This post was part of a series of old blogs i have created in the past. i moved them here (as well as tidying up some details) in order to preserve all of my writings in one place for easy reference. Hope you find this one a good read. Enjoy!
Let’s start from the basics.
You might have heard of the saying, we don’t see the world as they are, but as we are.
It may sound like a new age-y sound bite, but there’s truth in that sentence. We always interact with the world around us through our perception and our perception is formed in our mind.
Our perception is what gives us information about our environment. The colours of flowers, the smell of coffee, the sound of traffic and so on. Those information become the basis from which we take decisions or actions. Although extremely simplified, those chain of events are what enables mankind to essentially make sense of the world. Because not only do we extract information from our perceptions, we also started to observe and note patterns and eventually we form a model of our world.
Models are basically chunks of specific informations, patterns, or formulas that describe something in the real world. Probably the best example of this is the law of gravity that Newton formulates after he observed a falling apple from a tree. Gravity of course already existed long before Newton invented the theory. But in doing so, Newton created a model, or abstraction of this phenomenon of things falling down when they are not supported. He described methods and constants not only to analyse but also to calculate any object with a set of known metrics. And that model is what enables future scientists and engineers to build or invent even more complex and elaborate things in the future, from new scientific breakthroughs to new types of aircraft and beyond. Models are the intermediary building block of our world. If information and facts are like sand, then models are like the silicon chip. You can’t build a smartphone from raw sand, you need them in the form of chips. That’s the power of models.
But here’s the thing.
When we’re dealing with science, our models mostly work fine because they are based on actual laws of nature. Barring some freak cosmic disruption, the speed of light will remain the same no matter when or where we observe it. But that’s not the case with humans. Humans are unique from one another. Sure there are common traits and patterns, but there has never been two perfectly identical human beings, ever. And management deals (mainly) with humans. And that makes modelling human behaviour (something of critical importance in the field of management) a bit tricky.
That’s why you would find, for example, there are multiple models for goal setting. You have the SMART model, you have the OKR models, and so on (That’s a topic for another post). Does that mean one model is better than the other? No. That just means that because goals are made by humans and humans are different there are different approach we can take to set a goal. And having a variety of models for any given topic in management is not so bad until you consider another characteristic of mankind: we tend to be biased.
Bias, however minuscule, corrupts our thinking. And corrupt or bad thinking produces bad models. Bad models are like a random scribble on a piece of paper: It’s virtually useless and should be thrown into the bin.
And that’s exactly what have been happening.
Over time, ideas and models from people are conceived, presented, debated, and eventually either discarded or implemented, with the former being far greater in number than the latter. This is Freudian evolution in action. Most bad models don’t survive so we are left with good (or at least good enough), workable models that at least describe some truth about us.
This filtering or evolution, if you will, of models is very important, because as we have seen so far, models are the foundations for the things we build, for the advanced theory we construct, for the policies we create. In essence our models will eventually manifest and shape our reality. With good models you get progress, advancement and growth. With bad models you not only will waste time and energy but in some extreme cases could inflict suffering and damage.
What can we conclude from all this? If we are really serious about creating a great product with positive impact to the world, we need to be first and foremost serious about the quality of our thinking. Too many leaders and managers don’t realize the real impact of their decisions and choices. The good news is that problem can be mitigated if we always remember this rule :
Admit you were / might be wrong.
Never let yourself be over-confident about anything. Always assume that you might be wrong because you don’t have 100% facts and there might be some bias in your mind as well. That doesn’t mean you should keep second-guessing yourself either. The key here is balance, once you have sufficient information and have enough confidence, don’t hesitate to take action. If something goes wrong, have the courage and the responsibility to admit your mistakes and fix them. Never let yourself to be overly-attached to your bad ideas. If it is a bad idea, it deserves to die, thrown into the bin. You have to move on and form a new, improved, and more effective ideas.
And that’s how you build a better model.