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Author: [[Otto Scharmer]] Full Title: The Essentials of Theory U Category: #books 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 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. 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. 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. PART I A Framework for Seeing the Field

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The Essentials of Theory U by Otto Scharmer presents wisdom from the contemplative traditions.

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