Frames are mental models we choose and apply in different situations. They allow us to see patterns, generalize and make abstractions that apply to other circumstances so we don’t have to relearn everything from scratch. People can look at the same situation and see different things because they frame it differently.

Democracy is a frame, as is monarchism. Religion, secular humanism and the rule of law are all frames. In business, lean manufacturing is a frame. Frames can be simple or sophisticated, accurate or imprecise, good or evil. But they all capture some aspect of reality, helping us to explain, focus and decide.

The best example is the change in theories of planetary motion. For millennia, people thought the planets revolved around the Earth since that is what it appears like from our vantage point. They also placed Earth at the center, which aligned with our sense of preeminence. It took a radical reconceptualization to envision things from the perspective of being in space, not on planet Earth, and living on just one of several planets orbiting the sun. It entailed a shift in how humans saw themselves, not only how planets moved.

We can look at the history of green innovation. In 1900 a third of all automobiles were electric. But the rapid evolution of the internal combustion engine caused electric cars to quickly fall behind. For over a century, the mental model of a car was synonymous with a gas-powered motor. A slew of inventors and businesses tried—and failed—to revive electric cars, which had poor acceleration, speed and range. But then, when the timing was right, Tesla revived the mental model, or frame, for the electric car. Electric motors had become more efficient, battery technology had improved and computers had advanced enough to manage an electric vehicle. And the public perception of gasoline-powered cars had started to change. In the latter half of the 20th century, people had equated cars with personal freedom. Yet at the start of the 21st century, cars were regarded as contributors to climate change.

In some cases, the 21st century has many of the same problems we’ve always had but at a more dangerous scale. In other cases, we face novel problems. We could see the misinformation around viral outbreaks as a scale problem and climate change as a novel problem. The obvious answers don’t work: Tell people the facts and stop using fossil fuels. Yet people are suspicious of facts outside their lived experience, and society’s functioning and economic well-being depend to some degree on fossil fuels. So we need to reconceptualize the situations to come up with new answers. For example, we might appeal to emotions, not facts, to fight misinformation—maybe by using celebrity influencers. And we could view protecting the environment not as a virtuous act but as an economic imperative by making green energy cheaper than fossil fuels.

We live in an age of extremism dominated by two archetypes that are imperfect but useful when considering how people size up the world. On the one hand, we have the hyperrationalists, who believe we can rely exclusively on data and algorithms to solve our problems, bypassing human framing in favor of artificial intelligence. On the other hand, we have the emotionalists, who believe we should rely more on our gut feelings and emotions and less on analytical reasoning. When it comes to making decisions, there are times when either of these approaches can work. But there’s a better alternative, which is to hone our ability to see situations and be deliberate about the way we frame or reframe solutions.

The technique I find most useful is envisioning a situation before it takes place and in a structured way mentally playing with a range of alternative scenarios and responses. Professional athletes and elite commandos do these mental rehearsals before a competition or mission, and the practice has moved into the C-suite as something top executives do. It lets you experience doing something hundreds of times before the moment in reality when it counts most. For big decisions, this can include making a “postdiction,” which is like a prediction but presumes the decision was made and was disastrous. That creative critique as you think about what you missed is valuable.