Maps are a physical representation of a mental model. They delineate space and pinpoint location. Like frames, maps cater to specific purposes. And just as we pick frames--depending on the demands we have and the decision we face. The maps we select are a considered choice, with consequences for how we understand the world and act in it. But they also shape what we perceive through them.
INTRODUCTION
A short but powerful book on the topics of thinking and problem solving via using mental models to frame or reframe challenges we face.
The book explores a framework for how to navigate these frames - ideally helping the reader become more aware and deliberate in how they select, construct and apply frames to problem solving.
FUTURENATIVE - THINK BETTER. BUILD BETTER.
I very occasionally send out an email recapping some thoughts, learnings and ideas typically centred around a thesis & approach I call being “FUTURENATIVE”.
In short, the thesis states: FUTURENATIVE individuals and organization find a unique way to leverage apparent tensions and blend both discovery & execution work, in order to unlock massive impact.
You can sign up here to learn more:
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- the source of human power is neither muscle nor mind - but models.
- 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.
- 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.
- Same data, different frames, opposite conclusions.
- Understanding the power of framing in all domains is vital. We need to see problems differently in order to solve them
- Framing commonly happens subconsciously. But people who consistently make good decisions, or are in positions where they need to make high-stakes ones, are aware of framing and their ability to reframe. This affects the options they see and the actions they take.
- By mentally modeling the world, we keep it manageable and thus actionable. In this sense, frames simplify reality. But they aren't dumbed-down versions of the world. They concentrate our thinking on the critical parts.
- The term framing is well established in the social sciences. [...] they called the "framing effect," and described it as a flaw in human reasoning. […] not how something is positioned but a deliberate act of harnessing mental models to elicit options prior to making a decision. […] Every paradigm shift is a reframing […] But not every reframing is a paradigm shift -reframing happens comparatively frequently. Frames are more than a person's individual perspective-they are cognitive templates.
- Frames help to do two tasks really well: First, in novel situations or when circumstances change, our ability to choose a frame provides us with new options. Second, and at least as important, in situations that are familiar, frames focus our mind, thereby reducing our cognitive load. It's an incredibly efficient way for us to reach a suitable decision.
- There is a pathology of human progress, that the very fruits of our creation risk being the sources of our destruction.
- Frames can be simple or sophisticated, accurate or imprecise, beautiful or evil. But they all capture some aspect of reality. In so doing, they help us to explain, focus, and decide.
- Around the 1970s, the idea of "mental models" gained traction along with the concept that human reasoning isn't an operation of formal logic but works more like a simulation of reality: we assess options for action by imagining what might happen.
- Maps are a physical representation of a mental model. They delineate space and pinpoint location. Like frames, maps cater to specific purposes. And just as we pick frames--depending on the demands we have and the decision we face. The maps we select are a considered choice, with consequences for how we understand the world and act in it. But they also shape what we perceive through them. Hence the question "What map is best?" is nonsensical in the abstract. The answer depends on the context in which the map used and the purpose to which it is put.
- The brothers understood that for powered flight, they had to translate engine power into forward motion. That ensures sufficient airspeed over the wings, which translates into updrift and thus flight. It's a chain of cause and effect. Other aviators focused on designing the most powerful or efficient engine. The Wrights understood that the causal chain was longer, with the engine but one element.
- It's important to free the mind from preconceived notions that are too limiting. Tapping the imagination greatly increases the options that can be considered, and that in turn may increase the chance to find solution that's really good.
- They weren't geniuses - they were exemplary framers. They attained success by thinking clearly about cause and effect, by imagining alternatives, and by applying the constraints derived from the laws of physics.
- a frame itself is not a solution, it's just a means to find a solution.
- Framing is a process a method that guides the human mind toward understanding, imagination, and the evaluation of options.
- Frames do more than make us better decision-makers. They help us inject values as we make our choices. In turn they influence our worldview and even shape reality.
"It's difficult to see the picture when you're inside the frame." - Eugene Kleiner
- In contrast, humans have acquired the ability to generate abstractions and turn their causal inferences into frames. These mental models offer reusable templates to understand the world causally.
- New studies have shown that the rapid technological change humanity has experienced in the past two centuries cannot be explained solely by either an individual's ability to connect concrete situations to abstract principles (Pinker's "cognitive niche") or our social ability to share knowledge (Tomasello's "cultural niche"). They suggest that humanity has developed by combining the advantages of both
- Explainability is essential to a causal frame's success; it gives meaning to our existence and to what we experience.
- Models represent our best approximation of the real system. They allow us to identify the processes that are responsible, as well as processes that are not responsible.
- Counterfactual thinking is the second element of framing. […] counterfactuals are focused and goal-oriented. We use them to understand the world and prepare for action. Counterfactuals rely on the understanding of cause and effect that is embedded in our frames. This allows us to project forward or backward in time in our imagination, or take something that happened in one context and imagine it happening in another. It enables us to "fill in the blanks" of how the world might play out imagining the information we do not have while making sense of the information we do have.
- When we dream up alternative realities, we actually do serious cognitive work, requiring a wide spectrum of skills. Counterfactual thinking requires our minds to be fully engaged.
- stories do the same thing for our minds. They are a platform to contemplate scenarios of alternative realities and how humans act within them. They help us evaluate options and prepare decisions.
- Counterfactuals do more than help us imagine what isn't there. They offer powerful additional benefits. First, they act as a counterbalance to "causal determinism," the idea that there is only a set path to follow.
- The lack of diverse views and alternative thinking when vetting the plan popularized a new term in decision-making: groupthink.
- This leads to the second benefit, that counterfactuals make us better causal thinkers. [...] counterfactuals are so helpful because they remind us of options, broadening rather than deepening our focus. As we think about options, we also ponder cause and effect; in contrast, when we just focus on a single cause, we are not stimulating our imagination. That's why imagining alternative realities is such a central element for successful framing.
- Then there is the approach of many high-performance athletes and executives who practice "visualizations": developing a realistic mental image of a situation (whether a ski jump or a board meeting) and simulating within that world the diverse actions and responses that might work […]The trick, as toddlers quickly learn, is not to conceive of just any alternative reality but to construct one carefully that can help us achieve our goal.
- Envisioning alternatives to reality enables us to shape the future, to control events rather than be controlled by them.
- Constraints are the third ingredient, after causality and counterfactuals, for framing to work. Without constraints, we might imagine an enormous range of alternative realities that are so ill-connected to the causal mental model that they fail to inform our actions. We need the right boundaries for our imagination to elicit the choices we have. Constraints are rules and restrictions that shape our counterfactual thinking in a particular way. We can play with them -by loosening or tightening them, and by adding new ones or removing old ones. With constraints, framing goes from the purview of cognition to the basis of actions that matter.
- If we focus on the wrong constraints, we don't capture what's needed. But focusing on all of them doesn't help either. Select too few constraints and we lose focus on what matters; choose too many and we may miss something important. As a first step, we must appreciate that for each frame some constraints are soft and some are hard.
- Soft constraints are amenable, can be adjusted or bent even if only with substantial effort. Hard ones are fixed, impermeable, inviolable. Hard constraints capture the central tenet of a mental model; neglecting them means giving up on the very model itself.
- When we are choosing which constraints to modify, the principle of mutability suggests that we should single out elements that we can influence.
- When selecting which constraints to loosen or tighten, we should aim for the fewest, not the most, modifications. We should aspire to minimal change. With alternative realities in our mind, our imaginings need to stick closer to, rather than further from, the one we inhabit. That way, we reduce the risk of simply conjuring up impractical possibilities. When choosing between alternative explanations or solutions to a problem, embrace the less complicated: it will probably be more accurate than an intricate or elaborate answer with lots of parts.
- The benefit of models is that they let us mentally and physically practice, prepare, and probe possibilities with little consequence. We externalize elements of the mental model when they become too complex or when we want to make sure we stick to them. When a constraint is mental, we can break it (although we don't do so lightly). But in a simulator, the constraints are built into the design and are much less flexible. The flight simulator is a representation, not reality, just as a map is not territory.
- Staying within a frame comes with mental baggage. In contrast, switching to an alternative frame affords the opportunity to start anew. That is risky, but powerful when it works. It is a deliberate process, just as working within a frame is deliberate. But unlike framing, we don't improve our reframing abilities by doing it frequently. […] switching frames is more about a stroke of insight than a methodical process.
- These three forms of reframing--think of them as "repertoire," "repurposing," and "reinvention”
- Repertoire, the easiest solution, is to mentally riffle through our individual stock of frames and see whether we already have an alternative that will fit. When using our repertoire of frames, knowing the qualities of each frame we possess is crucial to identifying a good fit. But it is equally important to have a wide selection of frames at our disposal.
- Now, consider the second form of reframing, the idea of repurposing a frame from elsewhere. We do this when we need to reframe but have no ready alternative at our disposal, so we look to other domains for an existing frame that could be adjusted to our current circumstances. It won't be a ready template and so may require substantial cognitive work to shape it appropriately, but at least having something to play with can get us started.
- Reframing by dint of reinvention is the stuff we celebrate and remember in history. Many reinventions turn into historical milestones.
- In some cases, the new frame is so much better that it renders other ones practically obsolete. In other cases, new frames peacefully coexist with the old.
- Fixing specific problems was not enough; the whole system needed overhauling.
- Counterintuitively, it is also better to reframe infrequently. There is a temptation to reframe swiftly and repeatedly. It's the idea that if a reframe doesn't work, one can quickly rectify the problem by reframing again, jumping from frame to frame until the right one is found. Yet that is a fallacy. Each act of reframing is costly. It requires extra cognitive energy to abandon something one knows well, to come up with something new, and to understand it so well that it can be applied successfully. As a consequence, one cannot continually switch frames. It's like changing directions: do it too often and it leaves you disoriented.
- What's important is that we realize in many, but far from all, situations we can choose the strategy we want to employ depending on context (e.g., how fast a decision is needed, how broad our existing frame is) and individual preferences (e.g., how risk-taking we are).
- The disciplinary silos are about teaching people to play functional roles," complained Podolny at the time. He pushed to make every element of learning interdisciplinary so a range of frames would flourish, reflecting the needs of real business.
- The world is a complex place, and no single frame can offer the right solution to every problem. Drawing on different perspectives to shape our judgments improves the odds of reaching better conclusions.
- Applying a frame is a process by which, with the help of causality, counterfactuals, and constraints--the three C's-we drastically reduce the search space and identify a limited number of highly useful choices. The goal is speed of process and fit of options. It's fundamentally about efficiency that leads to action.
- Call it "cognitive foraging": the pursuit of new ways of thinking and seeing the world without the specific aim to acquire frames. Think of it as curiosity taken seriously. The aim is to be exposed to a plethora of perspectives, a variety of viewpoints, a cornucopia of concepts, all outside of one's domain. This helps us become more open to seeking and finding new mental models when we need to. It accustoms us to the task of being a hunter-gatherer of ideas; we exercise our inquisitiveness. By constantly looking, we're better at seeing.
- Kay is best known for his aphorism, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Less well known is what he calls "the tyranny of the present." In his view, institutions and schools do a poor job of encouraging novel thinking. "Most creativity is a transition from one context into another," he said. "There are more contexts than the one that we're in the one that we think is reality."
- You're stuck in a "local optimum" (the best for a particular area), not the "global optimum" (the best overall). You can't see the totality of the area; you can't survey the entire "problem space."
- That is why pluralism of frames in societies is such a vital strategy: it helps us rise to the challenge of the unknown unknowns.
- The only bad frame is one that denies other frames. There is no easy way to identify bad frames, or a simple recipe for what to do with them. Only absolutists believe they have all the answers. Tackling bad frames requires a constant and pragmatic navigation between the need to remain open and accepting at all moments and the vigilance to prevent the rise of intolerant frames.
- But the problem isn't merely that people use frames that no longer work. The danger is that as alternative frames are excluded, challenges to conventional wisdom will subside. The risk is that the environment will no longer support a range of frames that can coexist and vie for acceptance. Variety improves the likelihood that we find new solutions to our challenges and thereby overcome them.
- The outsider sees things that insiders do not and can use their novel frames to their advantage.
- Framing combines two distinct processes. The first, applying a frame, entails thinking with causality, counterfactuals, and constraints. It is ideal for efficiently identifying valuable options and preparing for swift action. The second process involves switching to a different frame. It is far riskier but may offer bigger rewards by letting us see reality differently. A new perspective begets alternative options for our decisions and may open up new ways of responding to challenge. We don't need to reframe when a situation is stable and circumstances are constant. But when the context changes, reframing is often a good strategy. It's like seeing the world through somebody else's eyes: it opens our mind and helps us to cast aside the limitations of our conventional thinking.
- Framers see the world not as it is, but as it can be. They do this by understanding, considering, rejecting, or accepting frames and communicating them to others.
FUTURENATIVE - THINK BETTER. BUILD BETTER.
I very occasionally send out an email recapping some thoughts, learnings and ideas typically centred around a thesis & approach I call being “FUTURENATIVE”.
In short, the thesis states: FUTURENATIVE individuals and organization find a unique way to leverage apparent tensions and blend both discovery & execution work, in order to unlock massive impact.
You can sign up here to learn more:
