Discerning worldview Paradigms, not paradigm blindness

So, welcome back. In this session we're going to talk about discerning the worldview paradigms instead of having paradigm blindness. A paradigm is the foundational understanding of how a specific domain, discipline, a field or expertise works. That could be in the field of education, manufacturing, good manufacturing processes, medicine, how that works, management, capitalism. And all of these domains come with their own set of rules and regulations and assumptions about what goodness is. They establish borders, boundaries and patterns and tell us what success looks like, but only from this paradigm, from within their own boundaries of thinking. Examples include the scientific paradigm of evolution versus creationism. Or in education, it could be a developmental approach which I take, or the expert model. Someone comes in and says, I know the answer. Follow me. In business we have these kind of areas like agile, lean, six sigma. There are all these domains. And the kind of grandfather of this has been Thomas Kuhn. He was a prominent philosopher, academic, influential author in science and the theory of progressing science. And he realized that scientists, they couldn't perceive or they ignored data that didn't fit their own paradigm. Let's watch this old video, maybe 30 years old by now, that I dug up.

But Kuhn also discovered a startling negative effect with some of the data scientists substantial difficulty. Why? Because that data did not match the expectations created by their paradigms. And in fact, the more unexpected the data was, the more trouble the scientists had perceiving it. In some cases, they simply ignored the unexpected data. Sometimes they distorted that data until it fit their paradigm, rather than acknowledge that it was an exception to the rules. And in extreme cases, Kuhn discovered that scientists, literally, physiologically, we're incapable of perceiving the unexpected data. For all intents and purposes, that data was invisible. To put it in more general terms, paradigms filter incoming experience. We are viewing the world through our paradigms all the time. We constantly select from the world that data that best fits our rules and regulations and try to ignore the rest. As a result, what may be perfectly obvious to a person with one paradigm may be totally imperceptible to someone with a different paradigm. I call this phenomenon the paradigm effect. And I have seen repeatedly that what Kuhn describes for scientists is true for anyone who has strongly held rules and regulations in their lives and who doesn't. In my work with companies around the world, I have seen this paradigm effect blind business people to new opportunities, cause salespeople to overlook new markets, obscure effective strategies from management, and it can blind each and every one of us to creative solutions to difficult problems, whether it's the army or the Environmental movement, the American Medical association or the League of Women Voters, Whether it's Citibank or IBM, the coach's way to hit the ball or Mom's way to clean the kitchen. We deal with paradigms all the time. And I believe that it is our rules and regulations that keep us from successfully anticipating the future. Because we try to discover the future by looking for it through our old paradigm.

So basically I'm saying that we're paradigm blind. Sort of like this rhino who doesn't realize that he's seeing his own horn. The world he sees has his own horn in the center of that. And if I were to ask you what's the source paradigm for your own leadership or your parenting or, or how you learn or your business success, I bet you could tell me the nine step process. The tools, the models, the methods you use. But do you know what sourced those instruments? We don't realize that the information, the tools, the methods we're using today, they were sourced from an outdated worldview or paradigm. Maybe our theory of change or our theory of how we learn, how we evolve ourself and our systems. So although we're not in the industrial age anymore, we're still breaking things down into small fragments, reducing them like they did in the factory. But taking a living systems approach means you're seeing the whole entity, the whole system system. For example, if you dissect a living frog, you can't put it back together. So the results that we see today, I'm saying that they're sourced maybe from outdated thinking. And here's the thing about this, there are consequences for the mechanistic industrial aged linear thinking, especially if we're unaware of it. We can't change what we don't see. And our friends can't tell us because they're paradigm blind too. And the gurus can't guide us because they're focused on their own practices and model. They're not focused on the paradigm that sourced it. So let's look at what's sourcing your paradigm. We're going to do this first for yourself, then you can do this again with your team or your organization. Please, as always, use ruthless rigor in your self assessment. And I'm going to ask you. This could be theoretical. So let's make it specific, concrete and real and personal. So you're going to need first to think about a real project pursuit or a goal that you're working on, or you're part of. And then you're going to assess the paradigms that I share with you now, this project that you're going to use and you're going to assess your the paradigms through this lens, it could be a current project or could be a past one, it could be a successful one, or there's maybe some room to grow. So once you have that, and I'm assuming you do, let's start with the levels of paradigm framework. This was created by my mentor, Carol Sanford. She written eight or nine books and I've been working with her very closely for the last seven years. So extract value, it means competing for human or non human assets for our own benefit, more of dominating or winning as much as we can. So a picture that comes to mind here is this kind of take make waste type of thinking. It's if we want to win as much as we can and we can totally disregard the rest, we know now that's wrong. So after thinking about extracting value and it's winning as much as we can, which we do need to win in organizations and business, the next level is people said wait a minute, we need to arrest this disorder. This isn't good, we need to slow down the damage, plug the hole. But it was more reactive if you will. So it was certainly addressing the fact that extract value is bad. So let's arrest the disorder. So some examples, if I'm thinking about stress that we all have and I want to address stress from arresting disorder, well then I might just go into a self induced coma watching Netflix with the big thing of popcorn. Or if I'm thinking about disengagement at work and I worked in HR for decades, I might have said let's have a pizza party or let's do an engagement survey for our employees or let's do a one time team building event. That would be arresting disorder, plugging the hole. And certainly when we think about climate change, there's some well intended here onesie twosies, but they're small scale renewable projects. They're plugging holes versus looking systemically. Now if we go up the levels of paradigm, the next level we'll look at is the do good and comes from the well intended human development movement where I worked for many years. It has to do with promoting culturally idealized versions of what I perceive as good. I used to perceive and I still do, emotional intelligence, psychological safety, human centered design, these are all good. They're coming from my do good paradigm. The fact though is that this human centered design is more anthropocentric versus living systems. It's well intended, but it's focused on self development, self esteem, self improvement kind of forgetting system. So some examples here might be, oh, we need more diversity, let's offer or demand mandatory diversity training, or let's have open office layouts. Sounds good, right? There's some challenge to that as well. And then there's work from home with COVID after that was their mandatory return to the office. All well intended, like team building, which I did for decades. Personality tests, little surveys, Cosmo quizzes. But they're putting people in buckets and categories and it feels good. And it's actually, I believe, a portal to the next level of paradigm, but it's forgetting stakeholders, so it's not taking this. Do Good doesn't take a holistic systemic approach and it's not sufficient for the profound change that we need today. So Do Good is a portal to the next level. And that's what I'm calling evolve potential. It's about fostering the development of a higher order thinking, Higher order doing in a higher order state of being at work and at home. Higher order thinking doing, state of being. Imagine that we're successfully and simultaneously evolving the product that we offer, the processes of how we do our work and our people, so that we're creating systemic transformation. And that comes from essence to essence connection. If you remember, in the second video I talked about potential, that we each have our own weird essence. It's not talking to the customer or to my team, from my level, my hierarchy, my title, but human to human, essence to essence connection, so that I can really integrate my value adding process to yours. But one more thing I want to share about this. The first two levels have to do with existence, current reality and existence. The next two levels above that have to deal with potential. So that's. Remember Wayne Gretzky. I skate to where the puck will be. And then Harvard Business School wrote an article. I skate to where the money will be. I skate to where the potential can be. Focusing on potential now, it doesn't mean that there are some problems, but that we're addressing those problems that we have in our daily existence right now. From the mindset, from the thinking, from the paradigm of evolving potential versus getting stuff done. Because as you remember what Einstein said, we can't solve today's problems with the same level of thinking that got us to these problems in the first level. So I'm trying to nudge us, if you will, to the next level of potential here. So stop the video if you'd like, pause and reflect on your own personal, concrete work that you're Working on with ruthless rigor, how would you assess the work you're doing? Because when paradigms change, the whole world changes along with them. As Newton physics, Newtonian physics went to relativity or the take make waste way of thinking and acting went to corporate social responsibility office only, then work from home and now there's work from anywhere type of thinking. And as my client said, once you see these paradigms, I can't unsee them. Hopefully that will happen for you and your systems as well. So let's just step back and reflect. How on track are you evolving your potential? And given your answer, what are the consequences for yourself in your system? And where's the nodal intervention where the acupuncturist could put the needle, the node to release the energy and refocus your attention. As we're going forward in the year, so now we're going to move to the second assessment and this one focuses again thinking through holistically of course, and focusing on internal and external focus. First do this with yourself and then again share with your team. You all probably know of systems thinking where you have a value adding process. There's some input, then some transformation magic happens, then there's the output, calling that the value adding process that we all have. And just think about your work. Is your work maybe for the last six months. Has your attention and your focus been mainly internally focused, not so much on the input or output, but on the internal focus? Or you're now considering left and right side of your system, the suppliers and the customers? I'm going to call that you're focusing more on improvement or last one here. Are you creating and thinking about systemic effects? Those systemic effects mean vitality and viability. The viability is this project program work that we're doing, Is it viable? Is it sustainable? Can we make a living off of this? And then also is it. Does it have vitality? Does it have energy engagement? Not only our offering, but our stakeholders. And then over to the right hand side. Speaking of stakeholders, are we evolving the potential of our customers and our customers customers? That's what I mean by systemic effects. There's one more piece for systemic effects. It also includes thinking. You'll need to be able to think across three time horizons. The existing business as usual, thinking about and working for tomorrow, to innovate for tomorrow, but also having the third time horizon of future foresight. So putting all of this together, I have some questions for you. You do it first for yourself and then for your team. Given my goals, pursuits and objectives this year, I'VE been mainly focused on internal performance improvement or systemic effects and potential. Are you spending too much time energy focus or maybe too little time energy focus somewhere? Where could that be? And thinking about where you've been mainly focused, Are you over attending or under attending to certain activities, groups, topics? When someone says jump, do you say how high? Arrest disorder? To what degree am I keeping the whole in mind versus fragmented piecemeal silos? And am I developing those systemic effects for vitality and viability, business viability, not only in my offering but in my stakeholders? And am I intentionally working across all three time horizons? So you can pause the video whenever you like. Work on these. Add more questions I take an anti hero approach, which means I'm probably forgetting some. Add your own and then step back from that. Reflect on your responses. Write one sentence that captures the essence. What's core here? Once you've done that exercise? And what's the one nodal action that could release energy and refocus attention? The same one. I've rewritten it for a team. You can use this exact same one for your team. And then we're focused on self and systems. Compare notes and agree on your actions for going forward. So that's the end of this video on paradigms. We're next going to focus on building self reflection skills instead of outsourcing it to someone else. Coach development Consulting, Learning to self develop self determine. We'll do that next time. Thanks.