Mental Models: Are you aware of yours?

I believe this is a profoundly important book, and is very helpful for organizations who tend to get stuck. This is just one of the chapters.

The reason that new ideas are rarely implemented and followed through on in organizations is because of the strength of our mental models (deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting.) Organizations can break through this log-jam by managing mental models - i.e. by surfacing, testing and improving them. We don't hold 'organizations' in our heads, but images, assumptions and stories. While we don't always behave congruently with our espoused theories, we do behave congruently with our mental models (or theories-in-use.) The problem is not that we have such mental models, but that they are often implicit and unexamined. Sometimes we can use new mental models to replace old redundant ones. To surface and examine our mental models we must "recognize leaps of abstraction", articulate what we don't usually say, balance inquiry and advocacy skills, and recognize discrepancies between espoused theories and theories-in-use. Also, organizations need to train people to surface key assumptions and develop face-to-face learning skills. There are ways to make learning of this nature unavoidable. 1) Move from traditional planning to learning, and 2) create internal boards to help people with creative thinking. People need to know that consensus or agreement is not the required outcome of learning. We need both reflection skills (leaps of abstraction, and the left-hand column) and skills of inquiry (balancing inquiry and advocacy.) Guidelines to this kind of reciprocal inquiry are offered.

Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline, the Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. (pp. 175-204) New York: Doubleday.


http://www.quality.org/tqmbbs/tools-techs/menmodel.txt