Paradoxical Thinking for Achieving Mastery

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System Thinking and Paradoxical thinking relate to one another; as organizations and individuals must become “adaptable/flexible and stable/controlled” (Becoming a Master Manager, 2007, page 350) to succeed in today's world. As we live in changing, unpredictable environments, in order to be successful companies, as well as individuals must move from a predictable, adaptive approach to a more innovative, outside-the-box thinking.

Part I - Introduction and Definition

The System Thinking Approach

The systems thinking approach was popularized in the book “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge, which explains that System Thinking is “a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots.” The main idea that lie behind the Systematic Thinking approach is that everything interrelate with everything else and explains our environment in a structured, predictable way. Additionally, the Systematic Thinking concept views the world as a static, fixed environment, where is no need to bother with big changes along the way, as events are perceived as simple one way, cause-and-effect. Peter Senge also describes Systems thinking as “a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for

Paradoxical Thinking

Example of company that demonstrates paradoxical thinking is Google. Google has changed the boundaries of internet by efficiently responding to changing demands of customers. It gained top position in search engines and ever since Google has ensured that paradoxical thinking is ingrained in all business operations. Employees of Google have also successfully adopted the concept of paradoxical thinking. They demonstrate their creativity and innovative ideas to the management and the one which are found to be worth creating a mark are implemented.

Paradoxical thinking is thinking out of the box and doing an in-depth analysis of contradictions. Paradoxical thinking is no science and can be learned by changing the way on thinks. It is all about thinking about all possibilities to come up with something which is not yet there in the market. It can happen that a solution does not appeal to the person responsible for devising it but it may appeal to target audience. For example, solar cars, introduced by Saturn had to face criticism when they were launched but it appealed to customers who were looking for energy efficient cars. Hence to learn paradoxical thinking one has to be open minded, willing to take risks and experiment with new ideas.

Paradoxical thinking is one of the eight skills related to intelligence but is least used of all skills. It is because such thinking involves the ability to reverse, manipulate, combine and synthesize opposites (Raavi, n.d). Usually people are so accustomed to traditional that they are unwilling to cross boundaries to see what lies beyond natural. Hence, all other skills - memory, logic, judgment, perception, intuition, reason and imagination are used much more than paradoxical judgment.

Leaders and management can play a big role in creating a working environment which fosters creativity and innovation. By providing basic requirements of paradoxical thinking which are open culture and thinking untraditional, leaders and management can provide the right platform to be used by employees to improve their productivity. Employees need to be creative, they have to think of unexploited avenues of business operations and think of ways to provide unique offerings to customers at quick pace. At the same time employees have to be appreciated for their efforts to encourage them to go a step further in improving their performance.

References:

Raavi, K.R. (n.d). Paradoxical thinking. Retrieved from http://www.krravi.com/PARADOXICALTHINKING.pdf

How Google demonstrates paradoxical thinking (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/how-goo