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In my doctoral research at Cranfield University I worked with a number of companies throughout Europe, the UK and the USA, with over four hundred people taking part and looking at barriers to change. I obtanined a whole series of case studies which, through the applciation of the Theory of Constraints Thinking Processes (TOC/TP) and especially the "Cloud" technique discovered a real and present barrier to change that affected many of the people who took part in the original research, and confirmed many times since then. It was at this point that the people who took part in the original research (See Hutchin 2001 Unconstrained Organisations and published by Thomas Telford for the full account of the research) helped me to define what I called “paradigm lock” which caused many organisations to fail in terms of the expected outcome of fully developed plans that fully overcame the core issues facing them at the time. The impact paradigm lock had on the individual managers was often very challenging, and very sad indeed.

This cloud represents a powerful force for maintaining the status quo, perhaps one of the most powerful. It reads this way, in order to achieve my goal in life I must deal with the constraints that block me, and in order to deal with those constraints, I must change my paradigm with respect to whatever the focal point is right now. However, in order to achieve my goal in life I must remain, maintain, control over my life, and in order to maintain control I must not change my paradigm with respect to, the same focal point. Now the conflict is clear, one cannot hold to one position about something whilst at the same time changing that position. The cross connection between the D box and the C box is negative, if says that if I stay where I am with respect to this issue, then I can never deal with the constraints holding me back from achieving my goal.

At the same time, if I do change to the new position, then my understanding of having control over my life is clearly jeopardised and therefore no matter the logic of changing to what the D’ box implies I am not prepared to do so. The D’ box jeopardises the B box and so I am stuck. “Dammed if I do and dammed if I don’t” is the overwhelming feeling of those locked into their paradigm with no prospect of being able to break free from the grip of this situation. This is the desperate condition I described as “paradigm lock ”. See Hutchin 2001 Unconstrained Organisations for the full account of the research