From the Ask Tom mailbag –
Question:
In yesterday’s blog, you mentioned a Post-It Note mentality. What’s a Post-It Note mentality?
Response:
When Elliott Jaques described the four states of mental processing, he was describing the way our brains perceive the world. This perception is used in problem solving and making decisions. I found this picture of a Post-It Note way of seeing the world. Below the picture I have clipped in the descriptions of Jaques four states. You tell me.
- Stratum I – Declarative Processing – the ability to focus on single task, direct output, solving problems through trial and error. Logic consists mostly of opinion without evidence to support.
- Stratum II – Cumulative Processing – the ability to piece together separate elements of a problem, pattern detecting, solving problems through past experience, documented in SOPs, best practices.
- Stratum III – Serial Processing – the ability, not only to see patterns, but cause and effect relationships between elements. Problem solving through comparative analysis, root cause analysis. The ability to sequence discrete elements into an efficient system.
- Stratum IV – Parallel Processing – the ability to handle multiple serial processes simultaneously. Not multi-tasking, but seeing the interdependency, contingency and bottlenecks that exist between multiple systems and sub-systems. Problem solving through systems analysis.
Post-It Note mentality. Which is it?
I like how you explained stratum 4 as ‘NOT multitasking’ at level 1 you can still multitask the time-span is just shorter in what you are completing in these tasks.
Mike, The best example of that is a teenager (of legal age) operating an automobile. They are running and aware of multiple integrated systems. A speed-braking system, a traffic system including traffic control systems, an air environment system, a music system, a turning system (direction), a navigation system (one place to another), and often a communication system (turn signals and iPhone). But the Time Span is in real time.