Your Mental Models

Adm. Thad Allen is the retired commander of the Coast Guard and hero of our efforts after Katrina. He has been the public face of our cleanup efforts for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Adm. Allen has the following comments regarding mental models and how leaders can go about creating a unity of effort:

I'm a big fan of Peter Senge (at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), who talks about learning organizations and the use of mental models. You have to understand at a very large, macro level what the problem is that you're dealing with and what needs to be done to achieve the effects you want - - and you have to be able to communicate that. You also have to create a set of shared values that everybody involved can subscribe to.

For example, with Hurricane Katrina, it was clear to me after about 24 hours in New Orleans that we weren't dealing only with a natural disaster. When the levees were breached and New Orleans flooded, it became a different event. Under the hurricane response model, resources are provided to a local government, which runs the response. But we had lost continuity of government: There was no functional local government that could take the resources and apply them to the mission.

So the mental model became more like the response to a weapon of mass effect. When I realized that, things started happening. I sat down with Russel Honore, who was leading the military forces down there, and we divided the city into sectors and assigned each sector to one of his units. We focused on providing security and creating the capacity of local government to do its job - - dewater the city, do the house-to-house searches and so forth.