Correlated compounding loopsthe day beforeA thing that became a bit more visible for me is this…Rigor and shared mental model space

Build a thing to build the thing2023When building new products, there’s always a weird tension between making something…Alex Komoroske has another great set of new cards on rigor and here’s a little riff on them. The thing that caught my attention — and resonated with me — was the notion of faux rigor. Where does it come from?

Limits2022Polarity of intention, structure, and capacity2022What the heck is 3P?2021

Alex’s excellent iron triangle of the argument trade-offs framing offers a hint. Time is the ever-present constraint, and that means that the Short corner tends to prevail. Given a 1-pager and a 30-pager, the choice is a no-brainer for a busy leader. So the battle for rigor now depends on the argument being self-evident. Here, I want to build the story around the concept of shared mental model space. A shared mental model space is the intersection of all mental models across all members of a team.

Nudges, boosts, bumpers, and tilts2023Using these two properties as axes, we can draw a nice –…In a small, well-knit team that’s worked together for a long time, the shared mental model space is quite large. People speak in shorthand, and getting your teammate up to speed on a new idea is quite easy: they already reached most of the stepping stones that got you there. In this environment, we can still find rigorous arguments, because the Self-evident corner is satisfied by the expansive shared mental model space.

As the team grows larger or churns in membership, the shared mental model space shrinks. Shorthands start needing expansion, semantics — definition, and arguments — longer and longer builds. With a smaller shared mental model space, the argument needs to be more self-contained. Eventually, rigor is sacrificed to the lowest common denominator of mental models. In a limited shared mental model space, only the most basic short and self-evident arguments can be made. Value good. Enemy bad.

Organizational pathology2022The “Royalfield” case study, one of many in Rumelt’s book, particularly stood…The law of tightening aperture2023What happens to the teams with wide apertures over time? Does the…This spells trouble for larger teams or teams with high turnover. Through this lens, it’s easy to see how they would struggle to maintain a high level of rigor in the arguments that are being presented and evaluated within it. And as the level of rigor declines, so will the organization’s capacity to make sound strategic decisions. After faux rigor becomes the norm, this norm itself becomes a barrier that traps the organization in existential strategic myopia.

Mental models2022I use the term “mental models” a lot, and so I figured…Settled and “not settled yet” framingsthe day afterI was working on decision-making frameworks this week and had a pretty…Say it in many different wayslinks here, 2021Shared mental model spaces are challenging to grow and expand. Mental models,…Prototype the problemlinks here, 2021I was looking for practices that help expand shared mental model space…Intention and shared mental model spacelinks here, 2021Hamilton Helmer pointed out this amazing connection between intention and shared mental…Veering toward first-order effectslinks here, 2021A common symptom of forgetting to counter-steer toward second-order effects is the…Janklesslinks here, 2021To make things interesting, the collective model of the environment is rarely…Tension in Shared Mental Model Spacelinks here, 2022This just occurred to me today, so I am writing this down…What the heck is strategy work?links here, 2022We turn the mastermind toward frameworks. The key objective of this role…Especially in situations when a small organization begins to grow, it might be a good investment to consider how it will maintain a large shared mental model space as new people arrive and old guard retires. Otherwise, its growth will correlate with the decline of argument rigor within its ranks.