Framing

Jorge and Harry discuss how to proactively shift your mental models to get unstuck.

• Framers by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and Francis de Véricourt
• Breakneck by Dan Wang
• Precision questioning
• Iceberg model

Episode Transcript

Jorge (00:00):
If you can proactively shift your mental models, you

(00:04):
can look at things from adifferent perspective from a
radically different perspectiveand perhaps make different
decisions or at least considerdifferent possibilities.

Narrator (00:20):
You're listening to Traction Heroes.
Digging In to Get Results withHarry Max and Jorge Arango.

Jorge (00:30):
Hey Harry, it's great to see you.

Harry (00:32):
Nice to see you too, Jorge.
Thank you so much for your graceas always.

Jorge (00:36):
Folks can't see me, but I'm smiling.
When we first, fired up thismeeting, you were wiping the
sweat off your face.
It looked like it's hot there.

Harry (00:50):
A little bit.
Yeah, it's unseasonably warmhere in Santa Cruz.
I think the thermometer hit 101yesterday and not sure what it's
today, but yeah, and of course Iwas out waxing my car which I'm
not sure is the brightest thingto be doing on hottest day of
the year.

Jorge (01:09):
For folks who, who are not on the Imperial system,
that's around what, like around39 degrees Centigrade?
Anyway, it's in there.
it's up there, right?
It's pretty hot.

Harry (01:20):
It's up there.
Yeah.

Jorge (01:22):
All right.
But folks are not tuning in tohear about the weather in Santa
Cruz.
Why don't we get right into it?
As usual, I've brought areading.
I think I usually give adisclaimer.
It's this is pretty long, butthen I find myself editing it
afterwards.
So just bear with me.

Harry (01:39):
Okay.

Jorge (01:40):
Here we go.
"Humans think using mentalmodels.
These are representations ofreality that make the world
comprehensible.
They allow us to see patterns,predict how things will unfold
and make sense of thecircumstances we encounter.
Reality would otherwise be aflood of information, a jumble

(02:02):
of inchoate experiences andsensations.
Mental models bring order.
They let us focus on essentialthings and ignore others.
Just as at a cocktail party, wecan hear the conversation that
we're in, while tuning out thechatter around us.
We craft a simulation of realityin our minds to anticipate how

(02:23):
situations will play out." I'mgoing to skip a little bit here
and jump forward in the text.
"We use mental models all thetime, even if we are not aware
of them.
But there are moments when weare acutely conscious of how we
size up a situation and candeliberately maintain or change

(02:47):
our perspective.
This often happens when we needto make a high consequence
decision, such as whether toswitch jobs, become a parent,
buy a home, close a factory, orbuild a skyscraper.
In those instances, it canbecome apparent to us that our
decisions are not simply basedon the reasoning we apply, but
on something more foundational.

(03:10):
The particular lens throughwhich we look at the situation,
our sense of how the worldworks, that underlying level of
cognition consists of mentalmodels." And now I'm going to
skip ahead a little bit more.
"The mental models that wechoose and apply are frames.

(03:35):
They determine how we understandand act in the world.
Frames enable us to generalizeand make abstractions that apply
to other situations.
With them, we can handle newsituations rather than having to
relearn everything from scratch.
Our frames are always operatingin the background.

(03:56):
But we can stop and deliberatelyask ourselves which frame we are
applying and whether it is thebest fit for the circumstances.
And if it's not, we can chooseanother frame that is better, or
we can invent a new framealtogether.
"Framing is so fundamental tohuman cognition that even those

(04:18):
who study the workings of themind rarely focused on it until
relatively recently.
Its importance was overshadowedby other mental capabilities,
such as sensing and memory.
But as people have become moreaware of the need to improve
their decision-making, the roleof frames as fundamental to
choosing and acting well hasmoved from the background to

(04:39):
center stage.
We now know that the right frameapplied in the right way opens
up a wider range ofpossibilities, which in turn
leads to better choices.
The frames we employ affect theoptions we see, the decisions we
make, and the results we obtain.
By being better at framing, weget better outcomes."

Harry (05:04):
That is so cool.
I feel like I should have readit somewhere.
Don't tell me what the title isyet.
And I should have known you weregonna bring mental models back.
I feel, like we didn't pummelthat one into submission when
our last conversation aboutmental models turned into a
conversation about mentalmodeling.

(05:28):
And then a funny thing happenedthis morning, but before I tell
you about it, and it's relatedto mental models, but before I
share that with you, what bookis this?
Have I read this?

Jorge (05:40):
You may have.
This is a book called Framersand the subtitle is Human
Advantage in an Age ofTechnology and Turmoil, and the
authors, whose name I'm going tostruggle to pronounce properly,
so apologies beforehand, areKenneth Cukier, Viktor
Mayer-Schönberger, and Francisde Véricourt.

Harry (06:04):
I have not read that and I, I'm a huge fan of the concept
of framing for so many differentreasons, one of which was that
when I did my TEDx talk, I thinkit was in 2014, I ended up
introducing a framework that wasreally a diagnostic thinking

(06:27):
framework to enable betterproblem framing.
But be that as it may, let metell you what happened this
morning when I was sitting precaffeinated, I saw something pop
up in LinkedIn.
I think I had about sixteenneurons firing and not all of
them well, and somebody hadposted, and I wish I remember

(06:49):
who it was right now, postedsomething about the why it was
that China was able to buildthings so quickly.
Did you see that?
And how the United States is soslow.
And I thought, that'sinteresting.
And I dove into it and it wasreally...

(07:11):
The book that it was talkingabout, I guess this was surfaced
from some work that a fellow bythe name of Dan Wang, recently
published.
A book called Breakneck, andChina's Quest to Engineer the
Future was the subtitle.
And if you were to boil it allaway, the LinkedIn article

(07:33):
basically said,"Look, if youwant to understand this in its
most basic way, think about thefact that China is basically a
country run by engineers, andthe United States is basically a
country run by lawyers." And Iwas like, that had never
occurred to me before.

(07:54):
It was just like somebody pickedthe frame up and moved it three
feet to the left, and all of asudden everything became clear.
And it was stunning to me howsimple it was.

Jorge (08:07):
Yeah, I think that's very much in the spirit of this book.
And you're right to call out thefact that we've brought up I've
brought up mental models manytimes before in our
conversations.
With the knowledge that we havemental models and that we use
mental models, if you buy intothat notion, then the question

(08:27):
arises as well, can you beintentional about the models
that you use?
And, and how can you kinda shfitthe model?
And the of reframing comes in,right?
I got the sense from thatpassage that I read there, that
for the authors of this book,frames and models are somewhat

(08:51):
analogous.
But I think that, the notion offraming as a verb is more
proactive than...
and I think that if you use theverb modeling, somehow you're
thinking like,"I'm simulating orcreating a kind of'what if'
scenario in my mind." Whereasframing is more about how you

(09:13):
can proactively change the lensthrough which you understand
what is happening so that youcan behave differently.

Harry (09:21):
I didn't take them as synonymous as you were reading
it.
It felt very much like themodels were the glass and the
frame was the frame.
And by moving the frame, you'reshifting the models you're
looking through.
And there may be more than onemodel, but they seem to me to be
complimentary, but distinctentities.

Jorge (09:44):
Yeah.
The phrase they use is"themental models that we choose and
apply are frames." Which is tosay, it's the same kind of
stuff, but some models, we adoptor emerge in us for reasons.
But others, like weintentionally craft in some way,

(10:04):
is the sense I'm getting.
And that's what they're callingframes, right?

Harry (10:07):
Yeah.
What led you to this book?
I'm curious.

Jorge (10:11):
What led me to this book is my perennial interest in
mental models and the notionthat we...
models in general, right?
Like, this idea that we makesense of the world through these
constructs, these abstractionsthat we carry around.

(10:33):
And I just search out books onthis subject.
And this one seemed to be aboutthat, but again, with this more
proactive lens.
And the pitch here, which is inthe subtitle of the book, is
that somehow being proactiveabout the frames that you use to

(10:56):
understand what is going on,somehow gives you an advantage.
So you have a leg up if you aremindful about what frames you
are using.
And the authors bring updifferent elements of framing.
And I read this book severalyears ago, I have to say and

(11:17):
somewhat uncharacteristicallyfor me, I didn't take good notes
at the time.
I read it while on vacation andI was outside of my usual
routines, but revisited it thismorning before talking with you
and some of it came back.

(11:38):
They have certain elements thatgo into framing.
So, for example, a core idea inthe book is the notion of
causality.
So, being able to perceive causeand effect relationships and and
allowing that to inform themodel, that's an important
component of framing.

(11:59):
Another is what the authors callcounterfactuals.
So being able to imaginealternate scenarios for whatever
is happening.
And then a third element isconstraints, which are the
boundaries that limit the frame.

(12:20):
And and part of the point hereis that if you know that these
are the elements that go intocreating a frame, you can be
more intentional about theframes that you use with the
goal of, again, being moreeffective, acting more
skillfully, somehow.

Harry (12:36):
I had so many different thoughts kind of tumble outta my
brain, but the first one thatcame to mind and we may have
talked about this at some pointthe work of Dennis Matthies from
Stanford.
So Dennis came up with somethingcalled Precision Questioning.
It eventually evolved toPrecision Questioning and

(12:56):
Answering.
And he taught it for a number ofyears at Stanford.
I think he ended up making itavailable as a continuing
studies course, which is where Ibumped into it.
And then eventually, I believeBill Gates hired him to go to
Microsoft and effectively deploythis new soft technology of

(13:17):
being able to ask more effectivequestions and being able to
answer in more succinct ways toincrease the velocity of a
purposeful conversation.
And, Dennis eventually, did thesame thing at Google, and then
he started a company calledVervago.
He's since retired and he didn'twrite a book on this subject.

(13:39):
And for many years, his coursenotes were available at the
Stanford bookstore.
They're probably still availablethere.
But at any rate, the thing thatcaught my attention was that
Dennis used to present likeseven categories of questions.
And those questions wereeffectively go/no-go questions.

(14:03):
And those are really questionsaround, are the right people in
the conversation?
Are they in the right channel?
Are they ready to engage andhave this conversation?
The next is a category ofquestions around clarification.
Is it ambiguous?
Is it vague?
How do you demystify something?

(14:24):
So it was go/no-go questions ofclarification.
Questions of assumptions wasanother category, which is the
uncritically held beliefs thatwe hold as true for something to
be true.
The next is basic criticalquestions around the veracity of

(14:49):
the data, the sources of thedata or information, all the
kinds of things that you wouldthink of around, is it a direct
source?
Is it an indirect source?
What methodology was used, andso on and so forth, to get that?
And then there are twocategories, causes and effects,
which is what triggered this.
And looking at trigger andcausation and mechanisms

(15:14):
underneath things.
And then there's lots we can sayabout causes.
And then, effects, similarly,whether they're leading
indicators or laggingindicators, whether that things
change over time.
And then, there's a category foraction.
And I often thought that therewas a category missing that was

(15:35):
really around desired outcomes,but we're not gonna go there for
the moment.
But the point that I was tryingto make with Dennis's PQ&A
precision questioning andanswering was that once I
learned this, I noticed thatwhen I was in engaged in high
stakes, transactional dialoguesin work situations, I would look

(15:55):
at the conversationintentionally through different
portals or frames from Dennis'smodel in order to ask more
relevant questions.
So, for example, if we werefixating on questions of
clarification, if we were reallytrying to better understand

(16:16):
something, I would often shiftthe conversation to,"But what do
we believe is true that mightnot otherwise be true?" So, I
would shift the frame toassumptions.
And I don't wanna belabor thiswhole thing, but I realize that
the PQ&A model of asking betterquestions to increase the
utility of a conversation for apurpose is like a meta frame and

(16:41):
you can deploy it by using thecategories in PQ&A to see the
world in a different light.
Because when you're in the frameof seeking clarification, that's
very different from being in theframe of trying to understand a
relation between what's causingsomething and what's affecting

(17:01):
something.
And so I just wanted to bringthat up because it seemed like
such a strong analog or, maybenot an analog, I'm not even sure
how to think about it, but it'sa strong tool set to apply to
this particular notion.

Jorge (17:17):
What is implicit in what you're saying and again, it's a
running theme in ourconversations is that the
interactions that you might behaving with people operate at
several levels.
And there are underlying ideasthat are informing those
interactions.
There are techniques to get tothe bottom of the stack in some

(17:39):
way.
One that I teach my students inthe systems course is the
Iceberg Model, which you mighthave seen.
And that one has four levels,right?
So, the top level are the eventsthat you can report on.
It's this is what I observedhappening, right?

(18:00):
Underneath that are patterns andtrends.
So if a certain kind of event iscoming up time and time again,
that might be an indication thatthere's a pattern at play,
right?
Those patterns in turn areinformed by particular systems
or structures that lead to thatpattern manifesting.

(18:25):
And those systems and structuresin turn are informed by mental
models that give rise to them.
So what we'll do in class is wehave students look at the front
page of the New York Times, forexample, and pick out any news
item that draws their attention.

Pick out the facts (18:44):
what are the events that this reporter is
reporting on?
And then, think about whetherthey reflect any patterns or
trends that have beenmanifesting over time.
And then we work our waybackwards to the systems and

(19:05):
structures that lead to thosethings to happen, and ultimately
to the mental models that areinforming them.
And the mental models tend to bepretty deep things, right?
For example, a mental model thatmight be leading to a particular
kind of behavior might be theidea of private property, for
example.
Like, private property issomething that we assume as a

(19:26):
kind of foundational layer inour society.
But that's a construct, right?
That's a model that we have forhow the world might work.
And there are other people whomight have a completely
different model for how theworld operates that does not

(19:48):
include the concept of privateproperty.
And, if that's the case, thenthose folks are gonna make very
different decisions.
And the point here though is, ifyou know that there are these
underlying levels and if you buyinto something like the iceberg
model that says that mentalmodels are at the kinda like

(20:10):
basement of the stack, then ifyou can proactively shift your
mental models, you can look atthings from a different
perspective from a radicallydifferent perspective and
perhaps make different decisionsor at least consider different
possibilities.

Harry (20:32):
Yeah.
And I'm wondering what do theauthors suggest in terms of...
I can't help but think aboutmindfulness meditation, where
they talk about labeling yourthoughts.
And I think about the fact thatwe have assumptions, this notion
that we engage the world withthese beliefs that are not

(20:53):
necessarily critically held inthis very valuable mechanism for
engaging the world in a moreproductive way is to be able to
identify them and label them andthen potentially choose
something different to take adifferent perspective.
What do the authors recommend interms of the mechanics around

(21:14):
surround getting from a currenttacit state to a more
productive, explicit, desiredstate?

Jorge (21:23):
Like I said, I read this book a long time ago and I don't
remember explicitly what theysaid.
But I have a vague idea.
And I'm issuing this disclaimerbecause I might be projecting
into it my own opinions here.
But I would say that step zerois bringing your frames to the

(21:47):
surface, right?
We don't stop to think aboutprivate property, for example,
right?
But that might be the operatingframe here, and it's so deep in
us that you don't think aboutit, right?
So step zero would be,"Okay,let's try to verbalize or
externalize somehow the framingthat is dominating this

(22:10):
situation." Once we do that,then we can do things like
explore counterfactuals, right?
What if the opposite was true?
What if we were not operatingwithin a construct where private
property was the norm?
What if particular constraintswere not present?
And with that in mind, you cando things like scenario

(22:34):
planning.
My sense is that is where thiswould operate.
But again, I don't rememberexplicitly what it is that the
authors recommend in the book.

Harry (22:45):
And I'm sorry, I didn't meant to put the screws to you
with that question.
I think I'm actually moreinterested in your perspective.
And the thing is, if you'regonna say, private property,
it's the thing, like sometimesthese things are so pervasive
and they're so deeply held tothey're foundational-level
assumptions, you don't even knowto ask the question.

(23:07):
It's like that David FosterWallace, the fish swimming by,
"How's the water boys?" And,what I'm wondering about is, so
for you, like if you were givingme advice or giving me guidance
on this, you've obviouslythought a lot about this, and
it's very interesting to me andI wanna learn, I want to get
better, I think this isincredibly valuable, like how do

(23:29):
I get to the point of evenasking myself the question, am I
engaged in a mental model rightnow?
Because I don't know that if Iwere in a situation dealing with
property rights that I wouldeven question private property.

Jorge (23:46):
Yeah.
And that was just an example offthe top of my mind.

Harry (23:50):
It's a good one though.

Jorge (23:52):
I just wanted to pick something that is very bedrock,
that we don't usually thinkabout.
But there are many other thingsthat are like that, and perhaps
a bit more malleable.
My sense is that this is aquestion best asked when you
have some decision to make, likea large decision to make.

(24:12):
Maybe it's undertaking a newproject or maybe...
Maybe you're trying to stake outa new market.
I'm gonna try to bring it backto a concrete example and then
maybe we can wind down thisconversation.
But, you and I were talkingbefore we started recording
about how we might bring morelisteners to the podcast, right?

(24:36):
That's something that we couldsit down with that, goal in mind
and we could look at the data,right?
So for example, we know how manypeople have been downloading the
show over the time that it'sbeen out.
We now have enough data therewhere we can spot some patterns.

(24:56):
We were reflecting earlier onwhether the fact that it is
summertime and therefore peopleare taking vacation in the
Northern Hemisphere, isaffecting our downloads.
So, that's an idea of we'respotting some kind of trend,
right?
And we can continue diggingdeeper.
We can start understanding whatstructures and systems are

(25:19):
underlying the patterns thatwe're seeing.
The fact that people in theNorthern hemisphere tend to take
vacation during this time ofyear, that is a systemic thing
driven by the weather patterns,school patterns, all these
things.
And then, they manifest certainmental models.
For example, the idea peoplelisten more to a show like this

(25:43):
at times when they're not onvacation.
I would suggest that's some kindof mental model, right?
Like I'm assuming that peoplewho listen to a show like this
one are more interested inproductivity work rather than
something like entertainment.
I don't wanna do an analysishere of what that would mean
towards growing ourlistenership, but I'm just
giving an example of the kind ofdeepening of the questioning

(26:08):
that happens when you arelooking to reframe.
Because you may find that whenyou get to the bottom and you
say,"We have this mental modelthat this is a show that appeals
primarily to people who are intobeing more productive or doing
work-related things?" Like, whatif that was not true?
What if people were justenthralled by our conversation

(26:30):
and...

Harry (26:32):
Scintillating conversation!

Jorge (26:32):
Yeah! It's like looking for some entertainment, right?
What would the show look like ifthat was true?
And we could play what-ifscenario.
Anyway, it's a trivial kind ofsilly example.
I just wanted to illustrate howthe thinking would go.

Harry (26:47):
I really appreciate that.
And pulling it back from theproperty example just to
challenging the assumptions andlooking at, given an assumption,
what is the model underneaththat assumption is maybe the
answer I was looking for.
And I hadn't connected the dotsuntil you walked me through
this.
Because naming the assumptionthat's the label, but the model
is what allows that assumptionto function.

(27:10):
And being explicit about that, Ithink helps provide
opportunities to step back andlook at potential alternatives,
potentially reframe.

Jorge (27:24):
And sometimes and I think that this is the key we get
stuck.
And we get stuck because ourmental models get us stuck.
And mental models are not fixed.
You can change your mentalmodels.

(27:44):
You can adopt different frames.
I think that, that's definitelythe point of this book.
I don't think that they talkabout the iceberg model, but
that's an example of a techniqueor a framework that can be
helpful in, at a minimum,bringing your models to the
surface.
And once you have those, thenyou can do the counterfactual
thing or understand for example,like what timeframes are you

(28:08):
dealing with?
Are you thinking about this inthe near term?
Are you thinking about it in thelong term?
Those are going to impact howyou approach whatever new
direction you're going to pickwith a problem.
And framing helps.

Harry (28:23):
Yeah.
this feels like a reallyimportant topic to explore
further.
And as I think about Dennis'smaterial and Precision
Questioning and Answering it isthe assumptions column more than
anything else.
And maybe we can talk about thatmore at some particular point.

Jorge (28:42):
Let's make a point to talk about it in a future
conversation, but for now, Ithink we should wrap this one
up.

Harry (28:48):
That sounds great.
I really appreciate you bringingthis one up.

Jorge (28:52):
All right.
Great seeing you again, Harry.
Thank you.

Harry (28:55):
Thanks for making the time today, Jorge.
Great conversation.

Narrator (29:03):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's podcasts
app.
Thanks.