The Essentials of Theory U

Core Principles and Applications

Otto Scharmer

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781523094424
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Food Industry
• Index: Business

Creating a Better Future This book offers a concise, accessible guide to the key concepts and applications in Otto Scharmer's classic Theory U. Scharmer argues that our capacity to pay attention coshapes the world. What prevents us from attending to situations more effectively is that we aren't fully aware of that interior condition from which our attention and actions originate. Scharmer calls this lack of awareness our blind spot. He illuminates the blind spot in leadership today and offers hands-on methods to help change makers overcome it through the process, principles, and practices of Theory U. And he outlines a framework for updating the "operating systems" of our educational institutions, our economies, and our democracies. This book enables leaders and organizations in all industries and sectors to shift awareness, connect with the highest future possibilities, and strengthen the capacity to co-shape the future.

PART I

A Framework for Seeing the Field

Some people say that, for all the talk about change, very little actually happens. But in my experience that is not true. I have seen tectonic shifts several times in my life. I saw it when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989—and with it the Cold War system. I saw it when the apartheid system ended in South Africa. I saw it when a youth movement swept the first African American president of the United States of America into office. I saw it when the center of the global economy shifted from the West to East Asia over the past two or three decades. And I see it now in the recent rise of autocrats, nationalists, and far-right movements as a counter-reaction to a single sided globalization and as an overlay to something of even higher significance: the awakening of a new awareness across the planet.

Even though not every one of these changes amounted to a tectonic shift, this much I know: today, anything can happen. I believe that the most important tectonic shift of our lifetime is not behind but right in front of us. That shift has to do with the transformation of capitalism, democracy, education, and self.

1

The Blind Spot

We live in a moment of profound possibility and disruption. A moment that is marked by the dying of an old mindset and logic of organizing. And one that is marked by the rise of a new awareness and way of activating generative social fields. What is dying and disintegrating is a world of Me First, bigger is better, and special interest group-driven decision making that has led us into a state of organized irresponsibility.

What is being born is less clear. It has to do with shifting our consciousness from ego-system to eco-system awareness—an awareness that attends to the well-being of all. In many places around the world we can actually witness the awakening of this awareness and its underlying force: an activation of the intelligence of the heart. Groups that begin to act from such an awareness can, in the words of UC Berkeley cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch, “be shockingly effective.”

The beginnings of this shift may seem small and insignificant in comparison with the vast challenges that we face worldwide. And in many ways they are. Yet I believe that they hold the seeds for a profound civilizational renewal that is called for in order to protect and further activate the essence of our humanity.

FIGURE 1: The Challenge of Disruption

My friend and Presencing Institute co-founder Kelvy Bird captures this felt sense in the image of an abyss (figure 1).

If we picture ourselves on the left-hand side of the image, we can see a world that is disintegrating and dying (the structures of the past); on the right-hand side we see the new mental and social structures that are emerging now. The challenge is to figure out how to cross the abyss that divides the two: how to move from “here” to “there.”

This picture, in a nutshell, depicts the journey of this book: the journey across the abyss, from a current reality that is driven by the past to an emerging future that is inspired by our highest future potential.

Three Divides

Today this journey matters more than ever. If we look into the abyss, we see three major divides. They are:

• The ecological divide: unprecedented environmental destruction—resulting in the loss of nature.

• The social divide: obscene levels of inequity and fragmentation—resulting in the loss of society—the social whole.

• The spiritual divide: increasing levels of burnout and depression—resulting in the loss of meaning and the loss of Self. With the capital ‘S’ Self I mean not the current ego self but the highest future potential.

The ecological divide can be summed up by a single number: 1.5. Currently our economy consumes the resources of 1.5 planets. We use 1.5 times the regeneration capacity of planet earth. And that is just the average. In the United States, for example, the current consumption rate has surpassed five planets.

The social divide can be summed up by another number: 8. Eight billionaires own as much as half of mankind combined. Yes, it is true. A small group of people that you can fit into a minivan owns more than the “bottom half” of the world’s population: 3.8 billion people.

The spiritual divide can be summed up by the number 800,000. More than 800K people per year commit suicide—a number that is greater than the sum of people who are killed by war, murder, and natural disasters combined. Every forty seconds there is one suicide.

In essence, we are collectively creating results that (almost) nobody wants. These results include the loss of nature, the loss of society, and the loss of Self.

In the nineteenth century many countries saw the rise of the social divide as a major issue, and it has shaped our public awareness ever since. In the twentieth century we saw the rise of the ecological divide, particularly during the last third of the century. It too has shaped our public awareness.

And at the beginning of the twenty-first century we are seeing the rise of the spiritual divide. Fueled by the massive technological disruptions that we have experienced since the birth of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, advances in technology will replace about half of our jobs by 2050. We are now facing a future that “no longer needs us,” to borrow the words of computer scientist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems Bill Joy, and that in turn forces us to redefine who we are as human beings and to decide what kind of future society we want to live in and create. After the various types of tyrannies that we saw throughout the twentieth century, are we now moving into a tyranny of technology? This is one of the questions we face when we look into the abyss.

In other words, we live in a time when our planet, our societal whole, and the essence of our humanity are under attack. That may sound a bit dramatic. Still, I believe it understates the significance of our current moment.

So where is the hope? The biggest source of hope in our time is that more and more people, particularly the younger population, realize that the three divides are not three separate problems. They are essentially three different faces of one and the same root issue. What issue is that? The blind spot.

The Blind Spot

There is a blind spot in leadership, management, and social change. It is a blind spot that also applies to our everyday social experience. The blind spot concerns the inner place—the source—from which we operate when we act, communicate, perceive, or think. We can see what we do (results). We can see how we do it (process). But we usually are not aware of the who: the inner place or source from which we operate (figure 2).

Let me explain. I first stumbled onto this blind spot when talking to Bill O’Brien, the longtime CEO of Hanover Insurance. From his many years of leading transformational change, Bill summed up his greatest insight like this: “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.”

FIGURE 2: The Blind Spot of Leadership

Bill’s statement opened my mind: What counts is not only what leaders do and how they do it but also their “interior condition”—that is, their inner source.

It dawned on me that Bill was pointing at a deeper dimension (the source) from which our actions, communication, and perceptions arise, and which allows us to sense and connect with a whole new set of future possibilities.

The quality of how we pay attention is a largely hidden dimension of our everyday social experience—whether it is in organizations, institutions, or even our personal lives. As we conduct our daily business, we usually are well aware of what we do and how we do it—that is, the processes we use. But if we were asked where our actions come from, most of us would be unable to provide a clear response. In my research I began to call this origin of our actions and perceptions the source.

In Front of the Blank Canvas

Reflecting on my conversation with Bill O’Brien made me realize that, every day, we interact on both visible and invisible levels. To better understand this point, consider the work of an artist.

We can look at art from at least three perspectives:

• We can focus on the thing that results from the creative process—say, a painting.

• We can focus on the artist’s process in creating the painting.

• Or we can observe the artist at the moment when she is standing in front of a blank canvas.

In other words, we can look at the work of art after it has been created, during its creation, or before creation begins.

If we apply this analogy to leading change, we can look at the change maker’s work from three similar angles. First, we can look at what leaders and change makers do. Many books have been written from that point of view. Second, we can look at the how, the processes leaders use. We have used that perspective in management and leadership research for more than two decades.

Yet we have never systematically looked at the leader’s work from the blank-canvas perspective. The question we have left unasked is: What sources are leaders and change makers actually operating from? For example: What quality of listening, what quality of attention, do I bring to a situation—and how does that quality change the course of action moment to moment?

To sum up the discussion of the three divides: While the ecological divide arises from a disconnect between self and nature, and the social divide arises from a disconnect between self and other, the spiritual divide arises from a disconnect between self and Self—that is, between who I am today and who I might be tomorrow, my highest future possibility.

Arriving at MIT

When I arrived at MIT from Germany some twenty-four years ago, my goal was to learn how I could help change makers in society deal with the big challenges of disruption that keep coming our way. The then newly created MIT Organizational Learning Center (OLC), directed by Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, brought together a unique constellation of leading action researchers from MIT and Harvard, including Ed Schein, Chris Argyris, Don Schön, Bill Isaacs, and many others. This book is heavily shaped and inspired by the opportunity to work in this network and circle of wonderful colleagues and friends, along with many other valued collaborators from other institutions and places.

Looking back at my own journey today, I see three major insights and learnings that have shaped my journey of exploring the blind spot.

Learning from the Future as It Emerges

My first insight is quite elemental. There are two different sources of learning: (1) learning by reflecting on the past and (2) learning by sensing and actualizing emerging future possibilities.

All traditional organizational learning methods operate with the same learning model: learning by reflecting on past experiences. But then I saw time and again that in real organizations most leaders face challenges that cannot be responded to just by reflecting on the past. Sometimes past experiences are not particularly helpful. Sometimes they are the very obstacles that keep a team from looking at a situation with fresh eyes.

In other words, learning from the past is necessary but not sufficient. All disruptive challenges require us to go further. They require us to slow down, stop, sense the bigger driving forces of change, let go of the past and let come the future that wants to emerge.

But what does it take to learn from the emerging future? When I started to ask this question, many people looked at me with a blank stare: “Learning from the future? What are you talking about?” Many told me it was a wrongheaded question.

Yet it was that very question that has organized my research journey for more than two decades. What sets us apart as human beings is that we can connect to the emerging future. That is who we are. We can break the patterns of the past and create new patterns at scale. No other species on earth can do this. Bees, for example, may be organized by a much higher collective intelligence. Yet they have no option to change their pattern of organizing. But we as humans do.

Let me say this in different words. We have the gift to engage with two very different qualities and streams of time. One of them is a quality of the present moment that is basically an extension of the past. The present moment is shaped by what has been. The second is a quality of the present moment that functions as a gateway to a field of future possibilities. The present moment is shaped by what is wanting to emerge. That quality of time, if connected to, operates from presencing the highest future potential. The word presencing blends “sensing” with “presence.” It means to sense and actualize one’s highest future potential. Whenever we deal with disruption, it is this second stream of time that matters most. Because without that connection we tend to end up as victims rather than co-shapers of disruption.

How can we connect to this second stream of time as individuals, as organizations, and as eco-systems? That exploration has guided my research journey over the past two decades. It has led me to describe a deep learning cycle that uses a different kind of process—one that moves us to the edges of the system, connects us to our deepest sources of knowing, and prompts us to explore the future by doing. This deep learning cycle applies both to our professional and our personal lives. For example, as a sixteen-year-old, I had an experience that gave me a real taste of what it looks and feels like to be pulled by the field of emerging future potential.

Facing the Fire

When I left our farmhouse that morning for school, I had no idea it was the last time I would see my home, a large, 350-year-old farmhouse. It was just another ordinary day at school until about one o’clock, when the teacher called me out of class and said I should go home. I had no idea what might have happened, but felt it wasn’t good news. After the usual one-hour train ride I ran to the entrance of the station and...