For no particular reason, here are three mental models that I often use in thinking through a situation.

Shoes

When you’re looking for a shoe online, there are a number of attributes you could start from: color, size, style, usage, ratings, materials, retailer, typical buyer, price, availability, and so on. On a website, this is called faceted navigation; a facet is a side of something, so faceted navigation allows you to browse options according to the “side” of an object. So when I’m trying to understand a situation, I’ll ask myself something like, “how else should I be coming at this?” or, “is this one facet really three?” Sometimes, instead of a shoe, I’ll imagine a simple cube — or stare at something around me like a tissue box or an eraser — and rotate it to see the different “sides”. This sort of analytical creativity (rather than combinatorial) is an active splitting of hairs to get a better diagnosis and view of a problem’s attributes.

Spiders

Specifically, spider charts, or radar charts. I love a good 2x2, but things really get going when you’ve got 8 axes to mess with. Where the shoes above help me to see different sides of a situation, a spider chart helps map the degrees to which each of them matter. Too often, it’s easy to get wrapped up in overly simplistic either/or debates, when the real challenge in a situation is the interactions between multiple interdependent (sometimes competing) factors. Spider charts help distribute the burden of influence appropriately.

Cities

Confession: I don’t know much (anything) about city planning. But I know that a city planner thinks about the world differently than a retailer, commuter, tourist, or resident. 

• The city planner is thinking about systems & infrastructure over decades, local policies, and how to serve a wide range of participants. 

• The retailer (or any business owner) is thinking about how they might connect that infrastructure to the kind of value they want to provide to patrons. They’re creating a system of value delivery within a narrower range of experiences over a long period of time: “how are the delivery trucks going to get here? Where will customers park? What kind of storefront am I allowed that will attract the right customers?”

• A commuter represents someone who uses the given infrastructure (city planner) on a regular basis and develops consistent but somewhat short-term social, economic, and behavioral patterns (with retailers): they have a favorite coffee shop or lunch spot, they take the same bus to work, pay the parking garage, etc. 

• A tourist’s interest in an area is dense & intense: short-term, looking for highlight experiences, higher-than-average spending, and pay little attention to infrastructure (except when they don’t know where the public restrooms are).

• Residents represent those who are usually attentive to long-term, value-accruing interests. Quality-of-environment factors matter similar to retailers, but they interact with many spaces similar to tourists and commuters.