Paradigm Shift We often hear and read about this term" Paradigm shift" but very few books explain as to what it is all about. One book, which is an exception to this, is the landmark book of Dr.Stephen Covey "
The seven habits of highly effective people". Dr Covey has beautifully illustrated this with explanatory notes and examples. According to him, the first time this term was used was by Thomas Kuhn in his book the "Structure of Scientific Revolution." In this book Kuhn went on to explain as how each time with the change in our thinking, there was a major scientific revolution.
To put it simply the term "Paradigm shift" means a sudden change in our ways of thinking about a situation, though it has not changed.
Till Nicholas Copernicus came along, for Ptolemy and the rest after him, the world was supposed to be flat with the earth being at the center of universe. It took another 500 years for the Catholic Church to redeem him. Giorgio Bruno was burnt at stakes for this belief before that. Once there was a paradigm shift, all the missing links fell into places and many scientific discoveries were made. Newtonian physics was incomplete till Einstein came along and propounded his theory of relativity. Similarly in medicine till the germ theory was accepted, a lot of babies and mothers died of puerperal fever. In the world of politics, the idea of democracy was brought to remove the anachronistic idea of Kings and their descendants ruling us for generations. However not all paradigm shifts are positive and sometimes they may also move in negative direction. In this page we will refer to it in the positive sense only.
Paradigm Shift Agents:
The paradigm shift can take place only after a sudden and opposite change in our perceptions, which is normally different from reality. This change happens quite suddenly in individuals and in societies, it takes longer time and sometimes it is cataclysmic. The French and Russian revolutions come under this category. The paradigm shift does not come about automatically or on its own. There is always a change agent. Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, George Washington, Lenin and Gandhi were all change agents. Behind every major paradigm shift, there is a strong leader and a change agent. Paradigm shift can be out of sympathy, out of necessity for survival, out of natural choice or out of absolute empathy. The example mentioned below is given by me.
This is taken from the movie "Gandhi" directed by Sir Richard Attenborough and played by Oscar winning actor Ben Kingsley. Gandhi was educated in the Inner Temple in England and was a Barrister at Law. He came from a fairly affluent family. He used to wear three piece pin stripe suits. On his return to India from South Africa, he goes around the country meeting people. One day his train stops over a bridge on a river. He gets down from the train to wash his face and sees a young village woman washing clothes. The upper portion of her sari is torn and she tries to cover her modesty with the torn cloth by tugging at it but to no avail. Gandhi is carrying a shawl over his shoulders. He lets it go in the river and the flow takes it to the woman. She grabs it and covers herself. He decides there and then to go half naked because majority of the people do not have proper clothes. The music and the way the scenes are shot and acted cannot be repeated.
There is absolutely no dialogue except the background music throughout the scene. This is a paradigm shift based on absolute empathy. Gandhi's greatness was his ability to empathize with people. He was also a leader par excellence. He is the originator of the non violent movement in the days it was unheard of.
The above example is sufficient to understand a paradigm shift and what it means. Unfortunately, it has become a cliché with too many people using it inappropriately. The most important thing to realize is that the situation remains the same. Only the perception and understanding of the situation changes to the diametrically opposite. Small lateral shifts are not paradigm shifts.
© June 2007. www.madgopes.com. All rights reserved.
To learn more about this author, visit Madhavan T Gopalachary's Website.
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Madhavan T Gopalachary
(Visit Madhavan's Website)
Madhavan Gopalachary, nick name "madgopes"
(g pronounced as in go) given by IIT
classmates, is a Mechanical Engineer and
an alumnus of Indian Institute of
Technology, Madras having passed out
specializing in IC Engines &
Thermodynamics.
He has nearly 35 years of experience in
the Corporate World. He started off as a
trainee and handled sales, marketing,
manufacturing, product management, profit
center management, strategic planning and
corporate development including R & D in
various organizations and at various
levels before becoming a CEO. His last two
professional assignments were at CEO level
before embarking to start management
consultancy business on January 01, 1998.
He has worked for British, Swedish MNCs as
well as very large Indian business houses.
He has spent a large portion of his time
from June 1998 till date in East African
Countries practicing as an independent
Management Consultant.
More details can be obtained at the
following web sites:
mmg.name/
mtg.html
mmgconsu
lting.biz/
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