Paradigm Switch Consulting Ltd

True and exponential improvement can only come with a change in management thinking

Our Approach

PSC helps organisations improve their performance by changing their approach to the design and management of work. By taking a systems thinking approach as opposed to a ‘command and control’ approach, improvements in customer service at reduced levels of cost with improvements in staff morale result.

It has been estimated that people working in manufacturing organisations spend about 20% of their time dealing with waste, e.g. re-doing things, returning things that are wrong, chasing things, querying incomplete instructions, doing other people’s jobs etc.

The corresponding figure for service organisations is about 40% because there are more people and fewer machines doing the work.  The identification and elimination of waste can therefore result in significant cost savings and can often make the difference between profit and loss.

“If management were to spend as much time to improve processes as they do in ranking, rating, rewarding and punishment for people (teams, departments, divisions) at the top and at the bottom, the results would be stupendous improvement of our economic position.”

W.E Deming

Management Thinking

Management thinking is trapped in a paradigm that leads to underperformance, waste and inefficiency. Such levels of waste are often rationalised as being the norm and yet it is caused more often than not by the way we work; it is entirely under our control but our unconscious mode of management thinking prevents us from seeing it and in most cases is the unintentional cause of it.

Organisational performance is being undermined and paradoxically reduced by an obsession with targets, standards and management thinking trapped in an outdated but unconscious mode that prevents managers from seeing waste and inefficiency and leads, in the worst cultures, to high staff turnover, poor morale and political behaviour of the worst kind.

Waste of management resource.

It is as Deming and others taught: 95% or more of variation in performance is in the system. By working on the people, managers are working on the 5%. It is an extraordinary waste of management resource.

One of the key problems with much that is written about, and done in the name of management, is that rather simplistic frameworks are applied to what are complex systems. We tend to focus on the parts rather than seeing the whole, and to fail to see the organisation as a dynamic process. A better appreciation of systems will lead to more appropriate action.

True and exponential improvement can only come with a change in management thinking and a change in emphasis; a switch in the prevailing paradigm.

Paradigm Switch Consulting aims to help change that thinking in order to achieve real and lasting change in performance, improved efficiency and reduced waste.