- Rethinking IBM's Research Model
- Compartmentalization of Business and Personal Life
- Domestic Emerging Markets
- THE PARALLEL UNIVERSES IN OUR MINDS
- WHERE "MODELS" COME FROM
- AVOIDING OBSOLESCENCE
- THE CONSEQUENCES OF MODELS
- ENDNOTES
Compartmentalization of Business and Personal Life
We recently spoke with a successful manager who remarked that when she needs to hire a new employee, she inevitably turns to a headhunter. But in her personal life, she trusts to chance to find a life partner. It is a similar challenge of finding the right person with the right characteristics and chemistry, but she applies a completely different approach because she has a different mental model for her personal and business life. She would never think about going into a single's bar and hoping to stumble across the perfect vice president of marketing, but she will in her personal life. Because of this artificial wall, she was much less creative in thinking about her personal life (and less successful in filling the position for a life partner) than in her business life where she routinely found great people to fill key positions.
One of the limiting frames we have is the separation of business and personal life, even as these two worlds are merging together. Look at how many TV entertainment programs have a work setting for portraying stories of personal lives. As the lines between business and personal lives blur, there are opportunities for shifting our thinking within business and personal life and across the two. We can borrow mental models from one area and apply them to the other to change the way we see both aspects of our lives.