A x-y axis with control, complexity, curiosity and confidence as the axis.
Where does your problem fit? Images from Midjourney, schematic by the author.

Understand the problem and how to win first, then choose the model

Every model (e.g. SWOT, business model canvas or customer journey) has a bias. It chooses for us what we can and can’t see. A way to solve for this is to understand the problem first and then hopefully find the best model to fit.

Helge Tennø
2 min readSep 15, 2024

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But how do you do that?

One approach is to start with a discussion on how the team wants to win. Is it by:

  1. Staying curious? Then an open-ended model is needed. One which is flexible, can update as the team is learning, hold different narratives at the same time and pivot with surprises.
  2. Staying confident? If the team want’s to establish one truth and stick to it. Demonstrating that it knows what it needs to know and there is no reason to change.
  3. Staying in control? Does the team see itself as a chess master? In full control of the predictable chess board and only in need of navigating the map once its been established
  4. Leading in complexity? Or does the team understand that it is not in control nor knows the landscape as it keeps changing, but wants to try to stay one step ahead.

Many models are confidence booster. Painting pictures of landscapes that can be controlled. But meticulous models are costly to make and when they are made they tend to stay the same for a long time. Which means that as the environment changes the map either becomes redundant or the team’s strategies do.

Making models that are both curious and embraces complexity is possible, they will never be 100% correct and they will always be changing. This asks that the team understands them for what they are: as good as it gets and a better reflection of a reality that demands continuous learning and will always have unknowns.

Understand the problem and how to win first, then choose the model.

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