Mental Models Game

Mental Models Game is a card game that improves team performance, well-being and creativity by helping people to talk and understand each other better.

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Tatu’s greetings for the Shift workshop participants.

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Questions Made at the Shift Mental Models Game

What is my mental model about entrapreneurship?

How can I change a negative mental model to a positive one?

How to gain the best leadership mental model?  what are the ideal mental models be a great leader?

What about relationship mental model? what is your mental model about a good relationship?

What is your mental model for Meaningful work?

How can I or my company benefit from understanding others mental models?

What kind of conflicts can not understanding mental models cause?

How can people affect other people's mental models?

What changes mental models?

How do you define mental models?

How to help people grow and Bloom by understanding mental models?

How to distribute or share your mental models?

How to use Mental models with customers? with little effort?

Should one adopt a customer's mental model in a business case? And how to do it? Or should one not? Why?

How can mental models help leadership or company succeed?

What is your mental model about success?

What is your mental model about the history?

What is the use of knowing your mental models?

How can one change a specific mental model?

How can you break harmful mental models?

How to break restricting mental models?

How to transform mental models?

How to learn about other people's mental models?

How to join two or several different mental models?

How do you deal with different mental models in one team?

Are the mental models changing?

How do you switch your mental model?

What is your mental model about empowering leadership?

What mental models about leadership enable personal growth?

How to improve your mental or else?

How often do you take time to look at what is happening and question your mental models and direction?

What is the best way to recognise your own mental models?

What is your mental model about Visionary leadership? what is your mental model about leadership with purpose?

What is your mental model about global mindset?

Do you even know what is your mental model? How might we better become aware of our mental models?

What is your mental model about what success constitutes?

How to develop or change your mental models?

What is my mental model about artificial intelligence?

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You can customise your Mental Models Game with the help of the empty question card templates included in the game. And in fact, it is highly recommended! 

One way is to curate the questions before the game, and also add few of your own. I recommend doing the curation in every case.

The second way is to give during the game empty cards to all players and invite them to write questions they feel important to include in today’s game. I have found these questions to be super valuable data for the future. Usually these questions include few diamonds as well. 

There are about 20 empty cards following the 5 templates shown in the pictures above. Should you like to save them, I recommend using post it’s on top of them. The standard square ones fit nicely under the cards.

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These are the instruction cards for the Mental Models Game.

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Tatu found an old article about the Mental Models Game, written back in 2011. It’s in Finnish only, I am sorry about that.

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We found an old article about the Mental Models Game, written by Jarkko Könönen, architect who worked as a researcher at the Agora X, creative team led by Antti Hautamäki back in 2011. Still valid today.

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Mailing the Mental Models Game. All these go abroad: France, Austria, Belgium (many!), Norway, USA (many!). I am very happy and excited to hear how people around the world will use and like the game. Br, Ville

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Mental Models Game Brochure Now Online

Hi friends, check out the fresh brochure about the game! And remember to use #MentalModelsGame in your social media activities, thanks :)

Mental Models Game Brochure 15.11.2016 from Ville Keranen

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The cards have arrived! However, they are not yet in right order, so still a bit more work to be done before they can be sent out. 

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Mental Models Game, Early Bird Price by Monkey and Banana Coop Webshop

The product Mental Models Game, Early Bird Price is sold by Monkey and Banana Coop Webshop in our Tictail store. Tictail lets you create a beautiful online store for free - tictail.com

Finally, the Mental Models Game is available for orders. Shipping starts at the end of this week. I am happy. 

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Fresh from the press, the brief history of the Mental Models Game, now available as a video. Check it out!

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Illustrations for the Mental Models Game are here! Made by the one and only Jaakko Mehtälä from Kuvituskonttori.

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I have hired an illustrator Jaakko Mehtälä from Kuvistuskonttori to take care of the illustration and the graphic design of the Mental Models Game. The game will feature playful and yellow suited monkeys!

This means that a new version of the game should be out latest in August 2016.

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Mini Game Instructions

Just got an email from a student in USA about the game, as they had to do a presentation about mental models for their class. Being initially a student project of mine, I got excited to help, and wrote this mini version of the game. I also want to share it here, as I have been thinking again to push this project a little further inspired by Jussi Galla and Ville Häll, and their card game to help support marketing. Below you can see my response to an inquiry for the game to be used in a 25 min presentation about Mental Models.

The game itself is still in a prototype form in my shelve. I suppose to get the actual card game would take too long time for your class, and also, 25 mins is a short time for the entire game. However, I think you can do a quick prototype of it in a class setting very well. How the game goes, or could go in your case is following:

1. Welcome everyone to the game - tell them about the rule, that there should be respectful dialogue, no judgement, and only one conversation at a time in small teams. 

2. Introduce the concept of mental models to the participants in few minutes, refer to ideas of the fifth discipline, share stories that illustrate why mental models make a difference

3. Round one, divide people into small groups of 3-4 persons, and give them 3-5 minutes time to share their mental models of something easy or funny, e.g. What is your mental model of a good dinner or party? The first question should be about something that everyone has a mental model of, and that is relatively easy to articulate as well. 

4. Round two, mix groups, and give another question, this time it can be more to the topic of the class, e.g. what is your mental model of a good leadership? Or what is your mental model of a good team player? Here it is important that you include adjective in front of the topic, here it was "good" in both. You can play with words and use more explosive terms, such as "insanely good", "great" or something alike. I think it should be something that spurs emotions and provokes stories for people to share. The main point is to share stories and ways we think. Give people 5 mins time this round. You can ask people to mix teams before they start the dialogue.

5. Ask people to come up with questions, deliver everyone an empty piece of cardboard or paper. Give them 1 minute or less to come up with a question, that includes adjective and the word mental model in it. Preferably also it should be an open question, honest inquiry.

6. Collect the cards, shuffle them, and pick up randomly.

7. Last round(s) can be from the questions people have created for the game. 

8. Finally, you can do a check out, ask everyone to share how they liked the game, what they learnt, or what was meaningful for them.

Bonus ideas:

* A nice addition is to ask people to draw their mental models. Give only 1 minute time to draw, and then share in small teams.

* You can also shuffle the team sizes if you have time e.g. But the challenge is that bigger group dialogue takes easily more time. In small teams more people get to share their mental models.

Please feel free to use the game; apply it, twist, modify etc as you wish. What I would like is to get as a feedback is a little reflection how it went, maybe just answer to following questions in an email from you your group:

1. What went well? 2. What didn't go well? 3. What did we learn? 4. What would we do differently next time? 5. Other reflection / feedback / ideas?

Best yellow regards from Finland, Ville / [email protected] 

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"But, I can imagine a future in which, after looking at the evidence, we see it as absurd they were ever the norm. But if John Snow has a lesson for us beyond the importance of public health, then surely it is that we must constantly question our widely held beliefs and test them against each new piece of evidence we can find."

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"We make assumptions about the world around us based on sometimes incomplete or false information. ... This is important because our behavior is affected by our assumptions or our perceived truths. We make decisions based on what we think we know."

Start With Why by Simon Sinek, p.11

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What is your mental model about a comfortable and well designed chair?

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"What is your Mental Model about a great guest book?" -Auli