A Flawed Mental Model

The cost of a bad mental model in business can be staggering. One I’ve been thinking about recently is the model we use to judge people in the workplace.

Long ago on the Saharan plains of Africa, we judged people simply. If one human ran into another, they applied a basic framework to decide quickly whether to run, fight, or interact (or even mate). The model was: Is the other person male or female? Are they big and dangerous-looking or small and nonthreatening? Are they from my tribe? Do they look like me?

These heuristics served us well when the mission was to simply stay alive.

But today, in the work environment, we often rely on relics of this primal mental model—and it doesn't work at all. In hiring, promoting, assigning work and more, we ask ourselves: What does this person look like? Are they imposing and confident, or are they meek and questioning? Do they look like me? Do they remind me of the people I most associate with?

These things tell us nothing about how well a person can …