The Trouble With Models
“Once an idea or an institution gains enough influence, it changes the basic landscape. Instead of the invention serving people in some way, people spend their time and resources serving it.”
— Douglas Rushkoff, Team Human
“How does that work?” is one of the core questions at the heart of the human experience. No matter what we seek—the divine, the mundane, or anything in between—we want to know how. Even when we ask why, there is often a how at the root of it.
Why do bad things happen to good people? How does the relationship between goodness and misfortune work? Why is the grass green? How is that color produced in a plant? Why aren't I making more money? How can I sell more of my product?
“How does that work?” is a question that seeks description.
We're looking for an understanding of the system behind our object of curiosity.
Humans have developed an impressive array of methods for describing the world. We use complex languages with adaptable vocabularies and elegant metaphors. We produce art that translates ideas into visual, aural, and experiential texts. We diagram, notate, and model. We tell stories that form mythologies.
But none of those descriptions are reality.
You might be familiar with the idea that "a map is not the territory." A map is an incredibly useful depiction of a territory, but it is not that territory. A mapmaker must make choices about what to depict and what to leave out. A map made for hiking will look different from one made for driving.
Maps are always incomplete—they are not reality.
Likewise, the "short bio" I share with an event organizer or media outlet isn't me. I select certain identities and credentials that communicate how I want to be seen relative to the audience receiving that information. Even if I were to write an exhaustive autobiography, that text wouldn't be me.
Biographies—auto or otherwise—are not reality.
“Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head—my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world.”
— Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems
Every attempt we make at describing reality is incomplete. That's much is evident, right? Our descriptive tools are extremely useful but nonetheless imperfect.
This imperfection isn't a problem until we start mistaking the model for reality. Until we try to shape reality to fit the model. Until we stop adapting the model and start adapting ourselves.
The prescription economy, as I described last week, is premised on this mistake. Within its logic, incomplete, imperfect descriptions of reality become prescriptions that shape reality in their image.
For a textbook example, look no further than internet marketer Jeff Walker's 2014 book Launch, which is based on his popular (and lucrative) online course Product Launch Formula. In classic rags-to-riches style, Walker regales the reader with the story of his first big "launch"—that is, how he made $34k in a week by offering a premium stock market newsletter to his email list. "I didn't know it at the time," he writes, "but I was just getting started."
After assuring the reader that this is not a "get rich quick book," Walker declares that there is a formula behind his success—one he'll share in the following pages. That formula is the aforementioned Product Launch Formula. It's a set of instructions for developing a product, building the buzz for it, and then offering it (i.e., launching it) to a multitude of clamoring soon-to-be buyers. He cites that early newsletter launch as a sort of prototype for the system.
Walker's formula, no doubt, describes the process he developed for launching his own products. It describes the process others have used to sell their products. But it is a model—an incomplete, imperfect rendering that describes a complex and fickle reality. The system the Product Launch Formula describes can be a useful (if highly problematic) model. But turning it into a set of step-by-step instructions actually blunts its usefulness. Instead of producing a better grasp of how the system works (remember, PLF is not the system, it's a model), the system's elements and interconnections are reduced to step-by-step instructions likely to fail on their own.
Models vs. Modeling
Recently, I spoke to Jessica Abel, author, illustrator, educator, and founder of Autonomous Creative, about business models. A model—like a business model—aims to diagram and describe why interconnected elements behave the way they do. A business model maps how elements like product, price, customer, marketing activities, etc., relate to each other, producing (hopefully) desired outcomes.
Ideally, we produce models to make sense of existing systems. We ask, ‘Why does this happen?’ and explore the various elements of the system and how they are interconnected.
But the mistake I see often (and have made myself) is viewing the model as a prescription. We fail to see it as a description of reality or even a description of what could be reality. It's a prescription of what should be reality. We adapt our needs, desires, and values to fit the prescription instead of asking how we might model a business that is based on those needs, desires, and values.
Perhaps calling the concept “a business model” is the first problem. When I’ve taught about business models in the past, students and clients have expected me to lay out their options—the available models (noun). But what I’m really trying to do is invite them to model (verb) a system that could produce the results they’re looking for within the constraints they have. It’s a subtle but critical difference.
What if we change how we approach the concept and say that we're “modeling a business?"
Business models are on my mind because of that conversation (which you can hear at Jessica's upcoming online event). But this same mindset shift could be applied to any kind of “road map," whether for a career, a family, a government, a financial goal, etc. Even when we're describing an ideal future rather than the present reality, we can remember we're modeling a potential way things could work rather than a way things should work.
And even then, the way things could work is incomplete.
That's the beauty of it, if also the trouble.
Learning how things work doesn't always reveal what happens next, and modeling today's reality doesn't always yield tomorrow's action plan. Instead, learning how things work and modeling today's reality helps us activate our agency and produce more purposeful systems for life, business, and beyond.
