Imagine being trapped high on a mountain during a blizzard or being adrift at sea in a life boat for weeks on end. Is there any way to increase your odds of surviving? In fact, research into why some individuals and groups survive these types of disasters while others don't indicates that the ability to adjust one's "mental model" to reflect the new realities of an extreme situation is a critical survival skill.

In Deep Survival, author Laurence Gonzales writes: "Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion." That deadly confusion begins with a flawed mental model that fails to reflect reality but still serves as the basis for taking action. Like people in survival situations, the ability to develop an accurate mental model often separates successful companies from organizations that do not survive.

So what exactly is a company's mental model? Simply put, a robust mental model eliminates internal confusion. The mental model is a framework that simplifies a potentially complicated strategy, allowing everyone in the organization to internalize the strategy and be guided by it.

Great companies build and share their mental model internally in ways that enable managers and employees to independently make critical decisions day in and day out that are aligned with the strategy. Without a strong mental model strategy can become open to interpretation, decision making can become bogged down, or both can occur at once.

Building a shared mental model was the first step in a successful turnaround for a commercial printer. Without a shared mental model as a guide, this printer's functional teams were working at cross-purposes as each function tried to optimize its own area from its own point of view.

For example, the top salesman, winner of the annual incentive trip to Hawaii five years in a row, was almost singlehandedly putting the printer out to business. How? The strategy called for delivering the highest quality printing to customers who were the biggest print users. The sales team prided itself on bringing in the biggest deals with huge volumes from these target customers. Their mental model was essentially, "Big customers, big volumes, big dollars".

While this interpretation of the strategy seems valid, there was a fatal flaw: big customers with big print volumes also command big discounts. Making matters worse, most of these high volume customers did not value high quality printing and their cost-focused approach put the high-quality presses the printer had invested in at a disadvantage. As a result, profits steadily eroded even as the top line grew.

As the losses and the pressure mounted, each function blamed the others for the issues facing the business. The functional teams that needed to drive greater collaboration went deeper into their silos instead. As this collaboration gap widened, performance deteriorated further.

A simple, but powerful exercise for building a shared mental model brought the cross-functional teams together. Using this approach, each function separately answered a series of key questions, including:

Which customers are the most profitable? 
How well aligned is our value proposition to their demands? 
What differentiates our value proposition from competition?
How will we compete and win?

Comparing the answers to these questions, developed from the perspective of each function, quickly revealed that each function was operating from its own radically different mental model. Sales and operations had very different views of the most profitable customers, with sales focused on volume and operations focused on quality.

Working together, the teams identified a previously unrecognized "sweet spot" common to their most profitable print jobs. With this new information, marketing identified customer segments with the most profitable jobs. They were smaller customers with moderate volumes that valued quality. Importantly, since they were too small to have large internal teams focused on printing, they would pay a premium to outsource parts of the process.

By focusing on these customers and building a new value proposition focused on their needs, the sales team started filling the printing presses with profitable jobs. Ultimately, the dialogue begun around the mental model created the reality check and the alignment needed to turn the business around.

In our experience, a successful mental model has three critical components. First, the mental model must provide an accurate reflection of your reality. A major flaw for companies, and for individuals in survival situations, is starting from faulty assumptions. There is a tendency, especially under pressure, to see the world as we wish it were, or how it used to be, rather than as it really is.

Second, a realistic picture of the situation serves as the basis for a plan of action. Agreement is needed on goals and how to achieve them.

Finally, the group, whether a team of climbers trapped on a mountain or a cross-functional management team, needs to work together using their shared mental model to achieve its goals.

Whether you manage a broad cross-functional business or are part of a small functional team, starting a dialogue about your company's mental model can lead to significant improvements. Begin with the types of questions the printer's team addressed. One potential outcome is to confirm that everyone is well aligned behind a shared mental model. Another outcome is to identify gaps to be addressed. While it may not be a question of your company's survival, building a stronger mental model can only increase your odds of success.

Jason Green is a Principal with The Cambridge Group