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Paradigms and decision-making frameworks
by Peter Donovan
When we are dealing with paradigms and beliefs, there is no opportunity to choose without awareness. The following is an
attempt at revealing what is usually hidden.
Some people may find it more useful to learn from specific situations in which people are applying these concepts. There are
numerous specific examples in the topic areas at left.
For short descriptions of the nuts and bolts of holistic management, see also the Allan Savory Center for Holistic Management's
website as well as other locations in our paradigms section.
This material is gathered from a variety of sources, including Allan Savory, Bob Chadwick, W. Edwards Deming, Jeff Goebel, Kirk
Gadzia, and Roland Kroos. It can be copied, but please acknowledge sources and please copy with purpose.
Peter Donovan
What limits change in human affairs? What makes real change possible?
Paradigms are habits of thought, unstated rules, assumptions, or beliefs that define the boundaries we operate in. We are not
usually directly aware of these habits of thought, nor are most of us taught about them in school or on the job. Much of what we
"see" is determined by the reality behind our eyes--the "landscape of the mind."
Once a boy and his father were driving, and they had a bad accident. The father was killed and his son seriously injured.
At the hospital, the surgeon who examined the boy said, "I cannot perform this operation. This boy is my son."
How can this be?
Paradigms often limit our perceptions and awareness. We are unable to see something that does not conform to our basic
assumptions. (We may assume all surgeons are men.)
The Greek thinker Aristotle represented the trajectory of a projectile as below, with forced motion on the left and natural motion to
the right.
We who recognize Galileo's discoveries (many of which were paradigm shifts) "know" that the trajectory of a projectile follows an
approximate parabola.
We can laugh at Aristotle. Yet Aristotle grew up in a culture where spears, rocks, and arrows were commonplace. In many cases
he was a keen observer. Yet his concepts and assumptions--the truth of which we recognize--determined what he saw.
As it is said a fish is the last creature to discover the existence of water, we are often the last to see our own habits of thought.
In his book Discovering the Future: The Business of Paradigms, Joel Barker identifies five things about paradigms:
Paradigms are common, they are all around us and we all have them.
Paradigms are useful. They show what is important and help keep us safe.
People who create new paradigms are almost always outsiders.
People who switch paradigms have to have courage, because the documentation or evidence is not there.
Everyone can choose to change their paradigms (the choice is yours).
These last two have a great deal to do with leadership. It is said that management operates within paradigms, but moving from
one paradigm to another requires leadership.
What today is impossible to do or change, but if it could be done, would fundamentally change your personal life, business,
organization, or community from this point forward? Ask this question often. The answers will lead you to the edges where new
paradigms are waiting to happen.
To shift paradigms, you must be willing to go back to the starting point. Albert Einstein observed that the kind of thinking that got
us into the present situation is not the kind of thinking that will get us out of it.
How does human thought, and the paradigms that govern it, have the greatest impact on the world we live in? What type of
human thought has the greatest and most powerful effect on our environment, our society and communities, our finances, and
everything else?
Decision-making processes or frameworks
People use thought processes all the time to make decisions and solve problems. It is important to realize that everyone has
some decision-making process, framework, or referent, even if it is unconscious, habitual, or unexamined. Paradigms or habits
of thought have a great deal to do with the way we make decisions.
A wide-angle view of decision processes is outside the curriculum of most educational institutions or business schools. These
kinds of things have only recently come into awareness. Even the concept of management, as a subject for study, is only about 50
years old.
The world in which our children and their children will live is built, minute by minute, through the choices we endorse . . . . These
small choices, these trivial decisions, have as much weight in the long run as all of Napoleon's wars.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium
How would you characterize the decision processes by which we manage resources today? How about in the social
sector--relationships, social services, etc.? How about in the financial sector--how do we decide what to do?
Here is a representation of popular decision-making framework.
Linear, reductionist, mechanical, reactionary,
or universal decision-making framework
CONTEXT or SITUATION
A problem, issue, or a symptom at the crisis point where the buck stops. Often the focus is on worst possibilities only.
DRIVING FORCE or GOAL
Production, preservation, eradication/reduction, problem-solving
Examples: to reduce unemployment, to produce a full documentation package on the software, to eliminate wild oats from the
fields, to preserve a natural area, to wean 600-pound calves, to harvest $450,000 worth of timber from the North Fork, to figure out
what to do about your boss, husband, girlfriend, mother; to farm without using pesticides.
RESOURCES
Money/labor, a budget or appropriation, equipment, facilities, water, wildlife, scenery, timber, minerals, employees, livestock,
inventory, real estate
ACTIONS (TOOLS)
Technology in all its forms (except in wilderness areas), Rest, and Fire
BASIS FOR ACTIONS
Peer pressure, single criteria, expert opinion, availability of funding, research findings, past experience, cost effectiveness, cash
flow, laws and regulations, how quick, compromise, or what is customary
FEEDBACK
Did we solve the problem, or at least treat the symptoms? We often assume correct decisions have been made, and monitor to
record results. In cases where we fail to solve the problem, we often tend to fix blame or pass the buck. Unintended
consequences (such as environmental damage, social backlash and resistance, and externalized costs) typically become new
problems, often for someone else.
Because this framework is problem-based, there are as many versions of this decision-making model or framework as there are
problems, issues, or symptoms. New problems and subproblems are constantly being generated--as unintended
consequences of dealing with previous problems or symptoms. Because of this, what we learn in one area of activity or
investigation often is not able to benefit us in other areas. This decision-making framework limits knowledge and awareness,
and under it many forms of knowledge (for example, local herbal knowledge) are certain to be endangered.
What we are here calling the linear or conventional framework is closely tied to the "expert model"--whereby decisions are
referred to specialists.
A holistic decision-making framework
WHOLE UNDER MANAGEMENT
We are in a situation of overlapping wholes. A management whole consists, at minimum, of people with their values, money, and
resource base or land.
DRIVING FORCE: THE HOLISTIC GOAL
The values the people in the "management whole" want to sustain; their best possible outcomes: quality of life, ways of
producing this quality of life, and future resource base needed to sustain this production indefinitely
Examples: to achieve self-fulfillment through meaningful work, develop the skills needed, and the customer base and community
to support this meaningful work; to live in harmony with the ecosystem while producing nutritious, quality food for caring and
knowledgeable customers.
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