PICTURE this: You’re settling into your seat on an airplane, preparing for a long flight.
As you settle in, a woman with two small children approaches you and takes the seats next to you.
The children are crying and uncontrollable. As the flight goes on, the children refuse to settle, and the woman seems unable to calm them down.
You try your best to ignore the commotion next to you, but you become increasingly frustrated and irritated with the woman, who seems to be unwilling to bring these children to order.
After a few hours of trying to control your anger, you cannot stand it any more.
You explode and shout: “Ma’am, could you please control your kids?!”
The woman gently looks over and says: “I’m so sorry. These are not my children. These two have just lost both their parents in a car accident and I’m their social worker transporting them to foster care.”
With that single sentence, your frustration, anger and irritation immediately change into empathy, care and compassion.
That immediate change is described as a paradigm shift.
A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in perspective brought about by a shift in underlying assumptions, which is often brought about by the introduction of new facts and information.
A strategist does not wait for paradigm shifts to happen to them, on the contrary, they purposefully seek out new data and information that may have a material effect on their underlying assumptions.
As you can see from the scenario, your mindset and actions following the paradigm immediately transform from anger to compassion in an instant.
That shift happened instantaneously and will remain as your dominant mindset going forward.
That is the lasting and staying power of introducing paradigm shifts to even the most stubborn of organisational situations.
