Quotes that represent deep mental models

Quotes that represent deep
Mental Models
The purpose is to build a collection of
wisdom for business and life.
These quotes were collated by Arrie van Niekerk and represent
some deep insights from a wide variety of sources. Some are
from books and articles and some from extracts and quotes from
various sources.

Heuristic
FLOW Goldratt Group (Southern Africa) © 2004
Heuristic Flow © 2007

There is nothing as powerful as a
CONCEPT,
and nothing more dangerous than a
MISCONCEPTION.

Heuristic

Einstein on Problems

“To break a mental model is harder
than splitting the atom
– Albert Einstein

Heuristic

Einstein on Problems

“The significant problems we face
today cannot be solved at the
same level of thinking we were at
when we created them.”
– Albert Einstein

Heuristic

Eli Goldratt: Challenging Assumptions
• When things don’t work, and all your efforts do not
produce the results you expected, then there is a flaw
in the thinking – we are missing something and it is
probably in our faces!
“What is needed is just the courage to face
inconsistencies and to avoid running from them just
because “that’s the way it was always done”.… We
simply need to look at reality and think logically and
precisely about what we see. The key ingredient is to
have the courage to face inconsistencies between
what we see and deduce and the way things are
done. The challenging of basic assumptions is
essential to breakthroughs”.
The Goal by Dr Eliyahu M. Goldratt:

Heuristic

Eli Goldratt: Operations
• “The closer you are to a balanced capacity
chain, the closer you are to bankruptcy”

• “If a company tell me they have moving
bottlenecks, my response is: You have NO
bottlenecks and most of your resources
have at least 30% spare capacity”

• “If you want to make money, most of your
resources must be idle from time to time”
Dr Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Heuristic

On Seeing and Blindness
“When one does not see what one does not see,
one does not even see that one is blind”
– Paul Veyne

In other words:
When you do not see what you don’t see,
you do not even see that you are blind.

Then what is the secret to seeing?

Heuristic

Ed Deming on Measurements
Ed Deming used say: “97% of what matters in an
organization can't be measured. Only maybe 3%
can be measured. But when you go into most
organizations and look at what people are doing,
they're spending all their time focusing on what
they can measure and none of their time on what
really matters -- what they can't measure.
Why would we do this? We're spending all of our
time measuring what doesn't matter.”
- Ed Deming
Founder of Total Quality Management (TQM)

Heuristic

Thomas Johnson on Toyota Philosophy
Measurement takes what's inherently interdependent, shaped by
patterns of mutual causality in nature, and turns it into something that's
inherently independent and shaped by patterns of lineal causality. In
creating systems whose operation can be described with quantity,
we create what is mechanical and mechanizing is diametrically
opposed to the natural.
So, we've destroyed the natural in our organizations, and we're very
comfortable that way. I spoke earlier of Toyota. Finally, after years and
years of walking the floors in that company and, on a few occasions,
working on the line, I came to this simple idea. The means are the
ends in the making. That's all there is. Get the means right and the
ends will take care of themselves.
– Tom Johnson
Author of: Relevance lost: The rise and fall of Management Accounting
and “Reflections of a Recovering Management Accountant”

Few people realise that Toyota does not use
standard cost accounting for its daily operations

Heuristic

Do the right things
“Do the right things …..
(organize work & flow properly)
… and the costs will take care of
itself!”
– Tom Johnson
Author of: Relevance lost: The rise and fall of Management Accounting
and “Reflections of a Recovering Management Accountant”

Heuristic

Marcus Wallenberg
One of the great leaders of the family in the post-World War II period, Marcus
Wallenberg, was very close to his companies. He regularly would go visit all
the companies. He was not a person who sat above the clouds and studied
his companies by looking at spreadsheets. He went down to the companies,
like Scania, and when he did he invariably visited the shop floor.

“If I want to know how a company is doing, I do not
look at data sheets. I go into the shop, because
that’s where what matters take place. And when I
go there I listen for the music. And when I hear
the music, I know everything is all right. But if I
don’t hear it, then we go to work”
– Marcus Wallenberg
Owner of INVESTOR, Family company holding major share blocks in Saab, ABB, Ericsson, Atlas
Copco, etc

Heuristic

Execution
Leaders fail due to an inability to reflect on reality. “The main requirement is
that you as a leader have to be deeply and passionately engaged in your
organisation and honest about its realities with others and yourself.” We need a
process of robust dialogue to achieve this.

“Too many leaders fool themselves into thinking their companies are well run.”

“Most fundamentally, the three core processes (People, Strategy, Operations)
were disconnected from the everyday realities of the business, and from each
other. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business.”

“The operating plan is strictly a numbers exercise, with little attention paid to
action plans for growth, markets, productivity or quality. People were holding
the same jobs too long, and many plants were run by accountants instead of
production people.”
-Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan
Execution. The discipline of getting things done.

Heuristic

Arie de Geus
“Companies die because their managers focus on the
economic activity of producing goods and services,
and they forget that their organisations’ true nature is
that of a community of humans.”
Living companies have the abilities to:
– Learn and adapt
– Build a community and persona for itself
– Build constructive relationships with other entities, within
and outside itself
– Govern its own growth and evolution effectively
- Arie de Geus
The Living Company

Heuristic

Henry Mintzberg on Management

Management is a curious phenomenon; it is generously
paid, enormously influential and significantly devoid of
common sense.
Management is a practice that has to blend a good deal of craft
(experience), with a certain amount of art (insight) and some
science (analysis). Easy formulas and quick fixes are the
problems of management today, not the solutions.
Good managers believe that their purpose is to leave behind
stronger organizations, not just higher share prices. They do not
display hubris in the name of Leadership.

Henry Mintzberg is the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies
at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
Heuristic

Complexity – The Four Types
1. Dynamic complexity: Causes and effects are far
apart in space and time. Sometimes just very hard
to grasp and those who see becomes impatient.
2. Detail Complexity: In technical/mechanical fields
where the detail of cause and effect has to be
known precisely in order to predict
3. Social Complexity: People involved see things
very different, causing the problems to become
polarised and stuck.
4. Generative Complexity: Unfolding in unfamiliar
and unpredictable ways.
Heuristic

Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)
• Complex adaptive systems have their internal feedback
loops that are extremely powerful and therefore you must
adapt the culture towards increase and support the system
rather than dictate it.
• It is largely self organising and self learning and will settle on
certain levels of performance in certain locations, but it has
the inherent ability to evolve to much higher levels than any
linear system can ever achieve.
• Characteristics of CAS:
– The CAS is a network of many “agents” acting in parallel.
– The CAS has many levels of organization, with agents at any level
serving as the building blocks for agents at a higher level.
– All CAS anticipates and predicts the future.
– CAS have many niches, each one of which can be exploited by an
agent adapted to fill that niche.

Heuristic

Measurements Drift

• Measurements can help • We want all the parts to
us to align the parts, but it contribute to the whole
most often do not • The parts must always do what
• Over time, the parts is good for the whole, NOT
develop measures that what is good for the parts
they believe are good, but
in reality they are not fully • Look for the harmony (music)
aligned of the whole

Heuristic 17

Example of the African Tracker

Detail Tracker (Expert Tracker)
• Objective: Follow and mark detail of the spoor
• Footprints, stride, stick and O-ring, flags
• High degree of accuracy
Trail Tracker (African Tracker)
• Objective: To catch up with the animal
• Direction, freshness, air spoor, intuitive
• Speed is essential; must track faster than animal laying the
trail

You could be an expert in both, but the objectives are different

Heuristic

African Tracker & Termite Mound
• Details slow down the process and cause you
to lose the bigger picture
• Strategy can not be much more than a clear direction; you
discover the detail on the track (if really needed)
• Giving only rules to a Complex Adaptive
System inhibits creative solutions
• The intelligence of the agents prohibits the mechanistic
rule approach

Heuristic

Dee Hock on World Views
• Machine World View: The Mechanistic, Industrial age, Separatist Command and
Control organisational model. Wholeness is assembled from replaceable parts.
WHOLE = SUM of the PARTS. Procedure takes precedence over purpose,
method more important than results. Purpose erodes into process, procedure
takes precedence over product – the doing of the doing until nothing gets done.
Where behaviour is compelled, there lies tyranny, however petty. [Local Efficiency
or COST WORLD view]
• Living System World view: The Holistic, Systemic, Modern age, Humane and
Creative organisational model. PARTS are manifestations of the WHOLE. The
essence of community is the non monetary exchange of value. All things are
simultaneously independent, interdependent and intra-dependent. Where
behaviour is educed, there lies leadership, however powerful. [FLOW or
THROUGHPUT WORLD]
• Cancers form whenever a part (a cell with the same DNA) loses its social identity
(connectedness) and grows with wild undifferentiated cell division – an empire
within the whole. Forces the system to be subordinated to its rules or measures
instead of subordinating to the core flow process.

Heuristic

Dee Hock on Management Systems
The World of Purpose, Principle and People
• The Holistic, Systemic, Modern age, Humane and Creative
organisational model.
• All things are simultaneously independent, interdependent and intra-
dependent.
• The essence of community is the non monetary exchange of value.
• Where behaviour is educed, there lies leadership, however powerful.

The World of Rules and Regulation
• The Mechanistic, Industrial age, Separatist, Command and Control
organisational model
• Procedure takes precedence over purpose, method more important
than results
• Purpose erodes into process, procedure takes precedence over
outcome – the doing of the doing until nothing gets done.
• Where behaviour is compelled, there lies tyranny, however petty

Heuristic

Dee Hock Quotes
• An organization, no matter how well designed, is
only as good as the people who live and work in it.
• If you don't understand that you work for your
mislabelled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of
leadership. You know only tyranny.
• The closest thing to a law of nature in business is
that form has an affinity for expense, while
substance has an affinity for income.

Heuristic

Dee Hock
• Key measures for a great company leader:
– Abandon tradition
– Throw detail planning to the wind (Co-insides with Clem
Sunter’s process of no paperwork)
– Rely on a clear sense of direction
– A few basic principles
– Common sense
– Trust in the ingenuity of people
– Let the answers emerge (have a way to allow it to happen)

Heuristic

Dee Hock on Leadership
• People are not "things" to be manipulated, labeled, boxed,
bought, and sold. Above all else, they are not "human
resources." They are entire human beings, containing the
whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we start limiting
them. We must examine the concept of leading and following
with new eyes. We must examine the concept of superior and
subordinate with increasing skepticism. We must examine the
concept of management and labor with new beliefs. And we
must examine the nature of organizations that demand such
distinctions with an entirely different consciousness.
• It is true leadership; leadership by everyone; leadership in,
up, around, and down this world so badly needs, and
dominator management it so sadly gets.
Heuristic

Dee Hock on Leadership
• Here is the very heart and soul of the matter. If you look to
lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself --
your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and
conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority
over you, and 15% managing your peers. Use the remainder
to induce those you "work for" to understand and practice the
theory. I use the terms "work for" advisedly, for if you don't
understand that you should be working for your mislabeled
"subordinates," you haven't understood anything. Lead
yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your
people to do the same. All else is trivia.

Heuristic

Dee Hock on Compensation
Compensation:
• Money motivates neither the best people, nor
the best in people. It can move the body and
influence the mind, but it cannot touch the
heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for
belief, principle, and morality. As Napoleon
observed, "No amount of money will induce
someone to lay down their life, but they will
gladly do so for a bit of yellow ribbon."

Heuristic

Dee Hock on Employment
Associates:
• Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second,
motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth,
knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity,
motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent;
without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding,
knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is
blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use
by people with all the other qualities.
Employing Yourself:
• Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate
your strength. It is idiotic to replicate your weakness. It is essential
to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and
judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it
requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.

Heuristic

Dee Hock
• The governing structure must not be a chain of
command, but rather a framework for dialogue,
deliberation, and coordination among equals.
– Authority, in other words, comes from the bottom up, not
the top down. The U. S. federal system is designed so
authority rises from the people to local, state, and federal
governments; in Visa, which contains elements of the
federal system, the member banks send representatives to
a system of national, regional, and international boards.
While the system appears to be hierarchical, the Visa
hierarchy is not a chain of command. Instead, each board
is supposed to serve as a forum for members to raise
common issues, debate them, and reach some kind of
consensus and resolution.
Heuristic

Dee Hock
• The real basics of what you need in order to
get agreement (Relationships cannot be much
more than this – organisational, marriage, etc):
– Intent (Vision)
– Clear sense of direction (Knowing where you are
going & roughly the road you will be taking)
– Few Basic Principles (The fundamental building
blocks that you will base it upon)

Heuristic

Dee Hock

• Heaven is
– Purpose, Principle & People
• Purgatory is
– Policy and Procedure
• Hell is
– Rule and regulation

Heuristic

Freedom

• Freedom is the length of the chain
between the range of your imagination
and the stake of reality.
• Freedom is the length of the chain between
your imagination and the stake in the ground.

Heuristic

Russel Ackoff on Management
• The characteristic way of management that we have
taught in the Western world is [to] take a complex
system, divide it into parts and then try to manage
each part as well as possible.
• And if that’s done, the system as a whole will behave
well.
• That’s absolutely false, because it’s possible to
improve the performance of each part taken
separately and destroy the system at the same time.

Heuristic

Russel Ackoff on Understanding
• Dr. Ackoff explains that analysis has been the
dominant mode of thought in the Western world for
400 years. Analysis explains how the pieces of a
system work. Synthesis is needed to understand the
why of a system and the interactions between its
parts as they work together.
• Understanding the implications of seeing the
organization as a system leads to the conclusion that
cooperation is more effective than internal
competition in leading any organization to work more
effectively.
Heuristic

On Marriage
Marriage hath in it less of beauty but more of
safety, than the single life; it hath more care,
but less danger, it is more merry, and more
sad; it is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys;
it lies under more burdens, but it is
supported by all the strengths of love and
charity, and those burdens are delightful.
Bishop Jeremy Taylor

Heuristic

Inspiration & Enjoyment
• The best way to inspire people to superior
performance is to convince them by everything you
do and by your everyday attitude that you are
wholeheartedly supporting them.
- Harold Geneen

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to
work a day in your life.
- Confucius

Heuristic

Andy Stanley
• The Vision must be firm and unmoving.
Vision generates Clarity and Clarity
trumps uncertainty.
• We must be flexible in our Plans, but not
in our Vision.
• Models always trump Vision.
• When things are tough, look back and
derive energy from seeing the progress.
Heuristic

The Five Cancers of the Soul
1. Arrogance - (I am right)
2. Unforgiveness / Blame shifting
3. Pride that comes at the expense of others
4. Selfishness / Selfcenteredness / Ego
5. Love of Money

Heuristic

The 5 Super-memes of Modern Society
1. Irrational Opposition – Just say “No”
– Criticism, Presenting only one side of the conflict cloud
2. Personalisation of Blame – Requiring a “head”
– Find a personal scapegoat for a systemic problem
3. Counterfeit Correlation – Common False Clichés
– Using statistical correlation without logical cause & effect
4. Silo Thinking – Compartmented thinking & behaviour
– Fragmentation of the big picture in more palatable pieces
5. Extreme economics – Money replacing hearts
– Simplified principles of business replace other society values
– Pursuit of profit, efficiency and productivity
The Watchman’s Rattle by Rebecca D Costa

Heuristic

Insight Process
Prerequisites for Insight Process to be Activated:
• Exhausted left brain logical, problem solving and left brain conceptual
thinking approaches (Regular thinking does not work)
• Reached a state where you are stuck – no obvious solution available
(Requires new Connections in the Brain)
• Your Thinking must be free from super-memes (Clean Slate)
– No Irrational Opposition
– No Personalisation of Blame
– No False Correlations
– No Silo Thinking
– No Economic Consideration
• Unlock the Brain’s way of finding solutions in extreme complexity

Heuristic

True Insight
Conditions Conducive for Cognition:
• Group of 3-9 People. Group Size trumps Resources
• Relaxed atmosphere & Regular breaks – Even half asleep
• Slow the train down (Cannot force it)
• Regular physical exercises followed by relaxing & letting the brain wander
• Good, Upbeat mood, Enough Sleep (7 hours), No chemicals.
• Brain Fitness & Nourishment (Proteins, Antioxidants, Omega 3 & Vit B)
Distractions towards Insight
• Brain must shut down internal and external distractions
• Must become free of preconceived solutions
• Clear, deep focus on the problem, followed by relaxation
• You cannot see the picture if you are in it. Get out of the picture!

Heuristic

New Insight
• It’s never enough just to tell people about
some new insight. Rather, you have to get
them to experience it in a new way that
evokes its power and possibility.
• Instead of pouring knowledge into people’s
heads, you need to help them grind a new set
of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a
new way.
– John Seely Brown, Seeing Differently: Insights on Innovation

Heuristic

Quotes that represent deep mental models

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