Power of Impossible Thinking, The: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business

by Wind, Jerry; Crook, Colin; Gunther, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780131425026
• ISBN10: 0131425021
• Format: Hardcover w/CD
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: Wharton School Publishing

Summary

Why your mental models are your #1 obstacle to success... and how to transform them into your biggest advantage! - If you can think impossible thoughts you can do impossible things. - Your perception is reality. What we see is what we think and what we think is what we see. - Apply your new mental models in business - and throughout your entire life.

Author Biography

Colin Crook is senior fellow of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

(AN ASIDE) IS THIS ANY WAY TO START A BOOK?	xxiii
ENDNOTES	xxv
PREFACE	xlv
HIJACKING OUR MINDS	xlv
Mental Models	xlvi
What We See Is What We Think	l
The Importance of Mental Models	lii
Thinking the Impossible	liv
ENDNOTES	lvi
PART 1 RECOGNIZE THE POWER AND LIMITS OF MENTAL MODELS	1	(36)
CHAPTER 1 OUR MODELS DEFINE OUR WORLD	3	(18)
Rethinking IBM's Research Model	5	(1)
Compartmentalization of Business and Personal Life	6	(1)
Domestic Emerging Markets	7	(1)
THE PARALLEL UNIVERSES IN OUR MINDS	8	(3)
Building Our Brains	10	(1)
WHERE "MODELS" COME FROM	11	(5)
Models for the Moment	14	(2)
AVOIDING OBSOLESCENCE	16	(2)
THE CONSEQUENCES OF MODELS	18	(2)
ENDNOTES	20	(1)
CHAPTER 2 RUNNING THE MIRACLE MILE	21	(16)
Flights of Fancy	24	(1)
Shifting Models	24	(2)
Models That Are Out of Sync with the times	26	(1)
THE POWER OF MODELS	26	(2)
PERILS OF MODELS	28	(4)
Changing the Tune	30	(1)
Making a Segway: The Bumpy Ride to a New Model	31	(1)
THE HUMAN SPIRIT IS INDOMITABLE	32	(2)
ENDNOTES	34	(3)
PART 2 KEEPING YOUR MODELS RELEVANT	37	(102)
CHAPTER 3 SHOULD YOU CHANGE HORSES?	39	(18)
Place Your Bets	41	(1)
A Wild Ride	42	(4)
KNOWING WHEN TO SWITCH HORSES	46	(9)
OFF TO THE RACES	55	(1)
ENDNOTES	56	(1)
CHAPTER 4 PARADIGM SHIFTS ARE A TWO-WAY STREET	57	(20)
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW	59	(4)
THE SEQUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS	63	(2)
SOMETIMES WE GO ONLY ONE WAY	65	(2)
THE PARADIGM SWING: LIVING IN ST. PETERSBURG	67	(2)
PARADIGMS WHOSE TIME HAS NOT YET COME	69	(2)
SEEING IN BOTH DIRECTIONS	71	(3)
ENDNOTES	74	(3)
CHAPTER 5 SEEING A NEW WAY OF SEEING	77	(16)
HOW TO SEE DIFFERENTLY	80	(10)
NEW MAPS	90	(1)
ENDNOTES	91	(2)
CHAPTER 6 SIFT FOR SENSE FROM STREAMS OF COMPLEXITY	93	(28)
What Is Knowledge?	95	(3)
THROWING A DROWNING MAN ANOTHER MEGABYTE OF DATA	98	(3)
Knowing More, Knowing Less	99	(1)
Swallowing the Sea	100	(1)
ITS ALL ABOUT CONTEXT	101	(4)
Zooming In and Out	103	(2)
THE PROCESS OF ZOOMING IN AND ZOOMING OUT	105	(10)
Knowing Where You Stand	105	(1)
Zooming In	106	(4)
Zooming Out	110	(5)
EXTREME THINKING: SIMULTANEOUS ZOOMING IN AND OUT	115	(1)
AN APPLICATION: DO YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?	116	(1)
ZOOMING	117	(2)
ENDNOTES	119	(2)
CHAPTER 7 ENGAGE IN R&D OF THE MIND	121	(18)
THE NEED FOR EXPERIMENTS	123	(2)
CONDUCTING COGNITIVE R&D	125	(7)
Making a Leap	127	(1)
Challenges of Experimentation	128	(1)
When to Experiment: Weighing the Costs and Returns of Cognitive R&D	129	(3)
INTO THE LABORATORY	132	(4)
LIFE AS A LABORATORY: CONTINUOUS ADAPTIVE EXPERIMENTATION	136	(1)
ENDNOTES	137	(2)
PART 3 TRANSFORM YOUR WORLD	139	(32)
CHAPTER 8 DISMANTLE THE OLD ORDER	141	(16)
PERSISTENCE OF MODELS	143	(2)
CHANGING MODELS: REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION	145	(2)
SMOOTHING THE WAY TO A NEW ORDER	147	(6)
CASTLES IN THE AIR	153	(2)
ENDNOTES	155	(2)
CHAPTER 9 FIND COMMON GROUND TO BRIDGE ADAPTIVE DISCONNECTS	157	(14)
ADAPTIVE DISCONNECTS	159	(2)
THE NEED FOR UNLEARNING	161	(1)
ADDRESSING ADAPTIVE DISCONNECTS	162	(7)
Recognizing Your Own Adaptive Disconnects	162	(2)
Bridging the Gaps	164	(4)
A Process for Connecting	168	(1)
ADAPTING THE WORLD	169	(1)
ENDNOTE	170	(1)
PART 4 ACT QUICKLY AND EFFECTIVELY	171	(68)
CHAPTER 10 DEVELOP THE INTUITION TO ACT QUICKLY	173	(16)
WHAT IS INTUITION?	175	(2)
Instinct, Insight and Intuition	176	(1)
THE POWER OF CREATIVE LEAPS	177	(1)
DANGERS OF INTUITION	178	(3)
DEVELOPING YOUR CAPACITY FOR INTUITION	181	(5)
MODELS IN ACTION	186	(1)
ENDNOTES	187	(2)
CHAPTER 11 THE POWER TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE	189	(20)
HOWARD SCHULTZ	189	(5)
Rethinking Coffee	190	(1)
A Journey of Discovery and Intuition	190	(1)
Bridging Adaptive Disconnects	191	(1)
Building a New Order	191	(1)
Zooming In and Out	192	(1)
Continuous Experimentation and Challenging the Model	193	(1)
Stretching Beyond the Possible	194	(1)
OPRAH WINFREY	194	(5)
Rethinking the Talk Show	195	(1)
Adaptive Experimentation:
Books, Magazines and Other Media	196	(1)
Bridging Adaptive Disconnects	197	(1)
Build a World Order: The Harpo Infrastructure to Support the Oprah Brand	198	(1)
ANDY GROVE	199	(5)
Continuous Reinvention and Experimentation	199	(2)
Changing Horses: The Strategic Inflection Point	201	(1)
Using Paranoia and Cassandras to See Things Differently	202	(1)
Intuition	202	(1)
A Two-way Street: Adding Market Perspective to Engineering Through "Intel Inside"	202	(2)
CONCLUSIONS	204	(3)
ENDNOTES	207	(2)
CHAPTER 12 CHALLENGING YOUR
OWN THINKING: PERSONAL, BUSINESS AND SOCIETY	209	(1)
HEALTHY THINKING: MAKING SENSE IN PERSONAL LIFE	210	(6)
DOT-COM: MAKING SENSE IN BUSINESS	216	(10)
TERRORISM AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: MAKING SENSE IN SOCIETY	226	(7)
Keep Your Eye on the Model	232	(1)
ENDNOTES	233	(2)
CONCLUSION WHAT YOU THINK IS WHAT YOU DO	235	(4)
Beyond Possibility	237	(2)
APPENDIX THE NEUROSCIENCE BEHIND MENTAL MODELS	239	(15)
CORE CONCEPTS	241	(7)
We Live Together in Separate Worlds	241	(1)
We Use Only a art of What We See	242	(1)
Reality Is a Story the Brain and World Work Out Together	243	(1)
Mental Models	244	(1)
The Cartesian Theater	244	(2)
The Reality of Reality	246	(2)
EXPLICATIONS	248	(6)
Walking on a Dark City Street at Midnight (Book Opening)	248	(1)
Shaking Hands with Bugs Bunny: The Nature of Memory (Book Opening)	249	(1)
Overlooking Gorillas: Inattention Blindness (Book Opening)	250	(1)
Hard Wiring: Nature vs. Nurture (Chapter 1)	250	(1)
Seeing Things Differently (Chapter 5)	251	(1)
Zooming In and Out to Sift for Sense from Streams of Complexity (Chapter 6)	251	(1)
A Self-reflexive World: Epistemological Solipsism (Chapter 9)	252	(1)
Intuition (Chapter 10)	252	(1)
Cultivating a Practice of "Letting Go" (Chapter 10)	253	(1)
ENDNOTES	254	(3)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY	257	(4)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	261	(2)
INDEX	263

Excerpts

Preface Hijacking Our Minds At first glance, mental models may seem abstract and inconsequential. But they cannot be dismissed as optical illusions, parlor games or academic curiosities-all in our head. Our models affect the quality and direction of our lives. They have profit-and-loss and even life-and-death implications. The debate about U.S. intelligence following the September 11 terrorist attacks illustrates the difficulty of making sense in today's complex environment. Congressional post-mortems focused on who knew what when-on the information-but not on the more critical mental models that shaped how that information was processed. As is almost always the case in our information age, what led to the tragedy was not primarily a shortage of data. Plenty of data points indicated that an attack using an aircraft as a missile was possible, and there was even information pointing to potential members of the conspiracy. While more specific information could have been gathered and shared among different agencies, the failure was only partially one of data gathering. This was not a failure of intelligence per se. It was, at least in part, much more a failureto make sense. Information was filtered through existing mental models related to terrorism and hijackings. For example, middle-class, clean-cut young working men with everything to live for did not fit the profile of the stereotypical wild-eyed young fanatics who became suicide bombers. So when these apparently more stable men began studying in flight school or asking about crop dusters, the possibility of terrorism was filtered out. Hijackings also followed a certain well-established pattern. The plane and its crew typically were taken hostage and flown to some remote location, where the hijackers made demands. Pilots were instructed that the best course of action for passengers and crew was not to resist. During the September 11 attacks, the information was filtered through a set of mental models that made it hard to see what was really happening until it was too late. The events of September 11 also dramatically illustrate the power of shifting mental models. When passengers on the fourth plane, United Flight 93, received reports by cell phone from friends and family about the attack on the World Trade Center, several quickly realized that this was not a typical hijacking. They could see that their own aircraft would be used as a missile against another target. In a matter of minutes, they were able to transform their mental models and take heroic actions to stop the hijackers. As a result, the last plane failed to reach its target, crashing in a field in western Pennsylvania, a tragedy that could have been much worse if some of its passengers hadn't been able to make sense of what was going on and move to stop it. The passengers and crew of Flight 93 were presented with a picture that was similar to the hijackings earlier that day. What they suddenly developed, however, was a different mental model. They were able to quickly make sense of what was happening and to act on this new understanding. And that made all the difference. Mental Models One of our most enduring-and perhaps limiting-illusions is our belief that the world we see is the real world. We rarely question our own models of the world until we are forced to. One day, the Internet was infinitely attractive. It could do no wrong. It was magnificent and beautiful. The next day, it was overhyped and ugly. It could do nothing right. Nothing had changed about the picture, yet in one instant we saw it as a seductive young woman and the next minute we rejected it. What happened? This is called a "gestalt flip." The lines and data points are the same, but the picture is dramatically different. What has changed? Not the picture, but our making sense. What is in front of our eyes is the same. What is behind our eyes has c