Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth.
— Tom Barrett
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you do the things you do, and why you do the things you do the way you do them? It is a fact of life that human beings create order. Some like to create order more than others, and some individuals’ sense of what order is makes more sense than others; but whatever degree of order we create, the fact is we have systems and processes in our lives that are a result of deeply ingrained assumptions or generalizations that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. These perspectives are also known as our Mental Models (also referred to in Chapters 9 and 10).
I once knew someone whose office and desk, to the untrained eye, looked like a burglar had come in and turned the place upside down; but if you were to ask that individual for a specific document or piece of information, they could find it instantly in a bewildering display of order in the chaos. For most of us, our everyday lives, even if they feel chaotic, are full of routines: the order in which you get dressed in the morning; the way you make your breakfast; how you tackle household chores; the way you stock your fridge. We bring our need for order into the workplace and start a whole series of routines: where we park our car; what we do when we get into the office; how we save our documents; how we file our paperwork; when we prefer to make phone calls; when we call meetings etc. But the problem with our routines and mental models is that they often clash with or get interrupted by someone else. For some, a break from the routine is a welcome distraction, for others, it disrupts their whole day and prevents them from being productive.
Balancing Complexity with Simple Routines
In a complex world, routines are essential to bring order so that things get done, and ensure that the things that need to get done, get done on time. Mental models help us make sense of the world around us. But routines and mental models also lull us into a false sense of security. They create a sense of having a handle on things and being in control. Worse still, they prevent us from thinking outside the boxes, systems, and processes that we have constructed. In a fast-paced world, routine prevents us from the dynamic and flexible thinking and ways of operating that will enable us to be proactive rather than reactive.
Mental models are often the greatest barriers to implementing new ideas in our life and work, and can lead us astray. Consider the story of the blind men and the elephant, where several blind men are feeling different parts of an elephant and describing it. The descriptions by themselves are inaccurate, but when combined into one, give a clearer albeit still flawed description of what an elephant really looks like. There does need to be a balance. Routines are important if they work, because routine can help us to be efficient. But organizational and personal effectiveness requires that we regularly commit ourselves to surfing the edge of chaos, forcing ourselves to challenge our mental models and ensuring we maintain a growth rather than fixed mindset.
Avoiding Liminality
A great analogy I heard recently is that of the rock pool, which helps develop the concept of living in a place of change and routine at the same time. First, imagine you are at the seaside. If you are lying on the beach or bobbing on the sea in a boat, you are in a place of routine, lulled into a sense of security, but you are in danger of being unprepared for changes that occur. In your own experience, you might have seen people on the beach caught out by a rising tide and have to hurriedly gather their belongings to stop them being swamped by the incoming waves. Or you may have seen individuals in a dinghy suddenly realize that they have drifted too far from shore, and struggle to bring themselves back to a safe place. The examples of the people on the beach being caught out by the incoming tide, or the people in the dinghy, can be analogous to an organization or individual being caught out by liminality. The term liminality is used to “refer to in-between situations and conditions that are characterized by the dislocation of established structures, the reversal of hierarchies, and uncertainty regarding the continuity of tradition and future outcomes” (Horvath et al., 2015).
But there is another place where you can place yourself at the seaside of organizational and personal effectiveness, the rock pool. Rock pools are particularly challenging and harsh environments. Plants and animals that live here must be able to cope with constantly changing conditions as water temperature, salinity, and oxygen levels fluctuate. Coping with all this and with crashing waves, in addition to avoiding predators, is no easy task. Yet rock pools are teeming with a rich variety of sea life that adapt and avoid liminality. Sea anemones, limpets, and seaweed are all stuck to rocks to prevent them from being washed away by the tidal currents. All can move from their anchored points when they need to, but they survive in the rock pool by being able to respond to the changing environment while maintaining a firm footing where they need to. This is the space that individuals and organizations need to establish to achieve effectiveness. They need to let go of the comfortable places and surf the edge of chaos, having a firm-enough grip on a solid foundation (purpose and values) while being flexible enough to respond to the changing requirements of a dynamic and fast-changing global environment.
Developing a Rock Pool Mentality
So how do you break out of your mental models and routines? You can develop a rock pool mentality by:
- Creating a safe environment in which people feel comfortable surfacing and examining their mental models; it must also be an environment where decisions are based on what’s best for the individual or organization, not on politics;
- Helping people develop their skills of reflection and inquiry;
- Promoting diversity rather than conformity;
- Agree to disagree; everyone does not need to agree with the various mental models that exist; each one is just an additional piece of information;
- Getting comfortable with uncertainty; we will never know the complete story.
This process requires individuals and organizations alike to change how they think about the nature of work and life. Once those barriers are reduced, we can begin to see mental models becoming leverage points for the innovation and creativity required to surf the edge of chaos.
Manage Your Career Tool #16 – Breaking Mental Models
Adapted from Spodek (2013)
Changing mental models requires an examination of your beliefs and those things that you value and deciding whether those beliefs and values help you to achieve what you want to in life, or whether they are holding you back and preventing you from being a success. Once you have recognized any limiting beliefs and values, it is possible to begin work on renewing your mind and challenging your belief system in order to ensure that your mental model is aligned with your desired purpose. There are three stages to this process:
- Improving your awareness of current beliefs
- Deciding what mental models you do want
- Replacing beliefs
It is important that you realize that as you engage with these exercises that you understand that mental models don’t always change overnight. Under pressure, it is easy to slip back into old ways of thinking, and you need to be determined to challenge yourself when you notice you are doing so, without being judgmental and beating yourself up for ‘wrong thinking.’ It is being deliberate in capturing thoughts that are unhelpful in pursuing your goal, and reiterating your new mental model until it becomes ingrained into your belief and value set.
Task 1 – Improving Your Awareness of Current Beliefs
This task is simply about taking notice of your beliefs and making a note of them. Over the course of one week, carry a notebook and pen with you. When you become aware that something in the environment is a trigger, take notice of the belief and write it in your notebook. No analysis is necessary at this stage, you simply want to capture a record of your mental life, the beliefs you have and the mental models you use to make sense of the world we live in.
Task 2 – Deciding What Mental Models You Do Want
After you have completed Task 1, you need to spend some time deciding what beliefs and mental models are aligned with what you want in your life, and which of those are disabling you from achieving success and need to be discarded. For example; if one of your beliefs is “I am not good enough” and your mental model involves constantly feeling inadequate and having to strive to prove you are good enough, then this is not a life giving belief or model and would need to be replaced. Write down the beliefs and mental models that you want to discard below:
Once you have decided what mental models you wish to discard, you will need to determine what you are going to replace them with. The beliefs that conflict with your goal need can only be challenged with something that works better for you. Using the unhelpful belief “I am not good enough” from Task 2, you would rewrite this belief as “I am good enough” and your mental model would be reframed as not needing to have to prove yourself to anyone. For each of the beliefs and mental models you highlighted in Task 2, write a corresponding replacement below:
Conclusion – Are You Ready for Encounter
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
—Apple Inc.
Do you feel it? I woke up this morning with a sense of purpose. Today is that day. It may seem like you have no idea what the day will bring, or that circumstances are muddled. You may not know what you are doing, or even why you are doing what you are doing. But maybe today is a day to set aside all the confusion, all the worry, and all the uncertainty and stand up and count today as the day that something new is going to happen. If you have completed all the Manage Your Career exercises and the associated tasks, you will have started you Challenge to Be and not to Do. As you begin to notice the changes and feel the difference that being rather than doing a job brings to your life, I encourage you to share your learning and revelation with others. Becoming an evangelist to set others free from merely doing a job to pursuing a life where you can pursue the release of your full potential.
Good luck and Best Wishes. I know you going to be awesome!