Everyone thinks they’re on the same page. Almost nobody is. A shared mental model isn’t a meeting or a slide deck; it’s hard mental work.

“Let’s make sure we’re on the same page.” That’s a frequent statement in professional life, yet are you sure of what it means? Very often, people refer to the concept of a shared mental model when they are using this sentence.

Let’s dive into a quick theoretical definition. A shared mental model is a collective understanding, representation, or mental picture of a task, goal, or team process held by a group’s members. It is the invisible framework that enables people to anticipate each other’s needs, communicate efficiently, and collaborate seamlessly without constant explanation.

That’s a heavy definition. Let’s look at it in the light of a few real-world examples.

Software Engineering

As the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, I’m still heavily involved in product management. Very often, a new feature begins life as a brainchild of a single person.

The first round of shared mental modeling usually takes place with our product team. It’s only a team of four people, but aligning what a feature should and shouldn’t do is hard work. It often takes multiple rounds to align the product team to have a shared mental model for a new feature.

Now, enter the development team. Before we start developing a feature or even writing JIRA tickets, the product team presents the new feature’s core concepts to the development team. The idea is to expand the shared mental model from the product team to the development team. Quite often, the development team raises valid points on technical feasibility at this stage. They need to be reflected in the shared mental model for the new feature, or you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Even though we invest lots of time in creating shared mental models for new features, it doesn’t always work out 100%. Sometimes, I get questions from the development team when a feature is nearly complete, and I ask myself, “Why does this question come up now?” More often than not, this is a sign that we didn’t create a fully shared mental model earlier on.

Crisis Management

Change of scene. Recently, I was teaching a crisis management course at the University of Lucerne. In contrast to a normal lecture, the course consisted of a five-day crisis simulation, during which participants had to address multiple problems simultaneously: flooding, migration, energy shortages, and a pandemic. They did so as a crisis response team that was constantly bombarded with new situations, an overwhelming amount of information, and a plethora of conflicts and dilemmas.

In such a crisis, nobody has the full picture of what’s really going on. That’s why crises are usually chaotic, at least when they break out. Creating a shared mental model in a crisis means verifying and externalizing information. That’s typically achieved by creating a visual situation map and holding regular situation briefings.

Even when you emphasize synchronizing information across the crisis response team, simple misunderstandings will occur during every crisis: Are we talking about 6 casualties now, or just 4? Like in software engineering, creating a shared mental model is difficult during a crisis.

Organization

Back to business life. Whenever things go sideways or major changes occur, companies tend to reorganize. We need a bigger sales team. Let’s split the development team into two. Let’s merge the two sales organizations after we acquired that other company.

The list of examples is endless, yet it’s fair to say that most reorganizations fail. Why? I guess it’s because the designers of the reorganization didn’t create a shared mental model with the people affected by the reorganization.

Strategy

Reorganizations are often mistaken for strategy-making. But that’s wrong. In entrepreneurship, strategy is connected to which markets you serve, what products you offer, and how you make money from those activities. And yes, at some point, strategy-making involves deciding whether or not to sell your company.

Creating a shared mental model for strategic decisions works similarly to the software engineering example described above: In a first phase, you need to create a shared mental model among your co-founders. And yes, co-founders might have different strategic views and, in some cases, even differing interests.

Only now can you start the second phase of strategic alignment: Involving your board. And once again, you might encounter different strategic views and differing interests, as your board will represent the investors.

Conclusion

Call it shared mental model, call it alignment, call it being on the same page: It doesn’t matter. The main thing is that you take the effort to create mental unity before proceeding with any important decision.

You might argue that those discussions are inefficient. They might look inefficient at first, but in the long run, they almost always prove very effective.

Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that creating shared mental models is difficult. Even if you invest a lot of time and energy into it, you will sometimes get it wrong.

What can you do? Just as with any difficult task, get up and just start. Your shared mental model skills will improve with practice. What are you waiting for?