Mental Models Paper

As an employee of AAA Transportation working in the Human Resources department it is part of the expected job duties to find ways to ensure all employees are working to better the company and to help the company grow. Presently, AAA Transportation has obtained new ownership. The new owners have an idea for how the company may be able to expand and grow. The new owners would like to add the delivery of non-perishable goods to the current delivery routes. The idea behind this is to expand the current area covered and provide additional service to existing customers. The owners believe that adding non-perishable goods to the routes using the current refrigerated trucks, that are usually not fully loaded, will help provide additional services at a lower rate to the customers.

The owners have run into a problem with two of the long time employees of the company. Vernon and Bud have been with the company for over 20 years and as such have quite a bit of influence over the current employees they work with. The new owners have no desire to terminate the employment of two employees with such a long history with the company so the goal is to change the way Vernon and Bud think about the new changes.

Four steps to promoting change to mental models/mind sets

There are four steps that need to be worked through in order to change the mental model or mind set of coworkers. These steps are mostly psychological in nature. The four steps are:

 Understanding mental models and recognizing the limits and power of those models

 Testing new approaches against the changes in the environment and generating new models

 Overcoming inhibitors that block change like insufficient information, insufficient trust, a desire to hold on to comfortable patterns, and the expectations of coworkers

 Changing your own mental model or mindset, implementation of the model, assessing the model regularly and continuous strengthening of the desired model

Each of these steps require constant...