David Pratt worked with Dr Stan Parsons in the US at Ranch Management Consultants. David relates the following, while teaching his first Ranching For Profit School with Stan in Australia in 1992. One evening, after teaching Day 3 of the course, David met with Stan in the pub for a debriefing. Stan started the conversation by asking, “David, do you even know what this school is for?” Coming to “his own defence” David said, “Sure. It’s to help ranchers build sustainable businesses. I thought it was a good answer”. Stan just shook his head. “David, the purpose of this school is to change the way people think. The purpose is to challenge their paradigms.” At the “schools” that Stan taught he always used to show a video by Joel Arthur Barker, “The Business of Paradigms”. Barker explains why it is difficult to change paradigms, but also that they can be changed. When a paradigm is changed, however, the change starts at “the edge”, and not at “the centre”.
Paradigms are real, when a paradigm is changed “everyone goes back to zero”! If a paradigm changes about how enterprises are run, or how a family farm business is managed, then do the best you can to consider the change. Paradigm “paralysis”, in a family-owned farming business sense, is “fatal”! The “centre” will not be able to help, at least in the beginning.
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