Managing Change:

Knowing People

Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts

The Two Sets of Interactive Mental Models and Their Evolution

Paradigms

A paradigm is a system of thought based on a central fundamental premise. Paradigms underlie our understandings of the physical sciences as well as the foundations on which virtually every other significant factor of everyday life is based.

Paradigms are central to human culture. They are learned, taught, passed on and often serve to define membership in a culture or subculture. "The passing of paradigms within a society is, in effect the process of acculturation and socialization. Paradigms influence how we govern ourselves, how our public institutions are configured and operate, our economic systems and institutions, the structures of our organizations, and how we manage people and other resources. Even though an individual can accept and internalize a paradigm, the paradigm itself remains an external model."¹

Paradigm Crisis and Paradigm Shift

Paradigms describe a basis for anticipation of specific events; they do not deal with values per se. When an existing paradigm no longer adequately explains or predicts relevant phenomenon and no replacement has been a paradigm crisis takes hold.

"The only way a paradigm crisis can be resolved is by replacing an old, no longer adequate paradigm with a new and different one that explains and predicts better than the original, a paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts do not involve simply slight modifications to the existing model. They instead replace and render the old model obsolete."¹

To adopt a new paradigm you need to start thinking differently, outside the box. "Throughout history significant paradigm shifts are almost always led by those at the fringes of a paradigm, not those with a vested interest (intellectual, financial or otherwise) in maintaining the current paradigm, regardless of its obvious shortcomings."¹