The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications

The Essentials of Theory U

Other books by the Author include

Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges 1st Edition

Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-system to Eco-system Economies

Prescence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future

The Essentials of Theory U

Core Principles and Applications

C. Otto Scharmer

The Essentials of Theory U

Copyright © 2018 by C. Otto Scharmer

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-9440-0

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9441-7

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9442-4

2018-1

Book producer: Westchester Publishing Services

Text designer: Lynn L’Heureux

Cover designer: Richard Adelson

Interior illustration: Kelvy Bird

To

the emerging movement of people who

bridge the three major divides of our time:

the ecological, the social, and the spiritual divide.

Contents

Preface

Part I: A Framework for Seeing the Field

1.   The Blind Spot

Three Divides

The Blind Spot

In Front of the Blank Canvas

Arriving at MIT

Learning from the Future as It Emerges

Building the Container

Social Fields

2.   Theory U—Form Follows Consciousness

Making the System See Itself

A Moment of Seeing

The Process: Three Movements

Mapping the Deeper Territory

Three Instruments of Inner Knowing

Three Enemies on the Journey Down the Left Side of the U

Two Barriers to Moving Up the U

Presencing and Absencing

3.   The Matrix of Social Evolution

The Grammar of Social Fields

Attending

Conversing

Organizing

Coordinating and Governing

Field 1 to Field 4: A Journey of Inversion

Making the System Sense and See Itself

4.   The Eye of the Needle

I Expect a Lot from You

Reintegration of Matter and Mind

The Essence of Systems Thinking

Through the Eye of the Needle

Inverting the System-Self Relationship

From Reacting to Regenerating

Part II: A Method for Consciousness-Based Systems Change

5.   One Process, Five Movements: Innovating from the Future

Co-initiating: Uncovering Shared Intention

Co-sensing: Seeing Reality from the Edges of the System

Presencing: Connecting to the Highest Future Potential

Co-creating: Crystallizing and Prototyping the New

Co-shaping: Grow Innovation Eco-systems

Part III: A Narrative of Evolutionary Societal Change

6.   Upgrading Society’s Operating System

Economy 4.0

Democracy 4.0

Cross-Sector 4.0

4.0 Lab

7.   Returning to the Roots

With Compliments to the East German KGB

Staying on Course

I Can’t Not Do It

u.lab

Get Involved

About the Author

About the Presencing Institute

Index

Preface

Ten years after the original publication of Theory U in 2006, my publisher approached me about writing this book. Somewhat more politely than this, he said: "Okay, Theory U has been selling well. But frankly, we have no idea why. It is almost impossible to read. Five hundred pages, dozens of tables, hundreds of footnotes—it embodies everything that a publisher would tell you not to do. Then he suggested, Why don’t you, for a change, now write a book that is readable—shorter, more accessible, and updated?"

I probably seemed a bit offended. When he saw that, he quickly pointed out how a couple of other authors, whom I happen to admire, had done what he was suggesting: First, write comprehensively about what you have invented, and then in the next book explain it in a more accessible way. The book you are now holding is the result.

I hope it will serve you well. By providing this introduction to Theory U—an awareness-based method for changing systems—I try to answer the question: How do we learn in the face of disruption? How do we learn from the future as it emerges?

Theory U blends systems thinking, innovation, and leading change—from the viewpoint of an evolving human consciousness. Drawing on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) tradition of action research and learning by doing, Theory U has evolved over two decades of experimentation and refinement by a vibrant global community of practitioners. At its core, Theory U comprises three main elements:

1. A framework for seeing the blind spot of leadership and systems change

2. A method for implementing awareness-based change: process, principles, practices

3. A new narrative for evolutionary societal change: updating our mental and institutional operating systems (OS) in all of society’s sectors

Part I explores the framework and main ideas of Theory U (chapters 1–4). It illuminates the most important blind spot in leadership today: the interior condition from which we operate.

Part II describes the process, principles, and practices of Theory U (chapter 5). It showcases practical methods and tools for change makers. The focus is on building the collective capacity to shift the inner place from which we operate.

Part III introduces a new narrative for profound evolutionary change in society (chapters 6–7). What does it take to redesign societies in ways that address the pressing challenges of our time? What does it take to apply the power of mindfulness to the transformation of the collective system? This part of the book outlines a framework for updating the operating systems of our educational institutions, our economies, and our democracies. This framework applies the core concepts of Theory U to the transformation of capitalism.

Theory U integrates these methods and lineages for effecting change:

•   Action research and organizational learning in the tradition of Peter Senge, Ed Schein, Donald Schön, Chris Argyris, and Kurt Lewin

•   Design thinking in the tradition of Tim Brown and Dave Kelly

•   Mindfulness, cognition science, and phenomenology in the tradition of Francisco Varela, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Tanja Singer, Arthur Zajonc, and David Bohm

•   Civil society movements in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and millions of others who are mobilizing change in their local contexts

Theory U Leadership: Cultivate the Social Field

At its core, Theory U makes a distinction between the different ways that action and attention come into the world. I pay attention this way, therefore it emerges that way. Or, as the late CEO of Hanover Insurance, Bill O’Brien, put it: The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.

Theory U draws our attention to the blind spot in leadership today: the interior conditions, the sources from which we operate both individually and collectively.

Since I grew up on a farm, I like to compare our interior condition to a field. Each field has two dimensions: one that is visible, what’s growing above the surface; and one that is invisible, what’s beneath the surface—that is, the quality of the soil.

The same distinction applies to social fields. We can see what people do, the practical outcomes that they accomplish in the visible realm. But we rarely pay attention to the deeper root condition: the source and interior condition from which we operate. Theory U draws our attention to that blind spot—to the invisible source dimension of the social field, to the quality of relationships that we have to each other, to the system, and to ourselves.

Theory U identifies four different ways (or sources from) that action and attention come into the world. They arise from a quality of awareness that is (1) habitual, (2) ego-systemic, (3) empathic-relational, or (4) generative eco-systemic.

The essence of leadership is to become aware of our blind spot (these interior conditions or sources) and then to shift the inner place from which we operate as required by the situations we face. This means that our job as leaders and change makers is to cultivate the soil of the social field. The social field consists of the relationships among individuals, groups, and systems that give rise to patterns of thinking, conversing, and organizing, which in turn produce practical results.

Social fields are like social systems—but they are seen from within, from their interior condition. To shift from a social system perspective to a social field perspective, we have to become aware of our blind spot, the source level from which our attention and our actions originate. That source level fundamentally affects the quality of leading, learning, and listening.

The problem with leadership today is that most people think of it as being made up of individuals, with one person at the top. But if we see leadership as the capacity of a system to co-sense and co-shape the future, then we realize that all leadership is distributed—it needs to include everyone. To develop collective capacity, everyone must act as a steward for the larger eco-system. To do that in a more reliable, distributed, and intentional way, we need:

•   A social grammar: a language

•   A social technology: methods and tools

•   And a new narrative of social change

The grammar of the social field is spelled out in Part I. The method, an awareness-based social technology, is spelled out in Part II. In Part III, they are incorporated into a narrative of societal and civilizational renewal.

Theory U revolves around a core process of co-sensing and co-shaping emerging future possibilities. But it is much more than that. The grammar and the method outlined in this book work as a matrix, not as a linear process. Some of the leadership capacities that are at the heart of the U method include:

•   Suspension and wonder: Only in the suspension of judgment can we open ourselves up to wonder. Wonder is about noticing that there is a world beyond our patterns of downloading.

•   Co-sensing: You must go to places of most potential yourself because it is in these connections that the seeds of the future come into the world. Connect with these places with your mind and heart wide open.

•   The power of intention: The power of intention is key. In all presencing work, the deeper intention is the opposite of corporate indoctrination. It is about increasing, not decreasing, your range of possibilities. It is about strengthening your sources of self in a world that otherwise tends to tear us apart. It is about making you aware of your own sources of curiosity, compassion, and courage.

•   Co-creating: Explore the future by doing, by building small landing strips for the future that wants to emerge.

•   Container building: Create new holding spaces that activate the generative social field.

The problem with our current societal eco-systems is the broken feedback loop between the parts and the whole. Theory U offers a method for relinking the parts and the whole by making it possible for the system to sense and see itself. When that happens, the collective consciousness begins to shift from ego-system awareness to eco-system awareness—from a silo view to a systems view.

The Theory U methods and tools enable groups to do this on the level of the collective. For example, Social Presencing Theater makes it possible for a group of stakeholders in a system to sense and see themselves—both individually and collectively—by bending the beam of observation back onto the observer.

This matters because energy follows attention. Wherever we put our attention as leader, educator, parent, etc.—that is where the energy of the team will go. The moment we see the quality of attention shifting from ego to eco, from me to we, that is when the deeper conditions of the field open up, when the generative social field is being activated.

My work with these and other methods of change over the past two-plus decades boils down to this: The quality of results achieved by any system is a function of the quality of awareness that people in these systems operate from. In three words: Form follows consciousness.

Acknowledgments

While a new methodology for leading awareness-based systems change is at the heart of this book, it is also about the journey of the self—in this case, myself, a kid who grew up on a farm, became an activist in social movements, and then started rethinking economics and building learning infrastructures in teams, in organizations, and on the societal level. This journey has of course been embedded in a whole web of relationships that co-created the work described in this book.

My heartfelt thanks goes out to the global network of partners and collaborators who helped (1) to articulate this framework, (2) to refine the methodology, and (3) to co-create a narrative and movement that, given today’s challenges, has never been more timely.

A deep bow to the co-creators of the Presencing Institute (PI):

The co-founders

•   Katrin Kaufer, for pioneering new capacity-building environments in values-based banks by blending the intentional use of capital with presencing practices

•   Arawana Hayashi, for creating Social Presencing Theater, a new method and art form for embodied knowing in social systems

•   Kelvy Bird, for creating the method of generative scribing that embodies presencing practices through visual practice

•   Marian Goodman, for growing a global eco-system of building capacity around presencing practices

•   Dayna Cunningham, for teaching us how to bring presencing practices to complex environments of systemic racism, and structural violence

•   Ursula Versteegen, for bringing presencing practices into mindful agriculture

•   Beth Jandernoa and the Circle of Seven for holding the space for all the above

The u.lab core team

•   Adam Yukelson, for co-creating the u.lab platform and leading the content creation of u.lab 1X (From Personal Change to Prototype) and 2X (Seven Acupuncture Points of Transforming Capitalism)

•   Julie Arts, for facilitating the global u.lab Hub Host community and for leading the content creation of u.lab 3X (How to create Your Innovation Lab: Pathway to Practice)

•   Angela Baldini and Simoon Fransen, for facilitating and supporting the multi-local Hub Host and u.lab community

•   Lili Xu and Jayce Lee, for inspiring