1/2 Individual Homework Mental Models in Network

Tivo Mallillin Implementation

TM225 TQM 9 August 2008, Version 1.0
For internal use

Task: Identify and list 7 good and 7 bad mental models in your own organization. Indicate why the
mental model is good or bad.

“Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but
know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant of both the enemy and yourself, you are sure being
defeated in every battle.

Sun Tzu, 500 BC - The Art of War

7 Bad Mental Models

1. The number of Work in Progress (WIP) for the acceptance milestone is increasing for over a
year and a half. The solution was to increase headcount of the acceptance team that is
responsible for the milestone. The headcount did not solve the problem but instead increase
overhead. There was not systematic approach in the resolution.
2. The competition is driving the margins down. Tendering team is cutting on mandatory roles and
tasks to cut down on cost therefore meet the target margins. The mandatory resource plan and
tasks are the minimum requirement to deliver quality service. Reducing the scope means
introducing poor quality and therefore additional cost that will result to less or negative margin.
3. Partners are not using the standard tools provided by the company; it is part of their share-of-
responsibility to use these tools and is part of the cost incurred. Project managers rely on
different source of information, i.e. mail, excel sheet and even sms to get hold of the partner
information. The result is disparate source of information.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are part of the short term incentives. The project teams
produce the result for the sake of having a good figure and not based on the primary objective of
the KPI.
5. The introduction of a service unit that actually duplicates the competency of an existing unit. This
introduction is based on the industry buzz. The company has sold this new service but actually
internally there was confusion on who will do what based on the service sold to the customers.
6. The introduction of a new organizational unit because the existing unit is not performing as
expected, which is an isolated case. This is deviating to the organizational blueprint.
7. Change orders are generally accounted as part of risk contingency cost. The project cannot
determine which is a legitimate sellable change orders and delighting the customer.

7 Good Mental Models

1. The project team is not responsible for a process in between the delivery of the service. They
have agreed to the customer to accept the service prior to the delivery therefore the project
recognizes the revenue earlier than expected.
2. The partners are not using the required tools for the deployment of the service. The contract
manager reduces their price and the project hired an equivalent workforce to do this task at a
lower rate.
3. Internally the project team was doing a good job at maintaining the quality of the delivery of its
service. The account team was able to sell this quality management as a separate service
towards the customer’s third party suppliers and partners.
4. The supplies were paid as soon as it was delivered at the warehouse, but there are missing or
stolen supplies when it is going to the deployed site resulting to loss. The resolution was to pay
the supplies on-site after accounting all quantities.
5. The introduction of a new service unit which overlaps to most of the existing service units ‘
competence brought to a clear SOR and handover, instead of creating an overlap of
organization.
6. Competitive times requires the project team to be cost effective, an approach of having multiple
hats for a similar scope of work is encouraged coupled with work-life balance.
7. Travel cost was rising for the past 2 years, the introduction of quarterly travel ban on internal
face-to-face meetings to enforce the use of existing technologies such as voip and video
conferences, the company has invested.