Analysts often have trouble communicating their ideas to others. Some of this challenge is self-inflicted – for instance, we like to tell people about how we solved something, instead of just giving the solution. But there is something deeper going on. I believe it has to do with the worldview of the listener, and I explain this difference best by sighting an example from history.
When Western sailors first encountered Polynesian navigators they met experts who, without compass, sextant, timepiece, map, or any numbering system, were able to find their way between islands hundreds of miles apart and reported that they had not lost a canoe in a generation. Western navigators, fully aware of the demands of navigation, wondered how this could be possible.
Polynesians had a system. They used stars to navigate – but while a star on the horizon is a useful guide, as it rises it becomes less and less informative until at it’s zenith it provides very little information – especially if you don’t know the hour. Polynesians solved this by identifying all of the stars that rise at a certain point on the horizon and where those same starts set. In this way they established “star lines.” Several members of each star line are near the horizon at all times. The point at which each star line intersects the horizon marks a reliable point upon which to navigate. Star lines are a terrific resource because they do not change with time of day or with season – they are perfectly fixed and unchanging. For every island the navigators memorized the star lines toward which one would sail in order to reach every other island. So from island A the navigator would know which star line to follow to reach island B. But there was an additional complication. Sailing at night, islanders risked sailing past the target island in the dark. Since a low island is only visible from about 3 miles away, daytime wasn’t much better. Birds, however, provide a useful tool for knowing when an island is close. Each morning they fly out from the island and each evening they fly back. If a navigator gets within 20 miles of an island, they can use them as a directional guide for the last stretch. This additional 34 miles added to the circumference. But it is important to know when one is within that circumference in order to stop and watch for birds during daylight, raising the question of how islanders estimated distance. To do this they imagined a third island, island C. Sometimes it was a real island, and sometimes it was fictional. They new the star-line along which Island B lay from island A. And they knew the two different star lines along which Island C lay from both island A and Island B. As they traveled from A to B, they would imagine island C moving across the star line background. They knew that when they estimated it aligned with the starline for island B, that they were close and should stop to watch for birds. This oversimplifies the true sophistication of the method – remember, that as sailors they were not sailing directly at island B. They are actually tacking left and right, at angles oblique to island B, and had to estimate motion toward the star line – a challenge that makes an already daunting task much more formidable. But the explanation so far is enough to establish the central remarkable thing about the mental model of the islanders.
The star lines are fixed in the sky, and the the canoe is fixed with relation to the star lines. This is true. Wherever you sail, your position relative to the star lines is the only unchanging thing. As the islanders traveled from A to B, instead of imagining themselves moving across the surface of the sea, they imagined instead that the islands moved in relation to them. This world view was so thoroughly established that when Western navigators pointed out that given their knowledge of the bearing of islands A, B and C with respect to each other that it was possible to draw a map of the fixed relative position of each island, navigators, at least initially, responded with complete incomprehension. What is the meaning of a map when islands move? This is the important point: both western and Polynesian navigators were using very sophisticated methods. Both were displaying remarkable intelligence and analytical acumen to solve the same problem. Both were achieving successful outcomes. And yet their mental models were so different that they had difficulty sharing information about the same topic.
Here are the essential differences between western and Polynesian mental models. Westerners perceived the world from a third person perspective, looking down on a map. And, westerners digitize the information, turning it into numbers representing distance (knots), bearing (degrees) and time (minutes and hours). Polynesians on the other hand, perceive the world from a first-person perspective, resting on the surface of the sea, and experience the world as in analog, without intermediating numbers.
This is similar to the challenge analysts have communicating to executives. Analysts consider problems from a third-person perspective: we like maps, and diagrams and flowcharts. And we like to digitize the problem – applying measures and graphing the results. But many people inside corporations think more like the pacific islanders: for them the world is experienced first person and analog. Instead of imagining their world from above, they experience it at ground level. And here’s the key. Both are right! Both are smart people dealing with the world in a way that is effective.
So what does this mean to an Analyst communicating to someone with an alternate mental model? Spend some serious time imagining the world from their first person perspective. What are they navigating by? I imagine their world as one in which I am standing on a field surrounded by a ring of people shouting at me. Some are angry, some are flattering, and I’m trying to minimize the abuse. I can’t see my situation from above. Along comes an analyst who starts talking about maps and numbers – these are alien to my world. How could they possibly help?