Cognitive Toolkit

Santhosh Gandhi

“Giving someone no map is much, much better than giving him a wrong map.” — Nassim Taleb

The Great Mental Models project is the clearest way to change the way you see the world, avoid problems before they happen, and make better decisions.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It was first described by Justin Kruger and David Dunning in 1999. Some researchers also include the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task.

As context is key, use of a pre-drawn map, schema, or heuristic for important decision-making may be a poor choice.

The map and territory is a metaphor used to illustrate the difference between the actual world and our understanding of the world as we perceive it to be. The ‘map’ is our understanding of the ‘territory’ of reality, and we must be careful to remember that the map is not the territory!

The map is not the territory reminds us that our mental models of the world are not the same as the world itself. It cautions against confusing our abstractions and representations with the complex, ever-­shifting reality they aim to describe.

A leader is like a handyman. A great leader is one who knows how to use the tools effectively.

Wise executives tailor their approach to fit the complexity of the circumstances they face.

Collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.

Read this article to learn how brilliant minds like Elon Musk use first principles thinking to solve difficult problems and develop innovative solutions.

The 80/20 Rule

Break down complex problems into basic elements and create innovative solutions from there.

First principles thinking is one of the best ways to uncover creative, strategic solutions to real business problems. Here’s how to use it.

System. We hear and use the word all the time. “There’s no sense in trying to buck the system,” we might say. Or, “This job’s getting out of control, I’ve got to establish a system.” Whether you are aware of it or not, you are a member of many systems – a family, a community, […]

Welcome to the first series of Somia CX Systems Thinking Publications.

If you’re diving into the world of product design, you’ve probably noticed that it’s easy to get bogged down in the nitty-gritty of…

Dunning–Kruger Effect explains why the least competent at a task often incorrectly rate themselves as high-performers because they do not know otherwise.

First principles thinking in product development allows you to remove all your existing biases and known constraints so that you can start to build a new and better solution.

And it will stick with me lifelong

The hidden tactic used by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk

Accounting for cognitive differences in our teams, processes and culture brings exciting opportunities to maximize our impact.

By first working independently on a problem and then converging to share insights, teams can leverage the benefits of both work styles, leading to rapid data analysis, diverse ideas, and high-quality designs.

System 1 thinking is a near-instantaneous thinking process while System 2 thinking is slower and requires more effort.

You’ve likely seen it in your own workplace - the star employee who gets promoted into a management role only to struggle

The Peter Principle, formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, states that “in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of…

The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an idea in psychology proposed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in the journal Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. The theory is a classification system intended to reflect the universal needs of society as its base, then proceeding to more acquired emotions. The hierarchy of needs is split between deficiency needs and growth needs, with two key themes involved within the theory being individualism and the prioritization of needs. While the theory is usually shown as a pyramid in illustrations, Maslow himself never created a pyramid to represent the hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy of needs is a psychological idea and also an assessment tool, particularly in education, healthcare and social work. The hierarchy remains a popular framework, for example in sociology research, management training, and higher education.

You have to measure both.