Theory U: Learning from the Future as It EmergesShows how leaders can access the deepest source of inspiration and vision • Includes dozens of tested exercises, practices, and real-world examples We live in a time of massive institutional failure, one that requires a new consciousness and a new collective leadership capacity. In this groundbreaking book, Otto Scharmer invites us to see the world in new ways and in so doing discover a revolutionary approach to leadership. What we pay attention to and how we pay attention is key to what we create. What prevents us from attending to situations more effectively is that we aren’t fully aware of and in touch with the inner place from which attention and intention originate. This is what Scharmer calls our blind spot. By moving through Scharmer’s U process, we consciously access the blind spot and learn to connect to our authentic Self—the deepest source of knowledge and inspiration—in the realm of “presencing,” a term coined by Scharmer that combines the concepts of presence and sensing. Based on ten years of research and action learning and interviews with over 150 practitioners and thought leaders, Theory U offers a rich diversity of compelling stories and examples and includes dozens of exercises and practices that allow leaders, and entire organizations, to shift awareness, connect with the best future possibility, and gain the ability to realize it. |
Contents
Foreword by Peter Senge Acknowledgments | |
Introduction | |
Bumping into Our Blind Spot | |
Facing the Fire | |
The Journey to U | |
Fourfold Learning and Change | |
Organizational Complexity | |
Shifts in Society | |
Prototyping | |
Performing | |
A Social Technology for Leading Profound | |
Individual Actions | |
Conversational Actions | |
Organizational Actions | |
Global Actions | |
Catching Social Reality Creation in Flight | |
Philosophical Grounding | |
On the Threshold | |
Entering the U Field | |
Downloading | |
Seeing | |
Sensing | |
Presencing | |
Crystallizing | |
Principles and Practices of Presencing for Leading | |
Birthing a Global PresencinginAction University | |
Notes | |
Index | |
About the Author | |
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Common terms and phrases
action begin behavior blind spot boundaries capacity challenges circle co-creating collective complexity connect context conversation create creative culture deep deeper source downloading dynamic economy ecosystem Eleanor Rosch emerging future enacted Enron evolve example experience feel field structure Figure focus four Francisco Varela future possibility global happens Harvard Business School heart holding space individual infrastructures innovation institutional integration intention issue Johan Galtung Joseph Beuys journey knowledge leaders leadership learning letting go listening living look mechanism mind move observe one’s operate organizational organizational learning organizations Parsifal participants patterns person Peter Senge practices presence principles profound prototyping question reality realized redirect relationship salutogenesis Scharmer sense shift silence social field social systems stage stakeholders story structure of attention systems theory systems thinking talk theory things thinking transformation Traudl Junge what’s whole