Re: Jonah and Mental Models

Larry Perlov (D83884@tsp.eskom.co.za)
Mon, 16 Jan 1995 16:50:05 GMT+200

Andrew Moreno wrote:
> Richard Karash asked:
>
> >How do *you* help a group bring out their mental models? What
> are
> >your favorite techniques? What are the tricks to make these work
> >well? What are the traps to avoid?
>
> Hi
>
> Jonah, in the book, "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt, uncovered
> the plant manager's mental model by asking a lot of questions.
>
> Does anyone see a pattern to the types of questions that Jonah
> asked?
>
> I noticed that Jonah started with setting and defining a result.
> The plant is there to make money; how does a plant manager know
> when the plant is making money.
>
> The faults in the plant manager's mental model started with no
> clear concept of what results he wanted. Actually, the plant
> worked perfectly; it was perfectly losing money.
>
> I thought it was interesting that Jonah asked a lot of questions
> and let the plant manager (I forget his name, I read the book
> while browsing in a bookstore) think things through on his own.
>
> Andrew Moreno
>

Jonah, in "the Goal" used a questioning technique called "the Socratic
method". This method, developed by Socrates and documented by Plato uses
pointed questions to either confirm or disprove the "subject's"
hypotheses.

For instance, suppose the subject (the plant manager - Alex Rogo)
hypothesises that the plant is losing money, Jonah will ask questions such
as, "are corporate accountants breathing down your neck?" or "have there
been many lay-offs recently?".

You see, Alex may not necessarily be losing money, and by responding
to Jonah's questions, he will either decide that the company is or is
not losing money. The most important part of this exercise is
the fact that Jonah does not TELL Alex anything! Alex discovers
the answers for himself.

The whole philosophy behind the Socratic Method is the fact that
facilitators (or consultants) should not spell out any of the answers for
their clients (although they are often hired to do just that!). Instead,
the facilitators should stimulate their clients to come up with their own
answers. Once you tell someone something, you rob that someone from the
opportunity of ever inventing that something by him/her self!!!!!

Incidently, as consultants, one of our primary tasks is to cause
our clients to BUY-INTO what we profess. One of the most powerful
ways to do that is to make our clients invent their own solutions to
their problems.

I found that using some aspects of the Socratic method with System
Dynamics has proved to be very synergetic and extremely useful.

This is the case because using tools such as STELLA or iThink, do
not give the user the answers. Rather, it gives the user the
opportunity to develop an intuition for the subject and come up with
his/her own solutions.

In terms of mental model mapping, the Socratic method has clearly got
merit. Unfortunately it is far from simple to implement in reality.
The main reason for that is the fact that people are naturally ego-
centric and we would much rather show how smart we are and give
answers than act naive and ask question! Furthermore, the techniques
employed by the socratic method are very intricate.

I hope this is useful. Please dont hesitate to contact me for
further information.

Regards

Larry


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* Larry Perlov - Senior Engineer (Technology Strategy) *
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