Dimitri Glazkov

r/K selection and innovationthree days beforeI’ve been thinking about the different conditions under which innovation emerges, and…The Perspective Ladder

What Dimitri Learned
· 14 min read

Thinking to write2024I’ve had this realization about myself recently, and it’s been rather useful…Say it in many different ways2021Shared mental model spaces are challenging to grow and expand. Mental models,…Model flattening2021Before we move on from our discovery of the inner OODA loop,…I’ve been trying to come up with a better way to illustrate the concept of mental model flattening, and realized that one way to do this is by describing it as I experience it.

Jankless2021As we Orient, examining our prediction error and updating our model of…The Upper Limit Of Understanding2019Walking down the yellow-brick road of everything being storytelling, I stumbled into…Mental models2022I use the term “mental models” a lot, and so I figured…Imagine a scale that reflects our relationship to a perspective: a self-coherent worldview. This worldview is possible because of the network of mental models we possess, helping us orient ourselves, see choices and possibilities, and act on them.

Pace layers of predictability2023One thing that stood out to me was this notion of a…This scale is arranged as a ladder of sorts, with the mental model complexity is at its highest at the top, becoming progressively simplified with every rung down. As the model gets simpler, our capacity to relate to a perspective diminishes. As we proceed through our day, we climb up and down this ladder multiple times a day, sometimes moment to moment. Even though all rungs of the ladder may be accessible to us, we aren’t sitting still. We run up and down, sometimes intentionally, but most often not.

Cravings and Aversions2021Though immediate effects of model flattening are already pretty dramatic, its largest…Model compression and us2022I wonder if the nadir of the hero’s journey is marked by…Just like real-life ladders, ours is subject to gravity. Climbing to the upper rungs seems to require effort. Conversely, all it takes is a little stress, fatigue, or a particular triggering experience, and down the rungs we go. Picture the process of mental model flattening as this sliding down the ladder.

Being Strategic2022It all begins with intention. There’s something in our environment – the…Understanding which rung we are at any given moment is, in itself, a form of acquiring a perspective. It serves as an extra boost upward: pausing to understand where we are might serve a useful trick to start climbing.

So, the ladder. I’ll start at the bottom and we’ll clamber up together. I’ll describe each rung as my own experiences – I hope they resonate and help you reconstruct the picture that I am seeing in your own mind.

🌪 Detached from a perspective

The ladder’s lowest rung is what I call “just stayin’ alive”. Here, I am thoroughly disoriented and lost, mostly just reacting as best as I can. My impulses are in charge. Whether positive or negative, my experiences at this rung are intense. If you’ve ever felt that panicky feeling of just trying to find bearings – or perhaps get that insatiable craving, then you know what I am talking about. At this rung, when the notion of a perspective is suggested to me, I will typically react with bewilderment, struggling to remember what it might mean. It may feel like a lifeline when a perspective – any perspective! – is offered. The particular strength of this rung is in the rush of adrenaline it provides, the extra kick for powering through a particularly tough situation. At the same time, these hormone baths are taxing for our bodies and aren’t great for our health in the long term. And well, there’s this whole “lost” thing.

Touching infinity2022As we explore the process of understanding, it may not be immediately…When detached from a perspective, it’s not that I don’t have any of my mental models. It’s that they all appear to have this squeaky, slippery rubber feel to them: grasping at them just makes them pop out of my hands and float farther away. The only ones that feel accessible are primitive and atavistically simple: “they bad, I good”, etc. This is the extreme of mental model flattening.

🩹 Sticking to a perspective

Just above is “sticking to a perspective” rung. I am firmly attached to a particular way of looking at what’s around me. I am no longer as disoriented, but I ain’t seeing much outside of the very specific window of the perspective. I can feel pretty comfortable in this state, aside from the occasional nagging feeling that something is missing. When someone suggests that they have different perspectives, I may look at them like they are messing with me – or trying to deceive me. While stuck to a perspective, irritation and anger are common reactions to the evidence that doesn’t fit into that perspective: I am part of the perspective and a threat to it is a threat to me. The gift of this rung is followership: I will happily roll up my sleeves and chip in to help with a problem when asked – as long as it fits into my perspective window.

Causal chains2021My experience is that most folks around me (myself included) enjoy employing…While sticking to a perspective, the mental models tend to appear as crisp and simple causal chains that are unburdened by any fuzzy notions. If this, then that. Even when well-familiar with loops in a network of causal relationships, any notion of them will be neatly elided from my thinking. Mental models of others are either “exactly like me” or some overly primitive caricatures.

GWT And Now Script#: The Agony of a Thousand Puppies2006Uh oh. Another reactive rant. Am I turning into a grumpy old…At least for me, this rung serves as sort of a defensive crouch. When I am distracted or tired, this is where you are most likely to find me. I’ve been looking for a sample of my writing at this rung of the latter and the Agony of a Thousand Puppies comes pretty close:

Hiding Javascript behind another language’s layer of abstraction is like killing puppies.

Yep, it’s the grumpy-pants Dimitri.

🔨 Holding a perspective

Another rung up is “holding a perspective”. My attachment to the perspective becomes more or less intentional. I hold the perspective, as opposed to it holding me. It is the only perspective I know, but I know it well. This perspective is particularly helpful when I am asked for loyalty or need to commit to a certain course of action.

When I hold a perspective, I can wield it like a sword and find clever ways to destroy perspectives of others. Even when I am clearly shown blind spots of the perspective I hold, I remain unfazed, retreating into the realm of magical thinking and conspiracies if necessary. I may not even be upset with people who have different perspectives. I just would have this calm sense of boundless confidence that they’re wrong.

Recipes for Thought2025An expert in organizational strategy will undoubtedly have a wealth of cognitive…This rung is populated by mental models that we’re experts in. The sheer depth of experience does the heavy lifting. These models may be fairly intricate, but tend to have this mechanical quality. When holding a perspective, we view all things around us in terms of precisely, pain-stakingly crafted mental models. Unlike at the previous rung, our mental models of others expand quite a bit in their sophistication. They have gears and springs that move them — and we feel like we know exactly how they tick.

My iPhone SDK2007So, my good friend Steve spills the beans about the upcoming SDK.…It pains me to admit how familiar this rung is to me. Some of my biggest blunders were rooted in this mechanized world – yet it remains to be somewhat of a default notch for me. If you want to hear how I sound at this rung, here’s a post from 2007, written in “holding a perspective” voice, where I propose an alternative to Apple’s iPhone SDK.

🌳 Having a perspective

A Classroom for Humanity2019To gain more insights around these questions, I’ve been looking into the…The next rung up is “having a perspective.” It is characterized by this sense that I do indeed have a particular perspective, and I know why I have this perspective. I can look around and see ample evidence that the way I am seeing is self-consistent and coherent. I can discern my own work of constructing this perspective. When someone talks to me about it, I can describe my perspective (and the reasoning behind it) in detail. I can take the perspectives of others, understand them, compare them, show flaws and benefits in them, and even adjust mine to make it more robust.

Archaeology of Self2019Every experience I have is a new lesson in life, a new…When at this rung, I am not trying to answer the question of “why is this perspective true/false?” but rather “why is it so?” The growing depth of understanding of my perspective helps me maintain the clarity of direction, which frames the main strength of this rung: the capacity to lead others.

Decision-making mindsets2023I have this intuition that the process is not the most important…Cutting or highlighting?2021Talking with one of my wise colleagues, we arrived at this neat…It is my experience that leadership and commitment are at the different rungs of the ladder. Especially in fluid environments, these are two different activities. One is patiently staying a decided course of action, and the other is looking to navigate a changing terrain. The latter requires flexibility and rapid changing of the mind, which can appear like lack of conviction at the “holding a perspective” rung.

Dandelion/Elephant Strategy Rubric2022On the other hand, dandelions and the r-selected species they represent choose…The sense of organic flexibility, like weeds, permeates our models at this rung. The models open up, no longer precise and mechanistic, allowing for ambiguity and tolerating clusters of unknowable. When we have a perspective, we recognize that it’s just a snapshot of some much more complex thing that we aren’t yet seeing, and are able to be okay with our model’s inherent incompleteness. The source of groundness at this rung emerges not from the confidence of “knowing the world”, but rather from the sense of awe of the complexity of the world and the deep desire to glimpse the whole picture.

Going Forward Is Leaving Past Behind2014Greetings, hypothetical Web app developer. So I wrote this thing. It’s for…A post from 2014 about Web platform deprecation might be a sample of how I sound at this rung. There’s a patient and thorough analysis of the situation, admission of its gravity and high ambiguity, and an optimistic call to action. It is the voice of most of my writing at work.

🌀 Visiting perspectives

Limits to seeing: capacity and attachment2021Helping a colleague process tough feedback this week, I’ve been reaching for…The “visiting perspectives” rung is at the top of our ladder. In addition to seeing perspectives of others, I can shift to inhabit them. I can step out of what I believe to be true and temporarily adopt someone else’s ontological realm. I do this without judgment and temptation to evaluate it against my perspective, accepting that this someone else also has a rich life experience and a lot to teach me. I am a traveler who’s visiting perspectives, and the less I hold on to mine, the more depth of other perspectives is revealed to me.

Limits2022This story builds on the one I wrote a while ago, and…This ladder might actually be one of those spiral staircases. In a weird circular fashion, the last rung resembles the first one: in both, I appear to have no attachment to any given perspective, and may even seem lost. The big distinction is that in the first rung, I can see very little. In the last one, I have the full capacity to see perspectives of others around me. This process of perspective examination is deeply enriching, and offers the gift of being able to see blind spots that nobody else can. When I am able to stay at this rung at the ladder, it almost feels like I can see around corners. When I say “systems thinking”, I usually mean not a particular discipline or methodology, but rather the experience of gaining access to the complexity of mental models at this rung of the ladder.

Normative, Informative and Generative Voices2022Within this lens, the constant struggle between the two – and the…For me, writing rarely happens at this rung, because the moment is so fleeting. I could try and plead the case that most of my recent posts are written in that voice, but I suspect it’s just skill. I have learned to emulate the gentle, curious voice of this rung, even though I am not actually inhabiting it.

Decoherence2020There is no past or future. There are only stories of the…However, I do have a few posts that I remember writing immediately after touching that top rung. They have this nearly delirious delight of briefly seeing something much larger than what I can typically afford. My Decoherence post from 2020 post is one of those. The first sentence reaches for a galactic horizon: “There is no past or future”.

Perspective ladder mini-case study

To give you a sense of how traveling up and down the ladder feels, I’ll describe my experience at a meeting I’ve been at just last week – here it goes, with commentary.

Rubber duck meetings2022When I am looking for new insights, a generative conversation with colleagues…We were discussing a subject that I knew a lot about, and I was pretty sure about that. I was also pretty sure that we were all on the same page. I started getting a little bit distracted, checking my email, and thinking about something else. Only a bit of attention remained on the conversation.

The Relationship Polarity2021I’ve been feeling a little stuck in my progress with the Four…At this point, it is unclear if I am sticking to a perspective, holding it or having one. All three feel the same. However, the “partial attention” bit points at the sticking to perspective: letting it hold me.

Sitting with discomfort2021While processing a difficult conversation with a colleague, we found this insight.…Then, one of the participants spoke up, revealing a different perspective that was incongruent with mine. My first internal reaction: “Wait, what? What’s happening here?”

Aha! Indeed, it looks like I was at “sticking to a perspective,” rung, and my colleague’s confident voice triggered a dip into the “just stayin’ alive” rung. The disorientation is a telltale sign in such cases.

Then I immediately had this sense of irritation come over me. I was feeling disheartened and disappointed.

Radical Candor as fallback notch locator2022Have you ever experienced this really fun moment when a few of…It sounds like I quickly escaped out of the lowest rung and climbed to “sticking to a perspective.” There could have been two alternatives here: one of me sticking to my colleague’s perspective, immediately adopting it, and the other is of me remembering that I have a lot of expertise in this area, and sticking to that. It looks like I picked the latter. One interesting marker for “sticking to a perspective” rung is Should-ness. If I feel strongly that I should be doing something or acting in a certain way, and/or others around me should be doing the same, or something I expect them to do – that’s a sign that I am at this rung of the ladder.

Receiving negative feedback2023Negative feedback is rarely fun, but can show up in varying degrees…After fuming for a little bit, but not saying anything, I noticed that I was feeling irritated. I tried to reorient and did a breathing exercise to release the tension. Once I settled down, I started noticing that my colleague was just wrong: they clearly didn’t understand the problem as well as I did.

Somatic Signals: How I use the Four Needs Framework2020This post marks a second anniversary of my self-work journey. Wow. 2020…This indicates that I am currently climbing upward, likely at the “holding a perspective” rung. There’s usually a sense of relief that accompanies reaching this rung, when I realize that all is well and it is the others who are lost, not me.

I started asking questions trying to better sense where their misunderstanding originated. To my surprise, I realized that my colleague had good insights that I could build on to improve my knowledge.

Being excited about disagreement2021Chatting with colleagues this week, I am recognizing that it might be…Orders of Humility2021Alex Komoroske and I had a great generative conversation today and as…I am now at the “having a perspective” run. There is a subtle shift when climbing up here: other people’s “wrongness” becomes a parts bin for ideas. Instead of being a protector of my perspective, I become a savvy gardener who eagerly improves it once novel insights are uncovered.

The meeting ended on a good note, and I felt pretty excited about learning new things, though I wasn’t quite sure what to do about the difference of perspectives between my colleague and I that we encountered.

The third option2024I facilitated a workshop on systems thinking recently (or “lensical thinking” as…It was only next morning that I realized how neatly our perspectives cover a larger problem space that I haven’t seen before, and how their view is not only valid, but also overlays a blind spot that I suspected was there, but couldn’t quite see (because that’s how our blind spots typically behave). The idea of how we could collaborate immediately became obvious and got me excited and fired up for the day.

My Self-work Routine2019I started intentionally working on myself a year ago today, writing my…This flash of insight is a result of briefly reaching the top rung of the ladder. I could swear it feels like it’s accompanied by the angelic choir sound: that’s how clarifying and revealing the insight that arrives. I wish I’d spend more time at this rung, but I only seem to reach it ephemerally and in certain conditions. Things like having enough rest and sleep, for example, are a large part of the equation. The excitement that followed is a drop to “having a perspective” rung: learning and incorporating the new gems into my garden of mental models. It is followed by the commitment and determination (“I am fired up!”) that tells me I clicked into the “holding a perspective” rung.

What I learned so far

The problem understanding framework2022When starting on this adventure, I wanted to construct a framework that…The Four Needs Framework2020The stories we tell ourselves shape how we see the world around…Stages of project forking2023With this framing, I accumulated a few insights. Here they are. Your…I hope this illustration has been helpful. I have been using a less kempt rendition of this framework for a while. Here are a couple of things I’ve learned along the way.

Change2022If you’ve read my stories before, you may recognize the familiar stair-step…How we engage with LLMs2023It seems popular to write about generative AI and large language models…Organizational pathologyseven days afterI was reading the latest book by Richard Rumelt, The Crux, and…The story above might sound familiar, because it is a loose, more flexible re-telling of the adult development theory. I’ve been unsatisfied with how, in conversations about ADT, the stage-like progression aspect of the theory takes center stage, displacing another useful aspect of it – the fluidity of how we show up in our daily lives. It is tempting to imagine that once a person reaches a certain stage, they just kind of stay at it. Since my experience is a bit different, viewing it as a one-way stair step progression felt too static. However, when combined with the concept of model flattening, it seems to gain this dynamic flavor.