The System Didn’t Fail: The Mental Model Did

Does this sound familiar? Your organization invests in a new tool, process, or way of working. The logic makes sense. The intent is good. Everyone agrees it should help.

And yet… a few months later, the results aren’t what you expected. Adoption is uneven. Old habits creep back in. The system quietly becomes the thing people work around instead of with.

When that happens, the system usually gets the blame.

But more often than not, the real issue isn’t the system at all; it’s the mental model underneath it that never changed.

The quiet assumption behind most change efforts

A lot of initiatives are built on a belief that sounds perfectly reasonable:

If we add the right tool, process, or investment, behavior will follow.

Sometimes that’s true. Unfortunately often, it’s not.

Not because people are stubborn or resistant or unwilling…but because they’re interpreting the change through beliefs shaped by past experiences, constraints, and incentives.

Those beliefs don’t disappear just because a system changes. They walk themselves right into your new system along with your existing people.

“If we build it, they will come”

Let’s start with a familiar one. A team invests in a robust marketing automation or CRM platform. It’s powerful. It can do a lot (can’t they all?). On paper, it should solve several long-standing problems at once (e.g., single source of data truth, automated workflow accessibility, consistent templates, etc.).

Training happens. Maybe there’s even documentation (a gal can hope, right?). Leadership is upbeat. And then [groan]… adoption is spotty (i.e. they don’t come just because you built it).

Some people use it. Others avoid it. A few revert to spreadsheets or inbox workarounds. Reporting is inconsistent. Experiments feel risky. No one quite trusts the data yet.

From the outside, it can look like people are being difficult. But if you slow down and listen, what you often hear instead is:

• I don’t have time to fully learn this right now.

• This feels complicated, and I don’t want to mess it up.

• We’ve switched tools before…I’ll wait to see if this one actually sticks.

Same system. Very different interpretations.

So the tool technically exists… but behavior quietly defaults back to what feels safer and faster…and if we’re being honest — comfortable.

If you’ve ever looked at a powerful system and thought, “Why aren’t we getting more out of this?” — there’s a good chance the system isn’t the problem.

The mental model is.

“More visibility will fix it”

Another common assumption sounds like this:

If we just had better visibility, things would improve.

So leaders ask for more dashboards. More reports. More updates. More status checks. And, the team responds…usually by spending more time reporting on work than actually doing it.

What doesn’t always get named is that visibility does NOT resolve:

• unclear decision rights

• shifting priorities

• late-stage stakeholder input

• competing definitions of “done”

So while the reporting increases, the underlying friction stays exactly the same.

If you’ve ever been asked for “more visibility” when what you really needed was clearer direction or firmer decisions, you know how this feels.

The mental model here is subtle but powerful: Information automatically leads to alignment.

In reality, information without shared understanding often just creates noise.

“If it’s important, people will make time”

This one shows up constantly, and especially in small and mid-sized organizations.

A new initiative is framed as a priority. Everyone agrees it matters. Leadership is sincere. But nothing else changes.

Calendars stay full. Deadlines remain intact. Existing commitments aren’t removed. The expectation is that people will “find a way” because the work is important (and that’s just what we do here, right?).

What actually happens instead?

• People quietly triage (and move ever so closer to burning out).

• Quality becomes uneven.

• Follow-through starts to slip.

Not because people don’t care, but because the system still rewards responsiveness and speed over focus and depth. After all, how many of you have told yourselves that you need to block off recurring placeholders on your calendar for “deep work” only to constantly book meetings over your sacred focus space?

If you’ve ever been told something was a priority without anything else being deprioritized, you’ve experienced this mental model firsthand.

Priority isn’t just about intent. It’s about tradeoffs…and systems that make those tradeoffs visible and real.

“The problem is resistance”

When change doesn’t land the way leaders hoped, the explanation often becomes: People are resistant to change.

But in practice, what I see far more often is something else entirely.

• People are uncertain.

• They’re unclear on expectations.

• They’re unsure what “good” looks like.

• They don’t know what’s safe to experiment with; or, what mistakes will cost them.

So they wait.

• They stick with familiar behaviors.

• They hedge and drag their feet.

• They watch to see what actually gets reinforced.

That’s not resistance. That’s sensemaking.

If you’ve ever labeled a team as resistant when what they really needed was clarity, safety, or feedback, you’re not alone. It’s an easy conclusion to reach…and a costly one.

Because once resistance becomes the story, the system never gets examined.

Why systems don’t override beliefs

Here’s the thing that often gets missed: Systems don’t operate in a vacuum.

They interact with:

• people’s past experiences with change (which is sometimes their “baggage”)

• what’s been rewarded or punished before (hello, Pavlov?)

• whether follow-through has historically happened

• how safe it feels to try something new

Two organizations can implement the same system and get wildly different results. This does not necessarily happen because one “did it wrong”, but because the assumptions shaping behavior were different.

That’s why change efforts that ignore mental models feel confusing. On paper, everything is in place. But in practice, people are still operating from old rules.

A familiar pattern

I see this pattern play out in some form again and again. An organization invests in a new approach: a tool, a workflow, a campaign, a system designed to improve outcomes. Leadership is optimistic. The logic is sound.

Early signals are promising. But weeks or months later, results plateau. Or stall. Or quietly fall short of expectations.

So leaders ask:

• Why aren’t people using this consistently?

• Why hasn’t this changed how we work?

• Why are we still running into the same bottlenecks?

What’s rarely asked is:

• What did people expect this change to do?

• What past experiences are shaping how they’re interpreting it?

• What assumptions went unexamined before we launched?

The system didn’t fail. The mental model driving it was incomplete.

Designing change with mental models in mind

This doesn’t mean leaders need to predict every reaction or manage how people think. It does mean slowing down enough to surface assumptions before expecting outcomes.

A few questions I’ve found helpful:

• What do we believe will change as a result of this?

• What might others believe based on what they’ve seen before?

• What would make this feel meaningfully different from past efforts?

• Where might people assume, “This will pass,” unless proven otherwise?

These aren’t technical questions. They’re people-centered ones.

And, they often determine whether a system ever gets the chance to work the way it was intended to.

A closing reflection

Mental models aren’t wrong. They’re shaped by experience. But when they stay invisible, they quietly limit what even the best-designed systems can achieve.

If you’re leading change right now — especially amid complexity, budget pressure, or fatigue — it may be worth asking:

• What assumptions are shaping how this change is being received?

• And, which of those assumptions need to be named before the system can do its job?

Sometimes, that shift in perspective does more than any new tool ever could.