Mapping the business mind

Drawing the reader ingeniously straight into the core issues, the book shows that our mind is our eye. As explained in the preface, there is an overwhelming tendency to see things according to one's experience and knowledge.

One of the most enduring""and perhaps limiting""illusions is our belief that the world we see is the real world. It is, in fact, an internal world of neurons, synapses, neuro-chemicals, and electrical activity with its incredibly complex structure, functioning in ways we have only a vague sense of, which we call the "mental model".

The book uses the phrase "mental model" (or "mindset") "as a short form for all the complex neuronal activities that we use in making sense of something and then deciding what action to take".

According to the authors, a "fundamental message of this book is what you see in any situation depends in very large part upon what you bring to the table".

Not much different from the time-tested tenets of management, the quintessence of its message signifies how to adapt and employ the mindset""mental model""to deal with events and opportunities in personal life, business, and society.

Authors commend the role of intuition in shaping destiny. The ability to see the world differently can create significant opportunities, as companies such as Southwest Airlines, FedEx, Charles Schwab, and others are shown to have demonstrated.

Part I recognises the importance of models and the way they create limits and opportunities. The brain, weighing an average just around three pounds, has a complex structure and complex functions. We have around 100 billion neurons, which communicate via perhaps several hundred trillion synapses.

The book refers to " Running the Miracle Mile": the four-minute mile was something beyond human comprehension, and thus beyond human achievement until May 1954, when, on an Oxford track, Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds, followed, two months later in Finland, by Australia's John Landy, who broke Bannister's miracle mile and clocked 3 minutes, 58 seconds. Within three years, 16 other athletes had also broken this record. "What changed was the mental model," explain the authors.

Part II leads the reader to find ways of keeping his mental model relevant, deciding when to change to a new model, where to find ways of seeing, how to zoom in and out to make sense of a complex environment, and how to conduct continuous experimentation.

It explains how we often become prisoners of set routine and behaviour, and thus grow less and less effective. As the authors put it, like the magician's daughter Miranda in Shakespeare's The Tempest, we are prisoners of our own islands of thought until some foreign intruders come to our shores.

The book explains the efficacy of the business models that persons like Lord Arnold Weinstock and Lord George Simpson (General Electric Co, UK) created were based upon wholly different mental models.

Part III deals with the identified obstacles to change, and strategies for addressing them. There are two basic approaches to the decision process: an analytical, formal process and an intuitive process.

When our intuition is wrong, our snap judgements will be off the mark. As the caption "the Power to do the Impossible" suggests for chapter 11, there are examples like of Howard Schultz, who joined Starbucks in 1982. The biggest personal challenge for Schultz was "reinventing yourself".

As he observes, the CEO needs to be nearsighted and farsighted, i.e. leaders need to be able to zoom out to be able to see the picture and zoom in to focus on the detail.

Likewise, Oprah Winfrey was successful not by fitting into the mould but by breaking it. So also, Andy Grove of Intel. All these three were able to embrace a different view of the world.

The stories of their successes reinforce some of the key messages of the book: recognise the influence of childhood education and early work in shaping the mental models; keep the models relevant; make things happen by transforming the world around; and act quickly and effectively.

Part IV highlights the view how we explore ways to access models quickly through intuition to transform our world. Elaborating the theme of challenging one's own thinking, personal business, and society, chapter 12 demonstrates how our models shape our worlds and our actions by way of seeking out new models, creating a portfolio of approaches, knowing when to shift from one approach to another, sifting through complexity, understanding one's own models, conducting one's own experiments, and recognising the structures which reinforce the old models.

The book moves on to catalogue a few of the lessons learnt about mental models from the dot.com bubble and its aftermath: understand your models; know when to switch horses; recognise that paradigm shifts are a two-way street; see a new way of seeing; sift sense from streams of complexity; engage in experiments; bridge adaptive disconnects; consider the infrastructure; and trust your intuition""but gain the experience to change it.

The peroration draws an essence of the authors' refrain. They cite Rainer Maria Rilke, "The future enters into us, in order to transform us, long before it happens", and go on to advise: "If you can cultivate the ability to think in new directions, you have the possibility to transform the business of your life and the life of your business ... To see these opportunities and seize them, you need to courage and understanding to think impossible thoughts""and then act upon them".

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THE POWER OF IMPOSSIBLE THINKING

Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Colin Crook
with Robert Gunther
Wharton School Publishing
Price: Rs 499; Pages: 274