How I Think
Last week, I gave a talk on the tension between our owner selves and our worker selves. I’m pretty happy with the way it came together, but I struggled to make it work. I had limited time on stage, limited knowledge of the audience, and quite a bit I wanted to say.
In the initial conversation I had with event organizers, we talked about how likely attendees felt many conflicting priorities given the current economic environment. I had recently published my article on why “the economy” doesn’t mean much when it comes to the needs and well-being of small business owners and independent workers. And I suggested that I hit similar themes but with a broader message that would apply no matter which way the economic winds were blowing. Hence, talking about the tension between our owner selves and our worker selves.
When I'm thinking about this kind of talk, I tend to structure it into 3 basic parts.
The first is a specific challenge that the audience is dealing with. The second is a mental model that I can use to elucidate that challenge. And third, a broader application that helps people use that mental model in a variety of circumstances.1
The specific challenge is what the organizers told me their attendees were dealing with (i.e., conflicting priorities). That connected to a mental model that I had for why conflicting priorities happen (i.e., how economic factors impact workers differently than owners). Then, I used that mental model to bridge to a broader application (i.e., how running a small business creates considerations that exert opposing forces).
That’s how I came up with the original presentation topic and title: “Navigating the messy middle between owner and worker.”
But when I sat down to start outlining what I wanted to say and how I wanted to build out the talk, I realized that there were, oh, about six mental models that I could use to talk about the difference between owners and workers. First, I eliminated a couple of models that would typically be my go-to concepts because I didn’t want to be written off as a Radical Leftist. I don’t have a problem with being identified as a Radical Leftist, of course. But I knew that if I could explain the issue without using the vocabulary of Marxism and class struggle, I could get everyone on board, regardless of how they’d identify themselves politically.
Next, I tried out a mental model where I’d explain how the different values and incentives within a corporate structure are different from the values and incentives within a small business structure. I made diagrams! I was on to something! But, for as useful as that mental model might be, I realized that I couldn’t use it to structure a 30- to 45-minute talk. There were just too many steps between the acute experience of the problem and the mental model I wanted to share to think about.
All throughout this initial phase, I made slides.2 I’ve learned that while I don’t think of myself as a visual thinker, starting to turn concepts into visualizations earlyhelps me properly scope and argue a talk. I noticed that the word “tension” seemed fruitful in terms of visual language. I grabbed a picture of two pairs of hands pulling on a rope, tug-of-war style. I put that image into the middle of the slide after one in which I briefly outlined how owner priorities differ from worker priorities. In the top left corner of the tug-of-war slide, I wrote: “These considerations aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive…” And in the bottom right corner, I wrote: “But they do tend to exert force in opposite directions.”
At that point, I realized I had overcomplicated the whole thing.
Honestly, any decent talk that I give has a moment where I’ve realized I’ve overcomplicated things and need to go back to the drawing board! The not-so-decent talks are the ones in which I don't realize I've overcomplicated things.
That tension—being pulled in opposite directions—spoke directly to the difficulty I knew everyone in the room would have experience with. It was a simple and effective mental model for the problem. Of course, that mental model didn’t have anything to say about the solution. So I needed to keep going.
As I continued to work through what I wanted to say, I recognized that the next step in the model would be to use a Venn diagram. The circle on the left was owner priorities. The circle on the right was worker priorities. I left the overlap intentionally blank to (hopefully) show that there isn’t some “right answer” for how these two sets of priorities overlap. Simply that there is room for us to play in the middle.
From there, I needed one more mental model to provide the takeaway. This one came easily: a gauge. I wanted to show that when we recognize the various forces creating the tension between our owner selves and our workers selves, we can adjust the pressure. Sometimes, we need to consider what are more owner-type priorities. Other times, we need to consider more worker-type priorities. But a gauge isn’t locked in one position, right? It remains responsive to our needs and goals, adjusting the pressure accordingly.
The other day, Kyla Scanlon, a brilliant finance and economics communicator, described her project this way:
The goal is to give people tools to understand the world around them.
This is my goal, too.
A mental model is a tool that allows you to see what’s happening more clearly, to wrestle novel information into a pattern that makes sense, and to recognize a familiar system at work, even in a wholly unfamiliar subject area. Tapping into a helpful mental model is like a deep tissue massage for the brain.
When I get a mental model right—not only in structure but in content, I sense relief from the audience.
After my talk, I facilitated a breakout session, part group discussion, part Q&A. The first thing that people told me was that I had described exactly what they feel on a regular basis—and that they realized other people feel the same way. They experienced the relief of recognition.
So, even though working out the structure of the talk was a challenge, I got (at least most of) it right.
While I was still struggling with my talk, I was in a strategy session with a podcaster. They wanted to know how to take a long-simmering but off-the-cuff rant and turn it into something that would be valuable for people. They have many of these rants, but there was one top of mind for them. They gave me the 60-second version of the rant, which was about a very specific, very niche issue in a subject I’m not all that up on.
But I sensed the mental model at the heart of the issue. I said something to the effect of, ‘It sounds like one system has a rigid and reductive structure while the other system has a fluid and responsive structure.’ They told me I nailed it. I didn’t need subject knowledge to understand the situation, just the right mental model.
I’m not telling you this to brag. I’m telling you this because so many people struggle to take their deep subject-level knowledge and translate it into something that others understand. I realized as I talked with this client that our most heartfelt rants often spring from mental models that we possess but others don't understand. We deliver these rants with such gusto because it seems so obvious to us that we're flummoxed that others don't see it.
If that's the case, then we need to be able to articulate the mental model along with the subject-specific knowledge to make it as useful as possible to those we're communicating with.
A quick philosophical aside…
This is a key component of critical theory and the reason why I draw on it so often. “Theory" is essentially another word for “mental model." A theory becomes “critical" when it reveals a pattern of injustice and offers a liberatory framework that transforms existing systems to create a more just world. The patterns and frameworks proposed are mental models.
For instance, I can use Marxist theory to think about how social and economic forces create our material circumstances. I might use "class struggle" as a mental model for understanding, say, why the Billion Dollar Creator podcast exists. Or, I can use gender theory to consider how the ways we perform gender change our experiences, social relations, and economic relations. Gender as performance—the opportunities it creates and the ways it constrains us—is a mental model.
When I encounter something in the world of work that I want to examine more closely, I almost always start with critical theory for this reason. I want to draw on an existing mental model and then adapt it as necessary. The specific issue I'm thinking about is important in and of itself. I want to shed light on something that, for good or ill, feels alive for the person encountering the work. The specific issue is also important in terms of operating as a sort of case study for the particular mental model I'm working with. Ultimately, I want to communicate the mental model and how to use it independently of the specific issue I'm addressing.
Basically, I want to make you a fish dinner and teach you how to fish.3
I believe we are all rich with mental models—whether or not you're a theory nerd, a visual thinker, or into metacognition.
Those of us who enjoy an impassioned rant about our pet subjects certainly possess a wealth of mental models. But many people (maybe you) don't recognize their good fortunes. So, how do you get better at spotting your mental models?
The first step is recognizing that you have a mental model for anything that comes easily to you. Are you especially good at helping people recognize when they want to make a big life change? You've got a mental model for that. Are you especially good at turning financial spreadsheets into strategic guidance? You've got a mental model for that. Are you especially good at turning a client conversation into website copy? You've got a mental model for that.
Once you know you have a mental model, I think it's helpful to create an abstraction. Diagrams can be really helpful. What does this problem look like if you turn its parts into a flow chart or decision tree, for instance? Formulas can also be good tools: A plus B equals C. Visual metaphors are one of my favorites. What else does this problem remind you of?
A visual metaphor was what unlocked the mental model I needed to create the presentation I started this post off with. Simply envisioning the tension we feel as a tug of war gave me a way to make the idea legible. From there, I could employ a Venn diagram and another visual metaphor, the gauge.
Finally, now that you've got a rough draft of your mental model, you need to put it to use and share it with others. A mental model that only seems to make sense to you probably isn't one that's going to stand the test of time. You can turn your mental model into a graphic, use it to write an article, or share it in a conversation. See if others can understand it or, even better, use it themselves.
As people interact with your mental model, you'll learn more about it and adjust it to make it even more useful to yourself.
As I wrap up here, I can't help but share that this sort of pattern recognition and mental model engineering is something that's well-documented among autistic people like me. We don't all notice the same patterns, of course. I recognize conceptual patterns and construct mental models for social interaction. Morgan Harper Nichols and I talked about how she recognizes visual patterns as part of her work. Others see patterns in data, animal behavior, or story. No matter what we're best at noticing, though, our mental models tend to be conscious and critical to our ways of living.
I don't think anyone can say whether autistic people naturally process the world this way or whether it's a skill we develop as a sort of coping mechanism. I believe it's a bit of both—but leaning heavily toward it being a skill.
And since it's a skill, it means that anyone who wants to can learn to do it better.
Footnotes
Yes, this is a mental model I use to structure talks on more conceptual subjects. Meta.
Slide decks are my love language. They’re also how I force myself to process ideas without leaning on complex sentences…
“Teaching a man to fish” is a mental model we use to understand the difference between solving a short-term problem and a long-term problem.
