Model Models for Product Managers

Mental models are simple expressions of complex processes or relationships. These models are accumulated over time by an individual and used to make faster and better decisions. Here’s an example: the

Mental models are simple expressions of complex processes or relationships. These models are accumulated over time by an individual and used to make faster and better decisions.

Here’s an example: the Pareto Principle states that roughly 80% of all outputs come from 20% of the effort.

In the context of product management, the model suggests that instead of trying to create 100% of the customer opportunity, you may want to look for how to do 20% of the effort and solve 80% of the opportunity. Product teams make this trade-off all the time, and the results often look like feature launches where 20% of customers with more complicated use cases aren’t supported.

Mental models are powerful, but their utility is limited to the contexts they were extrapolated from. To combat this, you shouldn’t rely on one or even a few mental models, you should instead be continuously building a latticework of mental models that you can draw from to make better decisions.

• How Treating Work Like Summer Camp Can Improve Your Team's Performance

• Are We Nearly There Yet?

• Decompilation: How to Find Simple Solutions to Hard Problems

• The Incredible Value of Mental Models in a World of Infomania

• Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

• Rethinking Efficiency

• Throughput Accounting

• What's Right is What Works

• "Real Options" Underlie Agile Practices

• First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge

• What is a Product?

• How to Predict Everything

• Unpacking the Innovator's Gift

• The Best Continuous Discovery Teams Cultivate These Mindsets

• Charlie Munger: 5 Notions to Help Solve Problems

• Running a Marathon in Your Bare Feet

• The Tyranny of the Urgent

• Introduction to the Theory of Constraints

• The Eisenhower Decision Matrix: How to Distinguish Between Urgent and Important Tasks

• 3 Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions

• Fighting Infomania: Why 80% of your Reading is a Waste of Time

• Aggregation Theory

• Mental Models, I Find Repeatedly Useful

• Why You Procrastinate Or Fail To Choose

• The Munger Two Step

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