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Take a look at these two quotes reflecting business leaders’ paradigms:
‘Just about everything that can be invented has been invented’.
-Commissioner of the US Patents Office in 1898
‘Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
-Harry Warner, Warner Bros Pictures in 1927
It seems ridiculous to us now that in 1898 some people thought that almost everything that could be invented had been invented.
Thankfully, people challenged that paradigm, which has opened up a world of opportunities for us today. The truth is that we all tend to think and behave in accordance with the paradigms we are most comfortable with. Most of us have some paradigms we adhere to without much, if any, logical thought about whether or not they are really ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – we just accept them, use them and believe and act accordingly; this is called the paradigm effect.
Many paradigms are passed on from one generation to the next – e.g. allegiance to a particular political party or football team. Your paradigms include:
- Your entrenched habits or fixed routines
- The ‘conventional wisdom’ that you accept and believe about some matter
- Rules that you accept about what you should or shouldn’t do in various situations
- Sets of guiding principles and assumptions about how to behave
- Sets of beliefs and ideas
- Self-imposed boundaries or standards that determine what you do, and how you do it
Having a strongly held set of paradigms can mean you are strong-willed (usually good) or pig-headed and unreasonably obstinate (not so good). The latter description typically characterizes people who are usually very resistant and see the world only through their entrenched paradigms. Therefore, they tend to be blind to opportunities, to the possibility of new ideas and creative solutions to problems. They see the future only through the myopia of their paradigms, and that future tends to be repetition of the past.
One of the greatest and most difficult challenges facing every business is what to do about change. Many owner/managers ignore it, others actively resist it, and for many that’s the reason for their business failing. If a business doesn’t make adjustments to meet the challenge of change in their industry or market, it will become less able to satisfy buyer wants and increasingly irrelevant to buyers. Becoming irrelevant to buyers means becoming obsolete.
Owner/managers who suffer from the paradigm effect tend to ignore or resist change, fail to see opportunities and become ever more vulnerable. Capitalizing on change, by avoiding threats and exploiting opportunities, demands a willingness to do a paradigm shift. The vast majority of highly successful businesses are operated by men and women who refused to accept that something ‘can’t be done’.
Ask yourself if your thoughts and actions are under the influence of entrenched (and often illogical) paradigms that may be preventing you from moving your business into the future it deserves. Don’t become obsolete by believing something different and better can’t be done.
Copyright 2006, ROC Sytems Pty Ltd.
All Rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission from http://www.ranone.com
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