Lessons In Excellence : Power Of Impossible Thinking

07 April 2007

Ranjan Kapoor: Generally so. And that is the reason why a lot of us do not see the blindingly obvious things.

Anuradha Sengupta: Ok, Jerry, how would you explain mental models? Would I be right in saying that sum of all mental models we have is our imperceptive background, what we are used to calling our imperceptive background?

Yoram Wind: Yes in the sense there has been many terms used over the years in the Literature describing it. We describe this as the sum processes that lead the person to understand the environment in a certain way, to make sense of the environment and to act in a certain way.

I think the easiest way to understand mental models are through examples and if I may, the cleanest way and the most intuitive one is really the example we tried in the book and the example is that you walk at night — you leave your office and walk to the parking lot and you suddenly hear steps behind you and you suddenly start walking a little faster because you are a little scared and as you walk faster the steps behind you get faster and closer to you and suddenly you turn your head a little bit and you see a colleague of yours walking also to his car and you sigh of relief and also walk your colleague to the car.

Now what happened here is that the situation was exactly the same situation — the steps behind you. We created two different models in our mind. One was the fear because suddenly you remember that you had read in the papers that there was a attack at night in a similar situation and your mind created the whole situation of fear. Next once you recognised the person — the instant change. The model that you had changed completely. And I think that's what it becomes. It's the way that we think. I'll give you another example. When we think about inner city, the images that come into mind immediately is crime, drug, poverty…

Anuradha Sengupta: A place you don't want to go to!