How to replace common sense with strategic mental models

Executive overview

Common sense is consensus thinking — it produces common results. To become irreplaceable, you need mental models that operate above the noise, not ones absorbed by default from life experience.

The shift is from scarcity and commodity thinking to abundance and multiplicative thinking. Four perspective shifts make this concrete.

Uncommon results require uncommon thinking — common sense actively prevents both.

The problem with common sense

• Common sense = consensus: what everybody else does, thinks, and decides
• Common results follow common thinking — standing out requires breaking from it
• Mental models form by default from experience, not by design
• Outdated or inaccurate models must be actively unlearned and rebuilt
• Holding onto current models locks you into the activity and results they produce

Scarcity vs. abundance thinking

• Common sense treats resources — help, money, opportunity — as scarce and finite
• Scarcity framing turns the economy into a pie: someone else's win shrinks your slice
• Scarcity drives hoarding and control: "I have to do it all myself"
• Controlling everything blocks bandwidth for higher-level strategy
• Believing everything is too expensive leads to burnout from figuring it all out alone
• Abundance mindset: the world works like a garden — success creates more opportunity, not less
• Abundance thinking is multiplicative, not competitive

Four perspective shifts to become irreplaceable

1. Best known path → anticipate the ripple effect

• The best known path is a commodity — if everyone takes it, results are common
• Ripple-effect thinking expands timeframes and sees how choices compound across a domain
• Positions you as the integrator of outcomes, not a follower of convention

2. Protecting your turf → growing value for all

• Turf protection comes from scarcity: guarding intellectual property, territory, lane
• Wealth multiplies when you create value for others, not when you hoard it
• Shifting from protection to contribution increases influence and impact

3. Gut instinct and past experience → continuously updated mental models

• Gut instinct is animalistic — reactive, one-sided, not strategic
• Past experience skews negative: bad memories dominate and produce hypervigilance
• Fear-driven decisions shrink the opportunity set
• Replace instinct-reliance with deliberate, ongoing refinement of how you interpret the world
• Different interpretations lead to different decisions and different results

4. Responsibilities and activities → payoff and impact

• KPI-focused thinking reinforces staying put — you become too valuable where you are
• Influence within your current role is not the same as directional, long-term impact
• Shift focus to the transformational payoff you provide to the team, company, or industry
• Future-focused, impact-oriented thinking is what earns higher-level roles