Using Mental Models to Improve Workplace Culture

Takeaways

Learn how mental models shape a productive workplace culture, aligning team behaviors with organizational goals for enhanced success.

One of the many benefits of living in the Pacific Northwest is the proximity to so many leading-edge businesses. I have been able to learn so much from these innovators who are right in our backyard. One of the common conversations is around tools to build a healthy, productive, scale-friendly culture. And that conversation often brings out the concept of mental models as one of the most oft-used and most clearly effective tools in culture formation.

A mental model is packaging an idea or a way of functioning, so that others can adopt it, making it easier for everyone to think and work in the same ways. It is not about “group think”, but instead a process to gain alignment. Some call a collection of these mental models a “playbook”.

Over the years I have been an avid collector of mental models. I add them to my playbook when I hear a leader verbalize one that resonates with me, or when inspiration strikes and I verbalize one of my own. Here are some of my favorites:

·      Embrace Risk and Change – Great organizations rise above the rest through innovation.  Innovation means taking risks and embracing change – lots of change. If we don't like change, we're going to like irrelevance even less.  Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be overcome. We value calculated risk-taking because you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

·      Bias for Action - In this fast-paced environment, those who sit back and wait to be called on, checked on, or handheld will get left behind.  If you want to excel here, you have to want it and chase it.  If you need clarity, ask for it.  If you need a budget increase, take action.  Speed matters to us. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We pay people to make decisions and solve problems, not to sit back and point them out.  We are fine with asking for forgiveness instead of permission (most of the time). Good intentions don’t matter around here – only actions.

·      Disagree and Commit - We are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when we disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. We do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. But once a decision is determined, we commit wholly to that decision even if it was not the one we advocated for.

·      Healthy is not an absence of Conflict.  Healthy is dealing with conflict well.  Around here we will say what we think, even if it is controversial, make tough decisions without agonizing, and question actions inconsistent with our values. We are all for teamwork but we don’t want group think.  We seek to think independently and talk about our disagreements openly, honestly, and with civility. Unhealthy people create drama, courageous people prevent drama. When there is more truth in the hallway than in the meeting room, we have a problem.

·      The Golden Rule  – We treat others and ourselves with respect at the same time. Instead of entertaining a discussion about anyone else on the team, we will firmly encourage others to deal with their concerns directly with the person they have a concern with. Being able to manage our own emotions in all situations is a hallmark of a great teammate.

·      Equity is Essential - We embrace, celebrate, and include ideas, cultures, and people who are different from what is familiar to us. There is no “other” here, just “us”. We will champion the path toward diversity, equity, and inclusion because it is loving, right, and best for our work together. It is not enough to do good work, make a profit, and be part of a great team. We commit to making the world a more just, equitable, and sustainable place for all. Diversity is being asked to the party, but inclusion is being asked to dance, and around here, we all dance together.

·      No Wet Babies - Nothing breaks down trust faster than being handed a problem that should have been fixed by the person handing the problem to you.  It feels like being handed a screaming, wet baby. By the baby’s parent.  When a messy issue or problem arises in our area or on our watch, we don’t hand that mess to a teammate.  “Asking for help” is fine. Asking someone else to do your job for you is not. We will do our best to offer solutions instead of problems.

·      Push Paretto – If we have ten things to do, we will decide which two produce 80% of the results and focus on them.  Possibly at the exclusion of others.  Leadership is a proxy for judgment.

·      Freedom and Responsibility - High-performing people produce growth.  Growth produces chaos.  The traditional solution for chaos is process and control.  Implementation of too many processes drives out the very high-performing people that produced growth.  High-performing people thrive on freedom and responsibility.  Our culture celebrates providing just enough structure that high performers have the systems and tools they need to thrive, but not going so far as creating needless bureaucracy. We will constantly manage the tension between maintaining healthy levels of process while increasing freedom and responsibility so that we can continue to keep and attract high-performing people.

·      People do not run the business.  Systems run the business and people run the systems.  It is a myth that people run organizations.  At least they don’t run great ones.  Great organizations are a collection of systems and processes that solve 80% of the problems and issues that come our way every day allowing the people to use their creativity on the 20% of unique issues and opportunities that knock on our door.

·      Customer Focused - We will never settle for satisfying our customers – satisfaction is the given.  They must become raving fans for life.  We pay attention to competitors but we obsess over customers.

·      Reward excellence, not competence - We raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. We recognize exceptional talent, are willing to move them throughout the organization, and take seriously our role in coaching others.  We will always try to hire people who are smarter than us, and always take a chance on “better”, even if it seems like a potential threat.  We use the organization to build people, not the other way around.  Everyone in every position needs to pass the keeper test which is “Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving for another job, would I work hard to keep?” 

·      There is wisdom in tension – We value customers AND staff, we target growth AND stability, and we need structure AND freedom.  We don’t want to have the pendulum too far to the side of any of these.  In the middle is where we want to live because there is truth in both sides and wisdom is in the middle of the tension.

·      Stewardship -  Every dollar we earn is a trust that we only get to spend once. We make every spending decision count. We accomplish more with less and stretch ourselves to be resourceful.  There are no extra points for growing budget size, only for spending it exceptionally well.  We think long-term and organization-wide. We never say "That’s not my job." We see the culture as something that we all help create, not critique.

·      Earn Trust - We are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. We do not believe that our body odor smells of perfume. We benchmark ourselves and our teams against the best.  Our leaders stay connected to the details and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them.  Everyone is willing to do great things – be willing to do small things. Be brilliant AND humble. Pick up the trash off the floor.

As you think about the culture you want to create within your organization, begin crafting a list of concepts that define how you want your team to think, how you want them to treat each other, how your values look when they are lived out, and begin chunking those ideas into phrases or ideas.

How do you uncover mental models of your own? Start by asking yourself these questions:

• What ideas and concepts do you love to share? What do you hear yourself saying to others?

• What do others hear you saying? When a teammate says back to you, “You always tell us _____”, that may be a mental model of yours.

• What do people say about you or your organization in the community? What are you known for?

• What ideals and mechanisms helped you make decisions the last time you were in a crisis?

• When you let someone go or when you hire someone, how do you know they were, or were not, a fit?

• When teammates talk about what they like about this organization, what do they talk about?

• What ideas from books, podcasts, or speeches really resonate with you?

It is OK if some appear to have tension or leave aspects to be defined and discussed. Your teammates with a low tolerance for ambiguity will want everything to be water-tight but some things just live best in tension and you can be OK with that.

Values are essential but often stay a bit distant and hard to apply. For instance, “trustworthy” is a common value but that may mean 30 different things to your team of 20 people.  When you take that value and define it as “earning trust”, “Freedom and Responsibility” and “Stewardship” in your playbook and give examples of picking trash up off the floor, being vocally self-critical, and asking the hard questions about data and metrics, now your team has a pathway to live out being trustworthy. And you have some tools to talk openly when you feel someone is not living this out.

Creating culture has many components and takes time and effort to do well. In the prior post, I outlined foundational ideas for creating culture, developing mental models is among the most important. Formalizing your mental models in a way that everyone around you can understand how you are thinking as the leader will take you several steps forward into creating a healthy, aligned, focused culture.