Category: Mental Models

How does the process of doing something new work?

Whether it’s learning a new language, picking up a new skill or starting a new business, we all go through a series of stages.

The typical learning curve is shown as learning plotted against time in a so called “S” curve. This shows that learning is low at the start, speeds up and then levels out later on.

The more natural way to think about learning, however, is that it is hard at the beginning, gets easy as you become more familiar with what needs to be done but then it needs a lot more effort to achieve mastery.

The first stage, getting started is often the hardest bit – when you are approaching something new for the first time. Everything is unfamiliar and different.

Take, for example, learning how to model a business case in Excel. At first, if you’re not that familiar with Excel, it takes time to understand the way in which the cells and formulas work.

After some time, you can get pretty competent at building models. This is the second stage.

Perhaps you can even create some very complex models that have lots of variables and connections to other sheets and perhaps use some VBA for automation and programming.

But then it gets hard once again to master the tool in the third stage.

Excel is a very accessible tool, but it is also a powerful programming language. You need to understand a lot more about the process of building a model to move to a stage where your model can be used to generate useful information in the form of scenarios, projections and sensitivities.

Most people don’t ever get beyond a model that gives you one answer. A model that helps you frame and investigate situations is a lot more complicated to think though and build.

Take another example – writing.

Almost everyone can learn to write. It’s hard at the start but most people probably don’t remember the effort they had to put into learning the shapes of letters and spelling out words when they were younger. It’s pretty natural now.

But then why is most business writing hard to read? Is it because you need jargon or complicated words to explain things, or is it because the writer hasn’t yet reached the point where they can express a big idea in small words?

Hemmingway talked about the idea of “one true sentence”. This was a sentence without decoration, without fancy words – just a simple sentence that said something meaningful.

But most business writers haven’t put in the effort that Hemmingway did.

It makes it easier to put in effort over time to learn a new skill once you know how the learning curve works and can see how it relates to how much you are learning.

At the same time, because it takes effort to learn something new, it makes sense to choose what you want to learn carefully.

In knowledge work – reading, writing and arithmetic are still the most useful skills to have.

Have you ever wondered what makes a product or a person successful in today’s interconnected world?

Is it the quality of their work, how hard they work or a big dose of luck?

There are competing theories flying around – but some have been around for longer.

The Matthew effect comes from biblical parables and says “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.”

In other words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

This effect doesn’t have to do just with money – although that is one way of measuring it in real life.

It turns out that you see this in a number of situations:

• The bestseller lists for music and books are dominated by a small number of well-known and rich artists.
• The most eminent researchers get the credit for a discovery, even if it has been done by a team.
• Children that learn to read early in life pull away from those that don’t.

There are two factors at play here.

The first effect is the principle of cumulative advantage. Small advantages build up to big ones over time.

An example of this is described in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, where children that start playing a sport who are older than others in their cohort perform better because they are bigger at the start of the year, and so get more opportunities to play and develop their skills.

People who start a job and are slightly better are more likely to be invited onto a team to do more interesting work, and over time get more experience than others.

The second factor is the network effect. The more connections you have, the more connections you tend to make – and the more connections you have, the more opportunities come your way.

People who have large networks or are already wealthy tend to have more people approaching them with ideas or opportunities.

Publishers pay more attention to authors that already have a large social media following or email list.

Venture capitalists take entrepreneurs that have already been successful more seriously.

Artists that have a large following and existing sales find it easier to get their next album out and into the market because people are already looking out for them.

So what does this mean for us?

The main takeaway is that advantage builds up over time. If you want to get rich, the best time to get started is 10 years ago.

The second best time is now.

If you have ever attended a team building event or communication seminar or similar training programme, the topic of body language probably came up.

93% of communication is non-verbal, they probably said. How you say something is far more important than what you actually say.

The problem is that this is wrong.

Professor Albert Mehrabian’s research in the late 1960s found that when trying to communicate feelings, 7% of the impact came from the words you used, 38% from the tone and 55% from your expression.

In other words, if you said you were happy when looking sad and sniffling, or said you were fine while looking very angry and snarling, people could work out how you really felt most of the time.

It doesn’t follow that when you try and communicate in general, only 7% of what you get across to someone else is the verbal component.

The research has been misinterpreted for decades – until TED.

TED – a conference on Technology, Entertainment and Design – is now probably the world’s best known repository of great ideas. It has videos of short talks where speakers talk billiantly about an area of interest and expertise.

They don’t just saunter up on stage and perform. The words they use are crucial – their words are used to “tell a story, build an idea, explain the complex, make a reasoned case, or provide a compelling call to action”.

TED made what you said important – because the speakers were talking about great ideas and insights and research that mattered and was making a difference.

Why does this matter to the rest of us?

Virtually any important decision you are involved in will require communication and persuasion. Either someone else has to make the case to you, or you need to make the case to someone else. And people have to agree.

In a connected world filled with information noise, we need to get better at making the case for doing something important.

What you say is just as important as how you say it.

What could possibly be the cause of a problem you are facing? How would you diagnose it?

Medical students are taught to be careful about making diagnoses of rare illnesses.

It is easy when you see a patient to remember the unusual illnesses you have encountered that caused the same symptoms as now and jump to the conclusion that your patient has the same disease.

It is likely that there is a simpler reason.

Perhaps this is why many doctors ask you to take a couple of painkillers and come back in two weeks. The chances are that whatever you have isn’t actually that serious.

Dr Theodore Woodward came up with the aphorism “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras” to remind his students to beware of making exotic diagnoses.

But you can use this outside medicine too. Take markets, for example.

Markets are places when buyers and sellers come together. Prices are created through the mechanism of supply and demand and the actions and decisions of participants.

If you want to get a good deal, you need to know what it takes to produce and supply the item you need and calculate its value.

In a one-to-one sale, you may be able to negotiate a good deal. In a financial market, you need to be ready to move when the market price is at a level that is low compared to your calculation of value.

Many things move the market price on a daily basis, but usually a few big things impact how prices work over the longer period – and they boil down to supply and demand.

The trouble most people have with markets is that they feel that they should be active rather than putting a strategy in place and letting it run – the simple passive approach seems too easy, but time after time it produces better results.

In any field, operations, human resources, sales, writing, programming, marketing, research – it is likely that the reasons for a problem are down to common causes.

Before you decide that your phone is knackered or that your computer has been infected with a virus and that’s what is making it slow, you should turn it off and turn it back on again and see if that fixes the problem.

If your marketing isn’t working – the chances are that you are not taking to the right people, or not saying the right things to interest them.

If your writing doesn’t flow, it’s likely that there are four or five main reasons that repeat time after time.

This aphorism also applies when you think about larger issues.

Is it possible that climate change is an elaborate scientific hoax, or is more likely that the current U.S administration’s antipathy towards mitigating climate change is because powerful organizations with a vested interest in the status quo are trying to protect themselves?

That said, context matters.

If you are on safari in the Masai Mara and you hear hoofbeats, you are quite likely to see zebras.

In addition, although you should not reach for an exotic reason immediately, you should also not rule it out until you have evidence to the contrary.

We just need to make an effort to think through the problem as clearly as possible.