Multidisciplinary
Models
Models used consciously
You already think using mental models. We all do. We intuitively apply concepts learned at various stages of our lives and experienced in professional and personal areas. They appear in our language when we say things like momentum, critical mass, catalyst, diminishing return, regression to the mean, 80/20 principle, opportunity cost, and many more. They are basic concepts from all fields of science and, in fact, all areas of human culture that help us to interpret the world and to make predictions about future events. There is a difference, however, between just knowing the models and internalizing and using them consciously and purposefully, including knowing their limits and when they become misleading.
I am a great enthusiast of studying and purposefully applying mental models. The models shape our thinking and intellectual development. When we have a broad set of models, we can assess reality more accurately and faster. If our mental toolbox is restricted, we tend to see everything through the limited lens of that toolbox. In coaching sessions, I use diverse mental models to form questions, analogies and comparisons. I also like reversing or clashing models to disrupt conventional thinking and create new innovative perspectives.
Multidisciplinary framework
When mental models reach another level of usefulness is when we create a multi-dimensional framework out of them.
Charles Munger of Berkshire Hathaway, who is a great promoter of this idea, calls this ‘a latticework of mental models’. The latticework is there to hold all the models that we know and is open to adding new ones as we learn them. In order for this framework to be even more effective in real life, it should be multidisciplinary. This is because the problems and challenges that we face typically cross multiple disciplines or can at least benefit from multiple approaches and methods. Knowing models from multiple fields helps to fine-tune our thinking and get closer to the real nature of the problem at hand, rather than stretching the reality to match a limited set of cognitive tools.
In my coaching sessions, I take my clients in a truly multidisciplinary direction, taking advantage of as diverse areas as mathematics, law, history, finance, biology, psychology, chemistry, arts, physics, history and last, but not least: philosophy. What is particularly useful in sessions is exploring models that are not our mental home turf. This gives my clients new perspectives and new tools to solve their challenges. If you have an engineering mind like I do, and decades of experience in the field, it will be challenging but also beneficial and refreshing to dive into ‘soft’ areas like human behavior, inductive thinking or multiple perception positions.
Learning mental models is a life-long process of deeply understanding basic concepts and internalizing them through practice before adding new ones. The compounding effect of expanding a dynamic cognitive toolbox makes it efficient and intellectually rewarding.
Mix, match and explore
Where true intellectual development and innovation kick in is when you start freely crossing between disciplines and developing your own models with the goal to build real-world knowledge and insights.
Ignoring boundaries between disciplines overcomes reductionism which works great to explain narrow and isolated phenomena but is less useful to describe everyday challenges in our private and professional lives. Instead, we take models from one discipline and apply them to another discipline, or we take models from different disciplines and overlay them, looking for patterns of similarity and where they supplement each other – with the goal of creating a new, more holistic and robust, representation of the world.
This approach, when used consistently in a series of coaching sessions, leads to having our own ‘latticework’ of models that are better adjusted to your real-world situations. Also, you are more likely to actually use the tools that you developed yourself. Apart from the specific insights that you derive from new mental models, it is worth observing what happens to your intellectual capabilities over the longer run. What my clients often report is an improved ability to see how everything is related and similar to each other and how these similarities help generate analogies and reduce the overall cognitive effort. Another aspect is the ability to hold multiple conflicting ideas in one’s head and explore them without causing intellectual discomfort.
Turn insights into actions
With all the value of knowledge and wisdom, they are still not solutions but rather explanations. Useful for analysis and understanding but not sufficient for outcome development and change. What is needed is a shift in perspective from looking back to looking into the future and planning the required actions to bridge the gap between this intended future and the present moment.
This is where the Ericksonian approach, with its focus on solutions and outcomes, comes to help. It is very pragmatic in promoting well-formed goals and working toward them through a series of tangible actions. The goals are always rooted in your values, are stated in the positive and describe solutions rather than problems. They are also concrete enough to be measurable and realistic enough to be achievable within the near future.
At the end of every coaching session, you will be asked to consider specific actions to execute before the next session. And then at the beginning of the next session, we will discuss how you were able to follow through and what learnings can be derived from this experience. This approach, when consistently applied, leads to increased efficiency, responsibility and self-agency.
