Raw intense fear pricked his skin and fissured up his back. He had to will his heart to slow down its wild beating, much like when he’s outmanoeuvring a wild animal, intent on his demise.

“Hey”, the pale young man on his left babbled in that strange tongue, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost! It’s only another honking bleedin’ horn…!” He slapped him on his often painful shoulder while laughing.

Since he’s come here yesterday with these strange men, he found himself in an alien world that he understood very little of. He could not figure out its towering temples [high rises for living and trading], hard unfriendly roads [tar] and non-living moving things [vehicles and ships].

But the worst was the awful racket. It kept him leaping with fright! The sounds were even more terrifying than anything else he’s had to endure so far. Back home was nothing like this place. Nothing.

Suddenly he saw a man pushing a strange thing full of bananas. He couldn’t believe his eyes! How could one man carry so unbelievably many bananas?

“That’sh a wheelbawwow with bananash”. The pale one again, muttering with a mouth full while pointing at a vendor pushing a cart with a yellow mound of bananas on it.

Since this was the first time he understood anything really, he was eager to communicate that. Excitedly his head bobbed up and down. Yes, now he’ll have something to tell his village! ¹

 *****

 All he could remember back home in the Malayan mountains where he was the tribal chief of what resembled a stone-age village, was the huge number of bananas one man could transport.

*****

Paradigms. What are they?

 Many definitions exist, but it’s basically how you think and why you think like you do.

It’s the composite structure framed by the totality of your beliefs, good and bad, that directly influence how you perceive the world

The truth of how paradigms influence our view of the world, is amply illustrated above by Arie de Geus’s story in “Living Company” [slightly…ahem… edited] in which an intelligent tribal chief from an isolated, near stone-age village in the Malayan Mountains, was taken out of his home turf and plonked into the concrete jungle of Singapore with its high rises, tarred roads and vehicular and naval traffic as part of an experiment.

Our chief couldn’t understand much of anything he observed since there was no previous experience in his mind to tack new incoming data to. The only image he could relate to was that of bananas since his paradigm was that of village life in a primitive setting. Even after being back in his village for three weeks, the only thing he could remember was the banana incident. He could only see what he knew!

It seems that the human mind cannot comprehend what it has not experienced before. Even though only a theory, this view seems credible and experience shows this to be true in the examples I’ll quote later on. Our chief certainly bears this out.

The good, the bad and the downright ugly

Paradigms can be both good and bad. And become ugly.

Good ones give you an easy recipe to order your life by and solve problems that regularly occur within set parameters. They allow you to develop positive expectations about your world based on prior assumptions and experiences.

But when fixed paradigms cause mental blocks that restrict you from assimilating or even seeing new information or solving some gritty problem, they are bad and can become dangerous. Bad ones keep you from seeing important truths or reality like it really is. When they withhold you from seeing changes in your environment you must react to, they’re not only bad, they become ugly.

You see, once you have a vested paradigm (a.k.a. your mind so damn well made up about something), you will automatically ignore information impulses beyond this set of beliefs. That was our chief’s experience. And not only his, but every person’s who has failed to see to see the new and adapt to it if needs be.

Don’t believe me? Read this…

 Somewhere in the 1940’s, a guy demonstrated a new photographic process to a major photographic manufacturer in America. There was no camera or film in his demonstration, but rather a box, charging device, light bulb and black powder instead. The idea behind the invention was that it allowed one to make an exact reproduction of the original image.

The picture his crude “tools” reproduced was dim, but traceable.

The manufacturer could not see the sense of this invention as this did not really square with his idea of photography, and coldly declined interest. So he became one of many firms that passed up the opportunity of what would eventually become the multi billion dollar photocopying or xerography industry.

Why did he pass up such an unbelievable chance?

 Because he could not see past his own frame of reference, made up by the established modes of photography. His mind was so set by the accepted way of doing things he simply could not see the great opportunity glaring at him.

He could not see or accept new data (like our chief), because it fell outside his paradigm. This is called the paradigm effect and when that is so strong that you are unable to see what’s under your nose, you are said to suffer from paradigm paralysis.

 And examples of paradigms preventing people from moving ahead and moving onto the new (and sometimes better!) abound. Just take shopping for example.

In the 90’s, Jeff Bezoz founded Amazon and online shopping was born. But the concept also required an EBay and the Social Media platforms to catapult it into the wider public’s frame of reference before a significant shift in thinking started taking place and more and more people began shopping online. Now, it’s part of a global culture.

It was just unthinkable that you could shop outside of a shop that you did not drive or walk to!

Now, this bound to happen again and again. To you and me…

 Unless…

 Unless you consciously change it. Shift the rails your paradigms glide on without losing any data already programmed in your thinker. When that happens, that you are able to change a current paradigm to a new one, it is referred to as a paradigm shift.

Time for new treads

Okay, you see the need to change or broaden some of your paradigms, but how do you do it?

There are many ways, but I like the one detailed by Mauritz Bekker of the Entrepreneurial Business School (EBS). He says though that it’s important to realise that paradigm shifting is a process that’s not going to happen overnight.

He sees this process as taking place in the following phases:

• Phase 1: Start to challenge existing paradigms with contradictory facts.
• Phase 2: You begin to see a discrepancy between what you believe and what you   experience.
• Phase 3: By asking the question ”Why must I stick to something if it doesn’t work for me?”, you’ll manage to disconnect from the existing paradigm.
• Phase 4: The actual paradigm shift takes place as you keep focusing on a new desired outcome / new knowledge.
• You can now use the extended  / new paradigm to recognise & solve any problems you might have.

Actions that will jumpstart and accelerate this process, include:

• Adding new knowledge to what you already know. Never stop learning.
• Always asking questions and never accepting mediocre explanations.
• Observing with the aim to learn. Focus on what interests you. This way, you’ll perceive things others will miss.
• Zoom in on new inventions / or research findings.
• Sharpen your ability to perceive with all five senses.
• Develop your intuition.
• Challenge your current beliefs. ²

 Are you an inmate in Prison Paradigm without knowing it?

Resources

1. A free retelling of Arie de Geus’s story of the tribal chief in “The Living Company”.
2. Bekker, M. The Successful Entrepreneur, 2009. p.54.

Before you pick up stones and force me into running for cover, bear with me. I’ll explain why I say so and upon what I base that.

And I immediately want to put the minds of those South Africans who are true entrepreneurs at rest and hasten to assure you, this post is not a reflection of you. You are the intrepid explorers of now and tomorrow’s uncertain waters and are, to a very large extent, the bright beacons of hope in this country’s morbid downward slide into economic chaos.

However, there are too few of you. Listen to this:

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report 2010 South Africa,¹ this country was ranked 27^th out of 59 countries, with an entrepreneurial rate of 8,9%, well below the average of 11,9%. Thus, rated as being at the lower end of the entrepreneurial totem pole.

Although there is a slight improvement in the figure from 5,9%(2009) to 8,9%, the GEM findings confirm South Africa’s trend of below entrepreneurial activity. According to GEM data, a country at South Africa’s stage of development would be expected to exhibit an entrepreneurial activity figure of about 15%, 60% higher than the actual current rate!

Okay, but why are too few entrepreneurs bad news for everybody, especially those who are NOT entrepreneurs?

Well, considering the state of not only the South African economy with its sky high fuel, food and energy prices, but the dire straits the global economy is in, with expectations of some coming global meltdown – economic and otherwise- this figure is not only disappointing, but extremely alarming.

You see, it is only entrepreneurial activity that is going to lift, not only the South Africans, but the worldwide population from its despair of prevailing joblessness and consequent poverty and other related ills.

Entrepreneurship is the main driver of new business activities in South Africa and worldwide. That in turn leads to job creation, economic growth and general prosperity.

What makes matters so much worse, is the growing unstable political climate exacerbating and fuelling existing feelings of economic impotence and racial tension through the instigation of unwise policies and statements.

For example: a huge percentage of previously advantaged people no longer feel welcome in their own country. This leads to the so called “brain drain” where potential white entrepreneurs permanently emigrate overseas in search of a better future elsewhere, since they no longer see such a future for them and their children in their home country.

Affirmative action and specific BROAD BASED BLACK ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT (BBBEE) regulations that do not enhance the very much needed entrepreneurial culture, except for the Enterprise Development component, add fuel to the fire of the scarcity paradigm (effected by a perception of scarcity – a major component of which is the erroneous belief that economic progress is caused only by scarce capital or other physical resources).

Add to this the fact that many South Africans are dirt poor and live in squatter camps with very few basic necessities, many times even without clean running water.  This leaves you with all the classic ingredients of a smouldering time bomb waiting to explode. It’s not a question of if, but when.

I said all the foregoing because I wanted to create a large enough platform for adequately pitching the importance of the issue under discussion, namely, THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF INCREASED ENTREPREURIAL ENDEAVOUR AS PREREQUISITE TO THE SURVIVAL OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN AND GLOBAL ECONOMIES.

SOUTH AFRICA AND THE WORLD DESPERATELY NEED MORE ENTREPRENEURS…NOW.

We in South Africa need to learn to bake a bigger cake and to stop fighting for a bigger slice of a shrinking cake.

But why this depressing reality of a decidedly “un” entrepreneurial culture?

There are a number of factors contributing to this legacy of “un” entrepreneurial culture, the most notable one being that of a job seeking mindset prevailing under South Africans.

People are looking for jobs, not starting one of their own and in the process creating work for others!

This plague actually infests a large percentage of people in other countries too and this scourge is directly responsible for keeping scores of people “frozen” in their need and unable to break out of their prison of despair; economical and otherwise.

What fostered this plague?

Blame the industrial revolution. It can actually be blamed for a lot of ills! One of the only things that can’t possibly be pinned on it, is your ingrown toenail.

Whereas the emphasis was previously on skills in the pre-industrial age, it then shifted to the administrative capabilities necessary to manage the mass production of machinery and later the concomitant marketing. This focus on a “boxed” mode of doing became the dominant mentality in our school system, with its emphasis on left-brain activities which totally ignored the more creative and innovative right-brain kind of thinking.

This was further exacerbated by the home environment in which an already entrenched job-seeking mentality was at the order of the day. More and more people were programmed to believe that security and advancement lay in well-paid jobs.

And so the deadly job-seeking mindset that keeps on imprisoning untold numbers of people in its steely cage of hopelessness and despair came about.

So, what hope is there then for those who think “jobs…jobs”?!

Cheer up. This is all reversible.

How?

Well, initially I thought I’d give you a couple of pointers and be done with it and there you go – hey presto- brand new thinking kicking in. New entrepreneur created. And I collect $200 each time when I pass start.

But no, I cannot do justice in a few words to the all-important process of reversing this terrible mindset from the horror it enforces upon people’s lives into freedom of thought and the inculcation of a different mindset, no not even in a few hundred words.

So give me some space here and in the next post I will try and tell you how to reverse this monster and liberate yourself from its enslaving clutches into new ways of doing and thinking.

For this, you need a complete paradigm shift. So we’ll start there.

Even better yet, contact us for details about the full treatment toward liberation from this slavish mindset. For even although I am going to address some issues, adequate space will not allow me to give you the full monty.

Lights please!

To those of you who are entrepreneurs, even in the smallest way possible, I salute you. And not only me, but everybody else who understands even the slightest smidgeon of the way economics work.

You are our lights in a dark and uncertain economic tunnel, the bright threads in the fabric that’s weaving the whole economic tapestry. You are the bright beacons of hope in the global wasteland of poverty, despair and failing expectations. Only you can truly take us forward.

May your tribe increase. Rapidly!

But be clear about this: true economic wealth is NOT produced in this era by the so called scarce resources like land, mineral riches etc. It is produced by ideas. Yes ideas.

Wrap your mind around that one. And in the meantime, get ready for some serious paradigm shifting.

Until next time,

Elmarie

© Elmarie Bouwer

Resources:

1. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor South Africa 2010.

http://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/files/GEM2010Report.pdf

2. Credit goes to Mauritz Bekker of EBS for all the knowledge about entrepreneurship and its development. Thanks Mauritz! You’re awesome.