Mental Models: Power and Pitfalls

Written by Ed Cook

Humans walk about the Earth trying to make sense of it. Karl Weick introduced the concept of "sensemaking" to organizational studies in his 1969 book The Social Psychology of Organizing. His work described how humans understand the world in the face of uncertainty and labeled humans "sense-making machines." What the machine creates is a Mental Model.

A Mental Model is the simplified representation (internal to the person) of how things work that helps humans navigate complex situations and make sense of the world. As Kenneth Craik first described in 1943, mental models are "small-scale models" of reality that our minds construct to anticipate events and guide behavior. These internal representations of external reality play a fundamental role in cognition, reasoning, and decision-making. 

Mental Models are not perfect representations of reality because they are based on our experiences, beliefs, and knowledge. As Jay Wright Forrester noted, "The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world... He has only selected concepts and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the real system." For leaders managing change, making critical decisions, or leading teams, Mental Models are both a powerful tool to ensure success and a pitfall into which leaders can become stuck.

Classic Mental Models

Several well-used mental constructs give us a taste of the notion of a Mental Model.

The 80/20 Rule (Pareto Principle): Initially described by Vilfredo Pareto in1906, when he observed that 20% of the pea plants in his garden produced 80% of the harvest, and later, in his study of Italian land ownership, he found that 20% of the population owned 80% of the land. Joseph Juran later developed it further and applied it to quality control, popularizing it in the business world as part of the quality movement. Leaders can use this mental model to prioritize high-impact activities and allocate resources effectively during change initiatives. 

Ockham's Razor: In the 14th century, William of Ockham, a Franciscan friar and theologian, described a reasoning approach that, after his death, was dubbed Ockham’s Razor. This principle favors the simplest explanation that fits the facts. Other formulations of this go back to many thinkers, including Aristotle, who wrote in his Posterior Analytics, "We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [other things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses." When diagnosing organizational problems or designing solutions, leaders can use this concept to avoid overcomplicating situations.

Pre-Mortem: Gary Klein first wrote about the pre-mortem in his 2007 Harvard Business Review article: “Performing a Project Premortem”. This technique involves approaching problems from the opposite direction. Instead of asking "How do we succeed?" leaders might ask "How do we fail?" and then devise actions to prevent those failures. This mental model helps identify potential pitfalls and strengthens planning.

These are not prescriptive but rather predictive techniques, meaning they do not determine what the best course of action would be but make a prediction on the structure of the situation. They are not perfect, however, these Mental Models persist because they have proven useful, the ultimate test for a Mental Model.

The Architecture of Mental Models

Mental Models are not without their drawbacks. They come with specific characteristics that leaders benefit from understanding. Mental Models are:

• Founded on Incomplete Information: Mental Models, by necessity, involve incomplete information and uncertainty. This means leaders must remain humble about their assumptions and actively seek to test them.
• Information Filters: Mental Models cause selective perception, allowing us to focus on certain information while potentially missing other crucial data. Leaders must be aware of the possibility of blind spots.
• Fundamentally Limited: Mental Models are constrained by factors like working memory capacity and cognitive biases. 

These flaws exist because they are the opposite of the value of Mental Models, which is speed and accuracy. With the “right” Mental Model, managing Change, making a Decision, or exercising Leadership becomes faster and more impactful.

The Connection to Joy at Work

The concept of Joy at Work, as described in The Guide to Joy at Work, is itself a Mental Model. The Ten Dimensions of Joy at Work provides Change Leaders with a lens for how actions will impact the culture of the organization – its level of Joy at Work. 

The Joy at Work framework provides a practical mental model for leaders. Before making significant decisions, leaders can evaluate: "Will this increase or decrease joy at work?" This doesn't mean avoiding difficult decisions, but rather considering how to implement them in ways that grow Joy at Work. Leaders can use Joy at Work as a diagnostic tool, regularly assessing whether their team's level of Joy at Work indicates a thriving or withering culture. When managing Change, leaders can design initiatives that grow Joy at Work, leading to better adoption and sustained results.

Research in neuroscience suggests that Mental Models shape our brains through the process of neuroplasticity. The more we use certain Mental Models, the stronger those neural pathways become. This suggests that leaders who consciously develop and practice positive mental models—like the Joy at Work framework—are literally rewiring the brains of their team members to look for and expect Joy at Work.

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Mental Models

A useful approach for leaders is understanding the application of single-loop and double-loop learning, both of which relate directly to how we update our mental models. These two approaches were described by Chris Argyris in “Double Loop Learning in Organizations” when he was exploring why organizations make the same mistakes repeatedly.

Single-Loop Learning occurs when decisions change, but the underlying Mental Model remains the same. It is the predominant method of learning because it is convenient and requires less cognitive effort. A leader practicing single-loop learning might adjust tactics when a strategy isn't working, but never questions the fundamental assumptions behind the strategy.

For example, if a team is missing deadlines, a single-loop response might be to implement stricter deadlines or more frequent check-ins. The Mental Model remains: "Teams miss deadlines because they lack discipline or oversight."

Double-Loop Learning is a more challenging approach. It involves changing the Mental Model itself. Using the same example, double-loop learning would question the Mental Model, "What if teams miss deadlines not because of a lack of discipline, but because of unclear requirements, competing priorities, or unrealistic timelines?" This might lead to fundamentally different approaches focused on clarity, prioritization, and realistic planning.

The trick is to know when to use each. The default should be single-loop learning. After all, why even have the Mental Model if it will not be used? However, when single-loop adjustments repeatedly fail to solve problems, it's time to question the underlying Mental Model. If employee engagement scores continue declining despite multiple program adjustments, the Mental Model of "what drives engagement" may need examination.

How to Use Mental Models

Insightful Change Leaders don't just rely on their existing Mental Models—they actively cultivate new ones, test their effectiveness, and adapt based on results. They understand that their Mental Models are tools for representing reality, not reality itself, and they remain open to updating them as they learn and grow. The art of great leadership is knowing when to make a small tweak (single-loop learning) and a recast of the model (double-loop learning).  

The first step is to describe the Mental Model under which you are working. When making a decision, it is helpful to reference explicitly the Mental Model so that the group you are working with or leading can understand the logic of the decision. This will apply in any Leadership move or decision on Change. The Mental Model provides a way to think about the problem, but it also provides a way to describe solutions because it references the Mental Model’s framework.

The second step is to interrogate the Mental Model with your team regularly to test its usefulness. Having even a light measurement structure in place will greatly help with this. If the measures indicate that the desired results are continually diverging from the desired level, then it is time to apply double-loop learning to see what can be learned about the Mental Model itself. If the results are off but varying both toward and away from the desired result, then single-loop learning is appropriate. Saying which of the two you are applying and why can open a far better discussion on problem-solving than might be had otherwise.

Although they have flaws, Mental Models are necessary constructs for making sense of the world. Explicitly acknowledging their power and pitfalls will make them even more useful.