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Mental Models Steps Towards Systems Thinking

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Mental Models Steps Towards Systems Thinking

Karl Fischer, Senior Principal, MA, MEd, PMP

Introduction
It is the task of the project manager to be aware of the larger environment in which her/his project is operating. One approach that helps the project manager achieve this insight is systems thinking. Being a systems thinker enables us to perceive the interplay of forces that surround and interact with us. Systems thinking asks us to go beyond our reactive mindset and our knee-jerk reactions to life. Now, just having a reactive mindset is not, in itself, a bad thing. For instance, if we dont react immediately to putting our hand on a stove burner that has been turned on, we are going to get burnt! We use this reactive mindset in many areas of life. A machine breaks down so we buy a new machine. Or sales drop so we launch a new ad campaign. This is called event-driven behavior, which in itself is not a bad thing. In contrast to this event-driven behavior, systems thinking calls us to see the world as patterns of behavior over time, using Peter Senges phrase1. For instance, there are patterns of machine breakdowns and there are patterns of buying cycles in which there are sales slumps. If we think about cycles, rather than events, we have a better chance to anticipate what is coming, rather than just reacting to it when it happens. However, if we look at the structure of the pattern of behavior (read the structure of the cycles we have just described) then we begin to see what creates the cycles that spawn the events. And once we see at this level, says Senge, we can take actions to change the structures that cause the cycles to happen.2 Attention at this level allows us to alter the source of the cycle rather than just deal with its symptoms, which are the events to which we normally respond. These structures of the patterns of behavior are called archetypes. They are fundamental patterns of the way things work. For example, one of these fundamental patterns is called escalation. An instance of escalation would be when one company gets ahead; other companies then feel the success of the first company as a threat. This leads to more aggressive behavior on the other companies part to reestablish their advantage. This behavior is seen as threatening by the first company and leads it to increase its aggressiveness. Each side uses aggressive behavior as a defensive response to the others aggression. The structure of this interaction however, is built on the belief that the welfare of one company is dependent on its relative advantage over the other. This assumption is never questioned, yet it is the true source of the problem, and the cause of the aggressive behavior. The above example of systems thinking demonstrates that these structures are not easy to see. Therefore the first step toward developing a facility for systems thinking is to make these patterns visible. One way is through the learning and use of methods that expose our own mental models, namely our own ways of seeing.

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Discovering Our Own Mental Models

Discovering our own mental models, and therefore exposing our hidden assumptions, opens our minds to systems thinking. When we enter the world of systems thinking through the door of mental modeling, we do what we tend to do in any new venture; we look for a guide. My office is filled with books by good guides. However, the one that I am going to recommend whose guidance we should seek is an older cartoon character by the name of Pogo. Pogo would wax philosophical at times when various events happened to him and his friends. One of Pogos most famous cautions serves as a prime directive as we approach mental modeling, We have met the enemy and he is us! Mental models are themselves, hidden assumptions. So we need tools that help us uncover and clarify ourselves to ourselves. Furthermore, mental models are in here, not out there. Methinks I see Pogo waving his arm frantically, trying to caution us about where the problem lies. Senge further explains, The problem with mental models arise when the models are tacit below the level of awareness. To the extent that people remain unaware of their mental models, to that extent the models remain unexamined. And because they are unexamined, they remain unchanged.3 In order to expose our own mental models we will examine several techniques that we can use to lift the lid on our own patterns of thinking, steering us away from the unexamined life. Senge found, in working with many corporations, that new ideas, initially successful in early tests, failed to be put into practice because they conflicted with deeply held images of the way the world works.4 Mental models are powerful because they shape how we act. Further, they shape how we act because they shape how we see or perceive. For example; if I believe that silence from my class means approval of my lecture, I will react completely differently to the students from if I believe that silence from my class means disapproval of my lecture. The following are four techniques for opening the lid on our mental models. Lets see how we can employ them to our benefit.

1. Recognizing leaps of abstraction

The goal here is being aware enough to distinguish what we observe from the generalizations we infer from our observations. One year in summer school, I had a classmate who was noticeable by his silence. He didnt talk very much, either in class or out. Most of the other students steered away from him, since their overtures at inviting him into a conversation never seemed to get anywhere. Our assumptions about his behavior ranged from he doesnt care about other people to he thinks hes better than the rest of us and everything in between. One afternoon he and I crossed paths after a physics class. I thought I would try something. I asked him for his help in working through one of the concepts and assignments in physics with which I was having trouble. His reaction was dramatic, to say the least. He looked stunned but agreed to meet with me on Saturday morning. I will never forget that Saturday, because I not only learned physics. I learned that this fellow had a speech impediment. It was very minor. He was painfully embarrassed about his speech impediment however, and therefore reluctant to engage anyone in conversation. My willingness to challenge my own assumptions freed everyone that summer.

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Having this kind of courage requires several mental attitudes: 1. We have to be willing to examine our beliefs about the way the world works. 2. We have to be willing to entertain that these beliefs may be generalizations and that, as generalizations, they could be inaccurate or misleading. 3. We have to be able (or at least willing) to site the data on which our assumptions are based. This last point underscores our willingness to test our generalizations, which leads into inquiring into ones own as well as anothers actions. Practicing this type of awareness in order to raise the level of our own behavior to a higher level of consciousness is a discipline. I once took a course on Social Change. The professor discussed the dynamic of how perceptions become reality. According to the professor, any experience is taken in through the view of a previous perception. That perception is colored by an attitude which, when confirmed, becomes a belief. Eventually the belief will become a value, and when this happens, the process becomes reversed. Values will color beliefs which, in turn, will color attitudes, which, in turn, will color perceptions which, in turn, will color opinions which, in turn, will color experiences. This process can only be stopped by raising our level of consciousness so that we can be aware what we are doing.

2. Exposing the left-hand column

Often in certain situations, where we anticipate danger or discomfort, we react in a way that is counter-productive to our improvement and to a positive resolution of the situation. We do this by remaining unconscious about our negative reactions. Exposing the Left-Hand Column is a technique that assists in raising our level of consciousness by revealing ways that we manipulate situations to keep from dealing with what we actively think and feel. To practice this technique, we start with a situation where we are interacting with one or several people in a way that we feel is not working. We practice the Left-hand column exercise in the following manner. On the right side of a sheet of paper we write a script that duplicates the exchange between ourselves and the other party. On the left side we write what we are thinking but not saying. When we review the left hand column we discover the assumptions that we have made (they will be there, dont worry!) It is these assumptions that govern the behavior described in the right-hand column. The following conversation, quoted from Senge, is an excellent example.5 The left column below is the thoughts in the mind of the Project Manager about Bill. The right hand column is the actual interchange between the two. It is Bill who has given the presentation.

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What the project manager is thinking

Everyone says the presentation was a bomb. Does he really not know how bad it was? Or is he not willing to face up to it?

What is said
PM: How did the presentation go?

Bill: Well, I dont know. Its really too early to tell. Besides, were breaking new ground here. PM: Well, what do you think we should do? I believe that the issues you were raising are important.

He really is afraid to see the truth. If he only had more confidence, he could probably learn from a situation like this. I cant believe he doesnt realize how disastrous that presentation was to our moving ahead. Ive got to find some way to light a fire under the guy.

Bill: Im not so sure. Lets just wait and see what happens.

PM: You may be right, but I think we may need to do more than just that.

I have underlined the assumptions that the Project Manager is making. The last one underlined is the action planned by the Project Manager that is based on the assumptions. To the extent that these assumptions, on the left hand column, are unrecognized they will remain untested. And to the extent that they remain untested, they will keep learning from happening in a conflict situation. The way to overcome this is to share the information in the left hand column with the person with whom you are in potential conflict. You may find that the other person shares neither the data nor the view of the data that you have, but that is the beginning of true communication. What you are looking for is a path which will allow you both to learn.

3. Balancing inquiry and advocacy

We expect a leader (read: project manager) to speak out, define, create rules and direction. This behavior in a leader is seen as advocacy for his or her position and a positive quality. But advocacy is a spiral process evidenced by increasing intensity of use. The more we do it, the better we get at it. It becomes our tool of choice. Advocacy becomes the answer for every situation. However, as one grows in a position of leadership, one faces more of the unknown, and the more complex the problems become. Confronting this unknown requires wisdom, and this wisdom may best be available from others. So the leader needs to ask questions. This can be done by the simple act of having the leader state out loud his/her view(s) and the supporting reason(s). Then simply have the leader inquire into the view of the person next to them. Senge says again, The goal of advocacy is to win the argument. The goal of inquiry with advocacy is to find the best argument.6

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Truly practicing inquiry and advocacy means being willing to expose the limitations of your own thinking the willingness to be wrong. The leader must elicit the input of others as eagerly as she has shared her own position. This often takes considerable courage. However, nothing else will make it safe for others to do likewise. Were talking about being a leader.

4. Identifying the disparity between what we say and what we do.

I recall a phrase, What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot even hear what you say. This captures a disparity that lurks in all of us. In working to raise this disparity to the conscious level, it is important to realize that the disparity may be due to our limited vision of ourselves and not an evil intent. For instance, if I say to myself that I truly love the wilderness, then I will experience a gap between what I have said to myself and my behavior of not doing anything to support the maintenance and expansion of natural resources. A method of seeing this gap is to examine your commitment to nature out loud in the presence of others and truly invite their feedback on your behavior. This is again a place where we may need the help of each other. The eye, in the act of seeing, sees everything but itself. To achieve the broadness of perspective inherent in systems thinking, we need to practice the techniques discussed above. The practice will eventually lift the lid off of our own mental models. However, this practice will bring not only a new vision but also a death death to some of our old (and dangerously current) methods of thinking about the world and ourselves in it. Pogo was right; we are the enemy after all! The paradox here is that when our defensive routines succeed in preventing immediate pain, they also prevent us from learning how to reduce what causes the pain in the first place.

Parting Thoughts
We see many changes that we need to make as being in our outer world and not in our inner world. The techniques for exposing our own mental models that we have just examined are telling us that the first step in the solution to any problem is to examine ourselves. The road to systems thinking down which the practice of learning our own mental models takes us is not an easy road. It requires new ways, new orientations in our thinking, and the death of old concepts. I recall the beginning line from a poem I learned in college by William H. Auden, We would rather be ruined than changed. Although the perceptual and cognitive shift into systems thinking may be a struggle for some of us, to others it is a wonder. They experience liberation. Systems thinking becomes a liberating tool, like looking through a microscope for the first time. Worlds that never existed before are there before their eyes. Whether systems thinking initially presents itself to us as a trial or triumph, the support of other people proves very useful. Teaming with others to accomplish this mental transformation that we have discussed is the topic for another paper. In the meantime, welcome to the road less traveled.

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About the Author

Karl has been a project manager for over 20 years. He has extensive experience in IT project management, predominantly in the telecommunications, aerospace, and outpatient health care fields. He has developed and directed departments and programs for government and Fortune 500 corporations. Additionally, he has taught extensively at the university and post-graduate Levels, as well as developing and teaching corporate in-service training programs, including extensive technical writing, in project management and database design and administration. He can be reached at kfisch1@mindspring.com

References
1. Kim, Daniel H., Systems Archetypes 1 Diagnosing Systemic Issues and Designing High-Leverage Interventions, Pegasus Communications, Inc., 1992, p. 2 2. Kim, p. 2 3. Senge, Peter M., The Fifth Discipline The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday, 1990, p. 176 4. Senge, p.174 5. Senge, p.196 6. Senge, p.199

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