I wrote this series in February 2005:
Why do intelligent people not make intelligent decisions? The answer that stood out was that people did not understand the problem correctly and therefore the solution proposed was orthogonal to the problem. To understand the problem correctly needs a mental framework that can get to its root. And for that, we need in place multiple mental models.
Unfortunately for us, even as we are taught a few ideas and models well, there are many others we do not understand at all. For example, those who understand technology may not understand economics, and vice versa. The result is incomplete decision-making mindsets. The solution is not getting people who are experts in different areas together – for the right decisions to emerge, it is necessary for all the important mental models to reside in one mind.
….A multi-model mind can be our greatest asset as we seek to build both our careers and the new India around us. But for that to happen, we will have to shed some of the baggage from the past – and that is not going to be easy. We need to make a start – with the world inside us, and then the outside. We have the benefit of technological revolutions that are happening around us giving us the ability to compress time — we don’t have a generation to effect this change.
