it was stunning to me how simple it was.

Jorge 8:07

Yeah, I think that's very much in the spirit of this book. And you're right to call out the fact that we've brought up I've brought up mental models many times before in our conversations. With the knowledge that we have mental models and that we use mental models, if you buy into that notion, then the question arises as well, can you be intentional about the models that you use? And, and how can you kinda shfit the model? And the of reframing comes in, right? I got the sense from that passage that I read there, that for the authors of this book, frames and models are somewhat analogous. But I think that, the notion of framing as a verb is more proactive than... and I think that if you use the verb modeling, somehow you're thinking like, "I'm simulating or creating a kind of 'what if' scenario in my mind." Whereas framing is more about how you can proactively change the lens through which you understand what is happening so that you can behave differently.

Harry 9:21

I didn't take them as synonymous as you were reading it. It felt very much like the models were the glass and the frame was the frame. And by moving the frame, you're shifting the models you're looking through. And there may be more than one model, but they seem to me to be complimentary, but distinct entities.

Jorge 9:44

Yeah. The phrase they use is "the mental models that we choose and apply are frames." Which is to say, it's the same kind of stuff, but some models, we adopt or emerge in us for reasons. But others, like we intentionally craft in some way, is the sense I'm getting. And that's what they're calling frames, right?

Harry 10:07

Yeah. What led you to this book? I'm curious.

Jorge 10:11

What led me to this book is my perennial interest in mental models and the notion that we... models in general, right? Like, this idea that we make sense of the world through these constructs, these abstractions that we carry around. And I just search out books on this subject. And this one seemed to be about that, but again, with this more proactive lens. And the pitch here, which is in the subtitle of the book, is that somehow being proactive about the frames that you use to understand what is going on, somehow gives you an advantage. So you have a leg up if you are mindful about what frames you are using. And the authors bring up different elements of framing. And I read this book several years ago, I have to say and somewhat uncharacteristically for me, I didn't take good notes at the time. I read it while on vacation and I was outside of my usual routines, but revisited it this morning before talking with you and some of it came back. They have certain elements that go into framing. So, for example, a core idea in the book is the notion of causality. So, being able to perceive cause and effect relationships and and allowing that to inform the model, that's an important component of framing. Another is what the authors call counterfactuals. So being able to imagine alternate scenarios for whatever is happening. And then a third element is constraints, which are the boundaries that limit the frame. And and part of the point here is that if you know that these are the elements that go into creating a frame, you can be more intentional about the frames that you use with the goal of, again, being more effective, acting more skillfully, somehow.

Harry 12:36

I had so many different thoughts kind of tumble outta my brain, but the first one that came to mind and we may have talked about this at some point the work of Dennis Matthies from Stanford. So Dennis came up with something called Precision Questioning. It eventually evolved to Precision Questioning and Answering. And he taught it for a number of years at Stanford. I think he ended up making it available as a continuing studies course, which is where I bumped into it. And then eventually, I believe Bill Gates hired him to go to Microsoft and effectively deploy this new soft technology of being able to ask more effective questions and being able to answer in more succinct ways to increase the velocity of a purposeful conversation. And, Dennis eventually, did the same thing at Google, and then he started a company called Vervago. He's since retired and he didn't write a book on this subject. And for many years, his course notes were available at the Stanford bookstore. They're probably still available there. But at any rate, the thing that caught my attention was that Dennis used to present like seven categories of questions. And those questions were effectively go/no-go questions. And those are really questions around, are the right people in the conversation? Are they in the right channel? Are they ready to engage and have this conversation? The next is a category of questions around clarification. Is it ambiguous? Is it vague? How do you demystify something? So it was go/no-go questions of clarification. Questions of assumptions was another category, which is the uncritically held beliefs that we hold as true for something to be true. The next is basic critical questions around the veracity of the data, the sources of the data or information, all the kinds of things that you would think of around, is it a direct source? Is it an indirect source? What methodology was used, and so on and so forth, to get that? And then there are two categories, causes and effects, which is what triggered this. And looking at trigger and causation and mechanisms underneath things. And then there's lots we can say about causes. And then, effects, similarly, whether they're leading indicators or lagging indicators, whether that things change over time. And then, there's a category for action. And I often thought that there was a category missing that was really around desired outcomes, but we're not gonna go there for the moment. But the point that I was trying to make with Dennis's PQ&A precision questioning and answering was that once I learned this, I noticed that when I was in engaged in high stakes, transactional dialogues in work situations, I would look at the conversation intentionally through different portals or frames from Dennis's model in order to ask more relevant questions. So, for example, if we were fixating on questions of clarification, if we were really trying to better understand something, I would often shift the conversation to, "But what do we believe is true that might not otherwise be true?" So, I would shift the frame to assumptions. And I don't wanna belabor this whole thing, but I realize that the PQ&A model of asking better questions to increase the utility of a conversation for a purpose is like a meta frame and you can deploy it by using the categories in PQ&A to see the world in a different light. Because when you're in the frame of seeking clarification, that's very different from being in the frame of trying to understand a relation between what's causing something and what's affecting something. And so I just wanted to bring that up because it seemed like such a strong analog or, maybe not an analog, I'm not even sure how to think about it, but it's a strong tool set to apply to this particular notion.

Jorge 17:17

What is implicit in what you're saying and again, it's a running theme in our conversations is that the interactions that you might be having with people operate at several levels. And there are underlying ideas that are informing those interactions. There are techniques to get to the bottom of the stack in some way. One that I teach my students in the systems course is the Iceberg Model, which you might have seen. And that one has four levels, right? So, the top level are the events that you can report on. It's this is what I observed happening, right? Underneath that are patterns and trends. So if a certain kind of event is coming up time and time again, that might be an indication that there's a pattern at play, right? Those patterns in turn are informed by particular systems or structures that lead to that pattern manifesting. And those systems and structures in turn are informed by mental models that give rise to them. So what we'll do in class is we have students look at the front page of the New York Times, for example, and pick out any news item that draws their attention. Pick out the facts: what are the events that this reporter is reporting on? And then, think about whether they reflect any patterns or trends that have been manifesting over time. And then we work our way backwards to the systems and structures that lead to those things to happen, and ultimately to the mental models that are informing them. And the mental models tend to be pretty deep things, right? For example, a mental model that might be leading to a particular kind of behavior might be the idea of private property, for example. Like, private property is something that we assume as a kind of foundational layer in our society. But that's a construct, right? That's a model that we have for how the world might work. And there are other people who might have a completely different model for how the world operates that does not include the concept of private property. And, if that's the case, then those folks are gonna make very different decisions. And the point here though is, if you know that there are these underlying levels and if you buy into something like the iceberg model that says that mental models are at the kinda like basement of the stack, then if you can proactively shift your mental models, you can look at things from a different perspective from a radically different perspective and perhaps make different decisions or at least consider different possibilities.

Harry 20:32

Yeah. And I'm wondering what do the authors suggest in terms of... I can't help but think about mindfulness meditation, where they talk about labeling your thoughts. And I think about the fact that we have assumptions, this notion that we engage the world with these beliefs that are not necessarily critically held in this very valuable mechanism for engaging the world in a more productive way is to be able to identify them and label them and then potentially choose something different to take a different perspective. What do the authors recommend in terms of the mechanics around surround getting from a current tacit state to a more productive, explicit, desired state?

Jorge 21:23

Like I said, I read this book a long time ago and I don't remember explicitly what they said. But I have a vague idea. And I'm issuing this disclaimer because I might be projecting into it my own opinions here. But I would say that step zero is bringing your frames to the surface, right? We don't stop to think about private property, for example, right? But that might be the operating frame here, and it's so deep in us that you don't think about it, right? So step zero would be, "Okay, let's try to verbalize or externalize somehow the framing that is dominating this situation." Once we do that, then we can do things like explore counterfactuals, right? What if the opposite was true? What if we were not operating within a construct where private property was the norm? What if particular constraints were not present? And with that in mind, you can do things like scenario planning. My sense is that is where this would operate. But again, I don't remember explicitly what it is that the authors recommend in the book.

Harry 22:45

And I'm sorry, I didn't meant to put the screws to you with that question. I think I'm actually more interested in your perspective. And the thing is, if you're gonna say, private property, it's the thing, like sometimes these things are so pervasive and they're so deeply held to they're foundational-level assumptions, you don't even know to ask the question. It's like that David Foster Wallace, the fish swimming by, "How's the water boys?" And, what I'm wondering about is, so for you, like if you were giving me advice or giving me guidance on this, you've obviously thought a lot about this, and it's very interesting to me and I wanna learn, I want to get better, I think this is incredibly valuable, like how do I get to the point of even asking myself the question, am I engaged in a mental model right now? Because I don't know that if I were in a situation dealing with property rights that I would even question private property.

Jorge 23:46

Yeah. And that was just an example off the top of my mind.

Harry 23:50

It's a good one though.

Jorge 23:52

I just wanted to pick something that is very bedrock, that we don't usually think about. But there are many other things that are like that, and perhaps a bit more malleable. My sense is that this is a question best asked when you have some decision to make, like a large decision to make. Maybe it's undertaking a new project or maybe... Maybe you're trying to stake out a new market. I'm gonna try to bring it back to a concrete example and then maybe we can wind down this conversation. But, you and I were talking before we started recording about how we might bring more listeners to the podcast, right? That's something that we could sit down with that, goal in mind and we could look at the data, right? So for example, we know how many people have been downloading the show over the time that it's been out. We now have enough data there where we can spot some patterns. We were reflecting earlier on whether the fact that it is summertime and therefore people are taking vacation in the Northern Hemisphere, is affecting our downloads. So, that's an idea of we're spotting some kind of trend, right? And we can continue digging deeper. We can start understanding what structures and systems are underlying the patterns that we're seeing. The fact that people in the Northern hemisphere tend to take vacation during this time of year, that is a systemic thing driven by the weather patterns, school patterns, all these things. And then, they manifest certain mental models. For example, the idea people listen more to a show like this at times when they're not on vacation. I would suggest that's some kind of mental model, right? Like I'm assuming that people who listen to a show like this one are more interested in productivity work rather than something like entertainment. I don't wanna do an analysis here of what that would mean towards growing our listenership, but I'm just giving an example of the kind of deepening of the questioning that happens when you are looking to reframe. Because you may find that when you get to the bottom and you say, "We have this mental model that this is a show that appeals primarily to people who are into being more productive or doing work-related things?" Like, what if that was not true? What if people were just enthralled by our conversation and...

Harry 26:32

Scintillating conversation!

Jorge 26:32

Yeah! It's like looking for some entertainment, right? What would the show look like if that was true? And we could play what-if scenario. Anyway, it's a trivial kind of silly example. I just wanted to illustrate how the thinking would go.

Harry 26:47

I really appreciate that. And pulling it back from the property example just to challenging the assumptions and looking at, given an assumption, what is the model underneath that assumption is maybe the answer I was looking for. And I hadn't connected the dots until you walked me through this. Because naming the assumption that's the label, but the model is what allows that assumption to function. And being explicit about that, I think helps provide opportunities to step back and look at potential alternatives, potentially reframe.

Jorge 27:24

And sometimes and I think that this is the key we get stuck. And we get stuck because our mental models get us stuck. And mental models are not fixed. You can change your mental models. You can adopt different frames. I think that, that's definitely the point of this book. I don't think that they talk about the iceberg model, but that's an example of a technique or a framework that can be helpful in, at a minimum, bringing your models to the surface. And once you have those, then you can do the counterfactual thing or understand for example, like what timeframes are you dealing with? Are you thinking about this in the near term? Are you thinking about it in the long term? Those are going to impact how you approach whatever new direction you're going to pick with a problem. And framing helps.

Harry 28:23

Yeah. this feels like a really important topic to explore further. And as I think about Dennis's material and Precision Questioning and Answering it is the assumptions column more than anything else. And maybe we can talk about that more at some particular point.

Jorge 28:42

Let's make a point to talk about it in a future conversation, but for now, I think we should wrap this one up.

Harry 28:48

That sounds great. I really appreciate you bringing this one up.

Jorge 28:52

All right. Great seeing you again, Harry. Thank you.

Harry 28:55

Thanks for making the time today, Jorge. Great conversation.

Narrator 29:03

Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes with Harry Max and Jorge Arango. Check out the show notes at tractionheroes.com and if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating in Apple's podcasts app. Thanks.