Blind Faith - Following faulty mental maps: QMN016

Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Wednesday, 15 May

(Today’s report is a 6 minute read)

Today’s report includes for the first time a new section by Chris Papasadero on frontline leadership. Chris has long noted that there isn’t much literature or training for first-time managers and front line executives. This short semi-regular section provides some mental models for the people who do the real work.  

BLUF: Like mindsets, mental maps can either help you chart a course to your next waypoint or ultimate goal, or they can plunge you into confusion and chaos at the worst possible time. Use caution.

KS here. I first read Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why shortly after it was published in 2003 with an interest in understanding the mindsets of those who've survived disastrous events – and those who haven't. It's long been a book that I've recommended to friends: it's an incredibly rich source of psychological survival tools. When I re-read it in 2017 through the lens I've gained by working in media and strategy, I discovered that its lessons are as applicable to business as they are to life-altering events. Of particular interest to me is Gonzales' approach to mental maps: the psychological models of ourselves and the worlds around us – our personal and professional environments – that we create and navigate reality by.

Laurence Gonzales observes and identifies an inherent flaw in our dependence on these mental maps: namely that, like mindsets, their inflexibility can be more detrimental than helpful and that there is always a danger of failing to redraw our maps in accordance with the shifting landscapes of circumstance. We fail to recognize certain landmarks, or worse, we misidentify them. "In daily life," Gonzales writes," people operate on the necessary illusion that they know where they are. Most of the time, they don't. The only time most people are not lost to some degree is when they are at home." He continues, adding, "All you have to do is fail to update your mental map and then persist in following it even when the landscape (or your compass) tries to tell you it's wrong" (emphasis mine).

During a meeting that I attended some time ago, I witnessed two business leaders with divergent mental maps clashing. Although both men were operating in the same space and ostensibly working towards the same goals, they had wildly different views of the operational landscape that they were attempting to navigate. While there was some agreement as to where certain elements stood in relation to their position, they could not decide which direction to take their plan. Eventually, the more insistent voice – an entrepreneur – browbeat the other into submission... and the project failed for all the reasons that the detractor – who served as head legal counsel for the company – had identified. The entrepreneur had not only failed to correctly assess the actual map on which their situation was taking place, he had also mistaken his attorney's mental map, viewing his cautiousness as obstinacy and his reticence as a lack of commitment.

Thousands of people conduct their daily lives and business according to faulty mental maps, living on borrowed time, far off the trail without even knowing it. As Gonzales writes, “Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion.” This is as true in the business wilderness as it is beneath a forest canopy. Whether it's a company that refuses to adapt to change in an industry that has outgrown the models that they cling to or a start-up insisting that their service or product will sell despite all market evidence to the contrary, simply because they've invested time, money, and emotional energy in it, the result will be the same: the inevitable shock and trauma that comes with the realization that they are irretrievably lost... and help isn't coming. (KSA)

AI WORD SALAD: Use This Cutting-Edge AI Text Generator to Write Stories, Poems, News Articles, and More (2 min) - If you use https://talktotransformer.com/ long enough, will it eventually write like Shakespeare? Seems unlikely, at least for now. “The text it generates has surface-level coherence but no long-term structure. When it writes stories, for example, characters appear and disappear at random, with no consistency in their needs or actions. When it generates dialogue, conversations drift aimlessly from topic to topic. If it gets more than a few responses, it seems like good luck, not skill.” Sounds like it has a great career in American politics ahead of it. (KSA)

DELIBERATION OF TECH: San Francisco Becomes 1st US City to Ban Facial Recognition Technology (2 min) May every organization and government be so circumspect in its application of AI. "Good policing does not mean living in a police state," said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who introduced the measure, at a hearing last week. "Living in a safe and secure community does not mean living in a surveillance state." But critics say police need all the help they can get, especially in a city with high-profile events and high rates of property crime. That people expect privacy in public space is unreasonable given the proliferation of cell phones and surveillance cameras, said Meredith Serra, a member of a resident public safety group Stop Crime SF.” (BJM)

THE JUNIOR EXEC BY CPP: "Autonomy of Action, Unity of Effort" (2 min)

The American military is unique in the responsibilities and freedoms it gives to its frontline operators; this is designed to create ‘autonomy of action, unity of effort’ so that large organizations can achieve the mission without need to micromanage every level of the company. Even the lowest level non-commissioned officer (NCO) is allowed creativity in how they achieve the ‘commanders intent’ and is trained in tactics that are flexible and adaptable to the mission before them. In the business world, this means agreeing on things like corporate strategy, understanding company values values, and metrics for success... and then giving junior managers the freedom to figure out how to get there.  

As a junior manager, your job is to figure out how to create unity of effort given your newfound responsibility. There’s limitations to understand and acknowledge, limits to what you can affect and change, and constraints on how you get there - but as a new manager you have the opportunity to get away from dealing with the details of your team and step back to view it’s overall mission and its overall performance as they align to the strategy of your company. As a front-line manager, you know your job better than anyone else – that’s why you got promoted – and so you’ll know the best possible way of achieving the intent of your manager and your company. (CPP)

Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.

KS Anthony (KSA), Brady Moore (BJM) & Chris Papasadero (CPP)