8. Recognise your Paradigms

The single biggest thing that holds people back from realising their full potential are the paradigms that they hold around how work should be done.

A paradigm is a set of beliefs, assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that form a way of thinking or a perspective.

Created over decades of experience, starting from childhood, they shape how we understand and interpret the world around us, informing our decisions, behaviours, and interactions with others.

In many cases, these paradigms are incredibly useful to guide our approach however, without acknowledgment, they can also constrain our thinking.

To be able to set a strategy for growth, you need to be aware of this and question the logic behind what you do, how you do it and why.

Its clear that paradigms about work have shifted significantly over the last 150 years. We have evolved from artisanal work, through mass production into techniques like lean and agile and into a world where work is support by Artificial Intelligence.

Innovative thinkers and leaders have continued to test and replace current paradigms with newer more beneficial practises. Leadership teams must continue to do the same, recognising that they set the paradigms for their organisation and only by questioning their own beliefs and developing themselves and their own thinking, can they develop their organisation.

Turn Constraints into Opportunity

It can be incredibly enlightening to take a little time to reflect on the paradigms you have around how work is undertaken. Even more so when investigating this as a team.

Having the humility to recognise that the way we think about work today is simply a product of our individual experience is critical to opening our minds to new ways of working and achieving performance previously thought as impossible.

Since we are so ingrained in our own, personal everyday way of thinking, this is a difficult task. If this is new, start by considering how you define value and how it is created for your Customers/Users. Consider how your organisation is structured and how you leverage diversity and collaboration and discuss how you develop your people and ways of working.

Think structurally, not tactically. There is no blame to be attributed to paradigms, they are not bad a thing, its often just a case of never experiencing a different way or that its simply always been done that way!

There is no standard answer to what the best paradigms for work are – a military operation may necessitate a different way of working to that of a design studio so this is situational reflection but to achieve sustained continued improvement in any environment there must be a shift to highly collaborative work that focuses on developing people.

Reassessing the reasons why we work in the way we do and being comfortable with challenging and changing them is critical to self development and the ability to successfully lead an organisation. It will supercharge your ability to re-configure your resources, finding much more meaningful ways of achieving your strategic objectives in the least wasteful way.