- Business Knowledge
- Posts
- Think Together, Win Together
Think Together, Win Together
Great Teams Don’t Just Work Together, They Think Together
Business Knowledge
May 03, 2025
In partnership with
Great Teams Don’t Just Work Together, They Think Together
In 2010, an Airbus A380 departing from Singapore suffered a catastrophic engine failure mid-flight.
Turbine blades shattered. Fuel lines were severed. Alarms screamed from every panel.
The cockpit was chaos, at least, it should have been.
But what happened next became a textbook case in team coordination.
Without panic or confusion, the pilots moved as one: identifying the issue, communicating with clarity, assigning roles, and executing the emergency landing with precision.
All 469 people on board survived.
Later, when asked how they maintained their cool under pressure, the captain didn’t say “training.” He didn’t say “checklists.”
He said this:
“We all had the same picture of what was happening. We were thinking together.”
Stay up-to-date with AI
The Rundown is the most trusted AI newsletter in the world, with 1,000,000+ readers and exclusive interviews with AI leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Demis Hassibis, Mustafa Suleyman, and more.
Their expert research team spends all day learning what’s new in AI and talking with industry experts, then distills the most important developments into one free email every morning.
Plus, complete the quiz after signing up and they’ll recommend the best AI tools, guides, and courses – tailored to your needs.
Most leaders focus on getting people to work together.
But the truly great ones?
They get people to think together.
This is the difference between alignment and unity.
Alignment is surface-level: same goals, same OKRs, same vision deck.
Unity runs deeper: same instincts, same assumptions, same understanding of how decisions get made when time is short and stakes are high.
That’s what shared mental models are:
A team-wide understanding of what matters, how things work, and how to respond when it breaks.
It’s why elite teams move fast without stepping on each other.
They’re not mind readers.
They’ve just built mental maps that overlap, so when the situation changes, they’re already seeing the same terrain.
Why Most Teams Skip This Work
Because on a normal day, it doesn’t feel urgent.
Everyone’s busy shipping, sprinting, hiring, scaling.
And in the short term? It works. You can survive with a fragmented understanding as long as things stay predictable.
But unpredictability is the only constant in business.
A market shift.
A key leader leaves.
A product fails.
A competitor moves fast.
In those moments, teams don’t rise to the occasion.
They fall to the clarity they’ve practiced.
That’s why shared mental models matter.
They’re not just useful in a crisis.
They’re how elite teams avoid creating one in the first place.
You know a team has them when you see things like:
Consistent decision-making: People don’t need to be micromanaged because they already know the priorities, principles, and tradeoffs.
Fast handoffs: Teammates can step in for one another with minimal friction, because they share context, not just tasks.
Low ego conflict: Disagreements are about ideas, not territory, because everyone’s working from the same mission, not personal agendas.
Predictable reactions: In tense moments, people act as expected. Not because they’re robotic, but because they’ve rehearsed the thinking behind the action.
This isn’t magic.
It’s muscle memory.
And like all muscle memory, it has to be trained.
Here’s how elite leaders build them, day by day:
1. They Narrate Their Thinking, Not Just Their Decisions
Most leaders say, “Here’s what we’re doing.”
Elite leaders say, “Here’s why we’re doing it.”
They share tradeoffs. Context. Risk factors. The options they rejected, not just the one they picked.
Why does this matter?
Because over time, people start to internalize the mental models behind the decisions.
It’s like teaching someone chess by showing them every move and the logic behind it.
Eventually, they don’t just copy your moves.
They start to see the board like you do.
2. They Create “Maps,” Not Just Memos
Every organization has documents.
But shared mental models require something deeper:
Maps that explain how the terrain works.
Things like:
A clear prioritization framework (so people know how to rank tradeoffs).
A “how we make decisions” guide (so choices are consistent across teams).
A company story that explains not just what you do, but why it exists and how it wins.
These aren’t static PDFs, they’re living tools.
They get revisited, debated, and improved.
Because the goal isn’t documentation.
It’s shared understanding.
3. They Rehearse for Reality
You wouldn’t send a fire crew into a blaze without drills.
But many leaders send teams into high-stakes moments without ever stress-testing their shared assumptions.
Elite teams practice scenarios before they happen:
What do we do if the roadmap explodes?
What happens if this role goes unfilled for 3 months?
What’s our response if a major client churns unexpectedly?
This builds fluency. Resilience. And mutual trust.
So when the pressure’s real, the panic isn’t.
4. They Invite Challenges to the Model
Shared mental models aren’t groupthink.
They’re living, evolving maps.
And elite leaders want those maps challenged.
They encourage their teams to ask:
“Is this assumption still true?”
“What are we missing?”
“What would break this system?”
Because if no one questions the map, it doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
It means no one feels safe enough to speak.
Elite cultures normalize this challenge, not as a threat, but as maintenance.
5. They Celebrate Clarity, Not Just Speed
In most teams, speed is the celebrated metric.
But elite leaders know that speed without shared understanding creates messes you’ll clean up for months.
So they praise:
People who slow down to clarify goals.
Teams who loop in the right voices.
Colleagues who pause to realign before charging ahead.
Because in the long run, clarity compounds faster than chaos.
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
When teams don’t share mental models, here’s what happens:
People waste time clarifying things that should be obvious.
Critical decisions bottlenecked at the top.
Trust erodes in the gaps between assumptions.
And when the storm hits? Everyone scatters.
That’s not because your team isn’t talented.
It’s because talent without shared thinking leads to fragmentation, not performance.
Final Word: Think Together, Win Together
The best teams don’t wait for the crisis to align.
They do the invisible work of building shared understanding, long before it’s tested.
That’s what made the Airbus crew exceptional.
They didn’t panic.
They didn’t hesitate.
They didn’t need instructions shouted across the cockpit.
They moved as one.
Because they’d already built a shared mental map of what to do—together.
The same is true for your team.
So ask yourself:
Do we make decisions from the same set of values?
Do we understand the big picture, or just our slice of it?
Can we move fast without constant clarification?
If the answer’s “not yet,” don’t panic.
Just start building the map.
Because when the pressure hits, thinking together won’t be a luxury.
It’ll be the reason you make it through.