theory u intro sept 05

Excerpt from:

THEORY U: Leading from the Emerging Future

Presencing Profound Innovation and Change

in Business, Society, and the Self (forthcoming)1

Introduction

C. Otto Scharmer Massachusetts Institute of Technology

www.ottoscharmer.com

September 2005 — SECOND DRAFT —

Theory U: Leading from the Emerging Future

© 2005 Otto Scharmer 2

Introduction

We live in an era of clashing conflicts and massive institutional failures, a time of endings and of beginnings. A time that feels as if something profound was shifting and dying while something else, as Vaclav Havel put it, wants to be born: “I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself— while something else, still indistinct, were rising from the rubble.”2

Facing the Crisis of Our Time

The crisis of our time isn’t just a crisis of a single leader, organization, country, or conflict. The crisis of our time is about the dying of an old social structure, an old way of institutionalizing and enacting collective social forms.

When talking with frontline practitioners—managers, teachers, nurses, physicians, laborers, mayors, entrepreneurs, farmers, and business and government leaders—I feel that they share a sense of the current reality: the heat of an ever-increasing workload and pressure to do even more. Many describe this as running on a treadmill or spinning in a hamster wheel.

Recently I attended a leadership workshop with the top one hundred leaders of a US Fortune 500 company. The speaker before me had a great opening. He reminded us that it was only 20 years ago that we had serious discussions about what we should do with all of the extra free time that we would soon gain through the use of new communication technologies. Laughter erupted around the room. Painful laughter— for the reality that has come to pass is very different.

As we perceive our pressures to rise and our freedoms to be diminished, our concerns about the unintended side effects and consequences multiply. We all recognize the growing dark side of our current way of operating:

• We have created a thriving global economy that yet leaves 850 million people suffering from hunger3 and 3 billion people living in poverty (on less than 2 dollars per day).4

• We spend massive resources on health care systems that yet merely tinker on a symptoms level and that are unable to address the root causes of health and sickness in our societies, resulting in health outcomes that aren’t any better than in societies that spend far less.

• We spend significant resources on our agriculture and food systems and only to create non-sustainable mass production of increasingly low-quality junk food that pollutes both our bodies and our environment.

Introduction


• We pour vast amounts of money into our educational systems but haven’t been able to create schools and institutions of higher education that develop people’s deep innate capacities to sense and actualize their future, what I view as the single most important core capability for this century’s knowledge economy.

• More than half of the world’s children today suffer conditions of deprivation such as poverty, war, and HIV/AIDS.5

Across the board we collectively create outcomes (and side effects) that nobody wants. But the key decisionmakers do not feel capable of redirecting this course of events in any significant way. They feel just as trapped as the rest of us. The same problem affects our massive institutional failure: we haven’t learned to mold, bend, decompose, and transform our centuries-old collective patterns of thinking, organizing, and institutionalizing to fit the realities of today.

The social structures that are decaying and crumbling—locally, regionally, globally—are built on traditional or industrial (modern) ways of thinking and operating that were first quite successful but are now hitting the wall.

The rise of fundamentalist movements in both Western and non-Western countries is a symptom of the deeper transformation at issue. Fundamentalists say: look, this modern Western materialism doesn’t work. It takes away our dignity, our livelihood, and our soul. So let’s go back to the old order.

This reaction is understandable as it relates to two key defining characteristics of the social decay today: the simultaneous loss of norms or values (anomie) and the breakdown of social structure (atomie). These losses lead to eruptions of violence, hate, terrorism, civil war, and so-called natural catastrophes in both southern and northern countries. The riots in LA and the tragic consequences of the flooding of New Orleans are but two examples close to home.6 These events remind us that the social order we live with is fragile and can break down at any time. These circumstances will probably intensify over the next decade or two.

So the question becomes how to cope with it, how to respond. As this conversation gradually begins to take shape, proponents of three main positions can be heard:

1. The retro-movements: let’s return to the order of the past. Retro movements can but do not have to come with a fundamentalist coloring.

2. The defenders of the status quo—just keep going. Focus on doing more of the same by muddling through. Same old same old.

3. The advocates of transformational change: Go forth by letting go of the old self and intentionally transforming the old body of collective behavior.

I personally believe that the current global situation calls for a shift of the third kind, which in many ways is already in the making. We need to let go of an old body of institutionalized collective behavior in order to allow a new quality of deeper social presence to arise. The spontaneous rise of social fields that embody this heightened collective awareness and action is one of most significant developments of our time.



The purpose of this investigation is to uncover the social grammar that illuminates this subtle and profound shift. To do that, we have to become aware of a profound blind spot in leadership and in everyday life. The blind spot concerns the structure of attention that we use when approaching our work.

Illuminating the Blind Spot

How we pay attention to leadership and social reality creation can be likened to how we look at the work of an artist. At least three perspectives are possible: We can focus on the thing that results from the creative process—say a painting; we can focus on the process of painting; or we can observe the artist standing in front of a blank canvas. In other words, we can look at the work of art after it has been created (the thing), during its creation (the process), or before creation begins (the blank canvas).

The same applies to leadership. We can look at what leaders do. We can look at the how, the processes they use. And we can look at their work from the blank canvas perspective: what sources are they operating from?

Figure 1: Three perspectives on the leader’s work

I first began noticing this blind spot when talking with the former CEO of Hanover Insurance, Bill O’Brien. He told me that his greatest insight after years of conducting organizational learning projects and facilitating corporate change was that “the success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor.” That observation struck a chord. What counts, it dawned on me, is not only what leaders do and how they do it, but that “interior condition,” the inner place from which they operate, the source from which their action originates.

The blind spot at issue here is a fundamental factor in leadership and social sciences. It also affects our everyday social experience. In the process of conducting our daily

Introduction


business and social lives, we are usually well aware of what we do and what others do; we also have some understanding of how we do things, the processes we and others use when we act. And yet there is a blind spot. If we were to ask the question, “Where does our action come from?” most of us would be unable to provide an answer. The blind spot concerns the (inner) source from which we operate when we do what we do—where the quality of attention resides.

In working with leadership teams across sectors and industries, I realized that leaders could not meet their existing challenges by operating only on the basis of past experiences. I wondered whether there could be a deeper learning cycle based on one’s sensing of an emerging future, rather than on one’s past experiences.7 I began to conceive of a learning process that tunes in to and pulls us into future possibilities rather than simply reflecting and reacting to past experiences.

I began to call this learning from the future as it emerges presencing.8 Presencing is a new term that blends the two words “presence” and “sensing.” It means to sense and bring into the present one’s highest future potential—the future that depends on us to bring it into being.

A number of people to whom I proposed this idea considered it wrongheaded. The only way to learn, they argued, is from the past. Learning from the future is neither possible nor a useful avenue to pursue, they said. Only the support, inspiration and collaboration with colleagues like Joseph Jaworski, Beth Jandernoa, Katrin Käufer, Seija Kulkki, Ikujiro Nonaka, Ed Schein, Peter Senge and Ursula Versteegen allowed me to forge ahead despite those warnings and admonitions. This study describes the process and the result of this journey.9 The existence of this deeper source and cycle of learning, its uncovering and articulation, is the main thread of this investigation

Entering the Field

A field is, as every farmer knows, a living system—just as the earth is a living organism. I grew up on a farm near Hamburg, Germany. One of the first things my father, one of the pioneers of biodynamic farming in Germany, taught me was that the living quality of the soil is the most important thing in organic agriculture. Each field, he explained to me, has two aspects: the visible, what we see above the surface; and the invisible, what is below the surface. The quality of the yield—the visible result—is a function of the quality of the soil, of those elements of the field that are mostly invisible to the eye.

My thinking about social fields starts exactly at that point: that fields are the grounding condition, the living soil from which grows that which only later becomes visible to the eye. And just as every good farmer focuses all his attention on sustaining and enhancing the quality of the soil, every good organizational leader focuses all her attention on sustaining and enhancing the quality of the social field that she is responsible for.

Each Sunday my parents took me and my brothers and sister on a Feldgang—a field walk—across all the fields of our farm. Once in a while my father would stop and pick



up a clump of soil from a furrow so that we could investigate and learn to see its different types and structures. The living quality of the soil, he explained, depended on a whole host of living entities—millions of living organisms living in every cubic centimeter of soil—whose work is necessary for the earth to breathe and to evolve as a living system.

Very much in the same spirit, this study is a about a field walk across the social fields of our contemporary global society. And just as we did during the Feldgang, once in a while we will stop at a furrow and pick up a little piece of data that we investigate in order to better understand the subtle territory of social fields. As every business leader and experienced management consultant knows, it is this invisible territory that is the most important in creating the conditions for high performance in teams, organizations, and larger institutional ecologies. As McKinsey’s Jonathan Day once noted about his experience helping global corporations through the process of fundamental change: “What’s most important is invisible to the eye.”10

The question is how to access this hidden dimension of leadership more consciously and reliably?

The Archimedean Point: Colle c t i ve ly Seeing the Field Structures of Attention

What is the strategic leverage point for intentionally shifting the structure of a social field? What could function as the Archimedean point—the enabling condition—that allowed the global social field to evolve and shift?

For my father, it was quite clear what he considered the answer to this question to be in his case, the case of agriculture. Where do you put your lever? On the soil. On improving the quality of your soil. That has been his mantra. The fertile soil is a very thin layer of living substance that evolves through the intertwined connection of two worlds: the visible above the surface and the invisible below. The words culture and cultivation originate from this very activity—to cultivate the soil by deepening and intensifying the intertwined connection between both worlds (e.g., by ploughing).

So where is the leverage point in the case of a social field? At precisely the same place: right at the interface where the two worlds meet, connect, and intertwine. What then, in the case of social fields, is the visible matter? It’s the content of our perception of social reality. And what is the invisible realm? It’s the blind spot—the source from which our perception operates. And what’s in between? The realm in between is where the visible world (what we see) and the invisible world (from whatever relative position we perceive it) meet and connect.

I call that intermediary sphere the field structure of attention. The term designates the quality of relationship between observer and observed. It describes the relational structure between observed (content) and observer (source).

Introduction


Collectively seeing the field structure of attention is the single most important leverage point in shifting the social field. For it represents the only content in our social consciousness that we have entire control of (because we did it ourselves and can’t possibly blame it on others). Seeing the field structure of attention means that we see both the actual structure of attention and some potential other ways of operating. If focused on, this capacity allows us to shift the structure of attention from one mode to another.

Four Field Structures of Attention → Four Streams of Social Emergence

The key insight that has emerged from my explorations and investigations is that there are four fundamentally different field structures of attention that manifest in four levels of perception (from shallow to deep). The four field structures differ in the place from which attention (and intention) originates. Every action by a person, a group, an organization, or a community can be enacted in four different ways—from four different places (relative to one’s personal or organizational boundary).

Let us take the example of listening. In my years of working with groups and organizations I have identified four basic types of listening.

The first type of listening is downloading: listening by reconfirming habitual judgments. Whenever you are in a situation where everything that happens confirms what you already know, then you are listening by downloading.

The second type of listening is objective or attentive listening: listening by paying attention to disconfirming data. In this type of listening you pay attention to what differs. You attend to those aspects of reality that differ from your own concepts rather than denying them (as you do in the case of downloading). Objective or attentive listening is the basic mode of good science. You ask questions and you carefully observe the responses that nature (data) gives to you.

The third and deeper level of listening is empathic listening. Whenever we enter into a real dialogue a profound shift can be observed. This is a shift in the place from which our listening originates. As long as we operate from the first two types of listening, our listening originates from within the boundaries of our own mental-cognitive organization. But in empathic listening, our perception shifts from our own organization into the field, to the other, to the place from which the other person is speaking. When moving into that mode of listening we have to activate our empathy—our love—connecting directly, heart to heart, to the other person. If that happens, we feel a profound switch; we forget about our own agenda and begin to see the world through someone else’s eyes. When operating in this mode, we usually feel what another person wants to say before the words take form. And then we may recognize whether a person chooses the right word or the wrong one to express something, That judgment is only possible when we have a direct sense of what someone wants to say before we analyze what she actually says. Empathic listening is a skill that can be cultivated and



developed just like any other skills in human affairs. It’s a skill that resides in activating a different source of intelligence—the intelligence of the heart.

And finally there is a fourth level of listening. That fourth level moves beyond the current field and connects to a still deeper realm of emergence. I call this level of listening generative listening, or listening from the emerging field of the future. This level of listening requires us to access our open heart and open will—our capacity to connect to the highest future possibility that wants to emerge. When operating on this level our work focuses on getting our self out of the way in order to open a space, a clearing that allows for a different sense of presence to manifest. We no longer look for something outside. We no longer empathize with someone in front of us. We are in an altered state—maybe grace is the word that comes closest to the texture of this experience that refuses to be dragged onto the surface of words.

This fourth level of listening differs in texture and outcomes from the earlier ones. You know that you have been operating on the fourth level when you realize that, at the end of the conversation, you are no longer the same person you were when you started the conversation. You have gone through a profound change. You have connected to the deepest source—to the source of who you are and to a sense of why you are here—and that connection has put you in touch with you emerging authentic Self.

Most people are familiar with these four types of listening. At first people usually think: well, I only know the first two types. Then, on consideration, they realize that they recognize a few examples of empathic listening. And then, if you ask people to consider the deeper layers of their life’s journey, most can find the hidden gold of their level 4 experience right there. It has always been there. But it wasn’t attended to and hadn’t been cultivated. It had been socialized out of us for most of our lives because it didn’t fit the culture of downloading and the habits of thought that dominate our mainstream institutions today.

And yet, in my conversations with master practitioners across the professions—artists, scientists, performers, inventors, educators, coaches—I have found that they all do the same thing. All have found a way to operate from that fourth field. Violinist Miha Pogacnik explained this level of operating to me with the following example:

“When I gave my first concert in Chartres, I felt that the cathedral almost kicked me out. ‘Get out with you!’ she said. For I was young and I tried to perform as I always did: just playing my violin. But then I came to realize that in Chartres you actually cannot play your small violin, but you have to play the macro-violin. The small violin is the instrument that is in your hands. The macro-violin is the whole cathedral that surrounds you. The cathedral of Chartres is built entirely according to musical principles. Playing the macro-violin requires you to listen and to play from another place. You have to move your listening and playing from within to beyond yourself.11 “

Introduction


Crystallizing Theory U

The essence of the theory I introduce in this study is a simple distinction among four different streams of social emergence. With this theory I propose that every action by any human being or social entity (regardless of its scale) can be performed from four different sources or levels of emergence—that is, from four different fields of attention (or four different levels of consciousness). The point of the theory is that the same action results in radically different outcomes in a given social context depending on the structure of attention from which this activity is performed.

By explicating these four levels, Theory U illuminates a hitherto hidden dimension of the social process: the source from which social action comes into being.

Let me crystallize some essential points of the Theory U approach by addressing the core question that underlies this book: What is required in order to learn from the future as it emerges?

What is required from the viewpoint of Theory U can be summarized in eight propositions or core points:

[1] To cope with the challenges of our time, organizations and social systems need to deepen their learning cycle from levels 1 and 2 to levels 3 and 4.

The global challenges of our time will force most institutions to reinvent themselves: who are we, what are we here for, what do we want to create, how do we get there? Organization and institutions need the capability to operate on all four levels of learning and change, not just on the upper two. There is no bigger source of frustration and waste of resources than trying to solve level 4 problems (which require an identity shift) with level 1 and 2 methods (technical problem-solving).



[2] The process of activating the deeper levels of leading and learning involves three movements: (1) observe, observe, observe: open up and connect to what is going on outside; (2) allow the inner knowing to emerge: open up and connect to what is emerging from within; (3) act in an instant: bring the new into reality as it desires.12

The three movements can be thought of as a prerequisite infrastructure for charging a generative social field. To charge a social field, we first have to put into place three types of connectors, which can be thought of as the hardwired infrastructure. The first connector links a given system with its external context (co-sensing). The second connector links one’s current and future self (co-presencing). The third connector links the intelligence of the hand with the embedded wisdom in local contexts (rapid-cycle prototyping).

While this process sounds simple and resonates with many people’s best creative experiences, the dominant pattern in institutions doesn’t work like that at all. The dominant pattern is governed by downloading or by operating on the upper two levels. It’s like living in a house with seven rooms, but using only half of them or less. You know that these other rooms exist. You may even try to enter them. But you don’t succeed. These attempts to enter the deeper levels often are referred to as forms of reorganization, such as restructuring or reengineering—whatever the mantra is. But all they do is amplify the collective felt sense of hitting the wall. Why?

Because we are lacking a critical piece a social technology: a collective leadership technology that allows us to access the deeper levels of learning and change.

[3] In order to access the deeper levels of learning and collective intelligence, leaders need a new social technology that actives and tunes three instruments: the open mind, the open heart, and the open will.

The new social technology at issue here deals with the tuning of three inner instruments: the open mind, open heart, and open will. Just as the open mind relates to IQ and the open heart relates to EQ (emotional intelligence), the open will can be

Introduction


thought of as relating to what recently has been discussed as SQ (spiritual intelligence).

To access these three deeper levels (below downloading) requires the inner work of transforming our habitual patterns of thoughts, emotions, and will by going through a process of suspending, redirecting, letting-go, letting-come, enacting, and embodying.

[4] The most important tool of this leadership technology is your Self.

At the heart (or the bottom) of Theory U lies the following assumption: that each of us isn’t one but two. Each and every human being or social entity is two. One is the person that we have become through the journey of the past. That’s the one we know well. The other one is the person that we could become through our journey toward the future—it’s our highest future possibility. That one isn’t as apparent as the first person is. It’s a dormant possibility that is waiting for us. Stanford University’s Michael Ray refers to the



first person as the self with a small s and the second person—our highest future possibility—as the Self with a capital S. The essence of presencing is that these two selves begin to talk to another. This connection establishes a subtle but very real link to our highest future possibility that can then begin to help and guide us.

[5] The leader’s interior work deals with meeting and mastering three enemies.

Why is the journey to the deeper levels of the U the road less traveled? Because it requires difficult inner work. It requires facing and overcoming three enemies that block the entrance to the deeper territories. The first enemy blocks the gate to the open mind. Michael Ray calls that enemy the VOJ (voice of judgment). Unless we succeed in shutting down our voice of judgment, we will be unable to make progress in accessing our real creativity and presence.

The second enemy blocks the gate to the open heart. This enemy is often referred to as cynicism, that is, the emotional act of distancing. What is at stake when we begin to access the open heart? First we have to put ourselves in a position of vulnerability, which distancing usually prevents. I am not saying you should not use emotions of distance. I am saying that if you want to get to the bottom of the U—to your authentic self—then emotional separation, like cynicism, is dysfunctional. It blocks your progress on that journey.

The third enemy blocks the gate to the open will. The name of that enemy is fear. Fear of letting go of what we have and who we are. Fear of loosing economic security. Fear of being ostracized. Fear of being ridiculed. Fear of death. And yet, meeting that fear is the very essence of leadership: letting go of the old (self) and letting the new (Self) come.

Introduction


The Indo-European root of the word leadership, *leith, means “to go forth,” to “cross the threshold,” or “to die.”13 That root meaning suggests the experience of leading change by dying and then going forward, by crossing the threshold to another world that only begins to take shape once we overcome the fear of stepping into the unknown.

[6] The leader’s exterior work deals with putting in place three types of infrastructures.

The three infrastructures create the places and rhythms that provide the three connectors (hardwiring) for charging the field:

• places that facilitate a shared sensing and seeing of what is actually going on (co-sensing)

• places of deep reflection and silence that facilitate a connection to the authentic source of presence and creativity—both individually and collectively (co-presencing)

• places that facilitate the fast-cycle prototyping of microcosms of strategic future opportunities , in other words, places that promote discovery by doing (co-creating)

[7] The future of any social system is a function of the level of emergence that its collective leadership operates from.

The real battle in the world today is over our own evolution as human beings and societies. What is at stake is nothing less than the choice of who we are, who we want to be, and where we want to take the world we live in. What are we here for? The answers to these questions differ according to the structure of attention (level of emergence) that we use to respond to them. They can be given from a purely materialistic-deterministic point



of view (when operating from levels 1 and 2), or they can be given from a more holistic perspective that includes the subtle (spiritual) sources of reality creation (including levels 3 and 4).

And just as the outcome of a given conversation differs according to the level of listening that you use (resulting in downloading, debate, dialogue, or deep presence), or the outcome of institutional change differs according to the level of emergence on which the change leaders operate (resulting in reacting, redesigning, reframing, or presencing), the outcome of the human evolutionary project—the trajectory of the evolutionary pathway—differs radically according to the level on which the collective leadership operates.

Note that I don’t refer to individual leaders but to collective leadership, which includes all people effecting change regardless of their formal position.

[8] Leadership in this century means shifting the structure of collective attention at all levels.

Leadership in this century is global leadership and means shifting the structure of collective attention from the individual (micro) and group (meso) to the institutional (macro) and global system level (mundo). The good news is that the turning points for transforming the field structure of attention are the same across levels. These turning or inflection points, which I discuss throughout this study, apply to all system levels. The more challenging news is that there is a price to be paid. Operating from the fourth field of emergence requires a commitment: a commitment to letting go of everything that isn’t essential and to living according to the letting go/letting come principle that Goethe described as the essence of the human journey:

“And if you don’t know this dying and birth!--You are merely a dreary guest on earth.”14

Crafting a Social Technology of Freedom: 24 Principles of Presencing

My purpose with this book is to do two things: to outline a social grammar of emergence that illuminates the blind spot (Theory U), and to outline a social technology of freedom that puts that approach into practice (through the principles of presencing).

The method and social technology are summarized in 24 principles and practices at the end of the book. The 24 principles work as a matrix and constitute a whole. That said, they can also be presented at individual process stages that follow the path of the U. The stages are:

• Co-initiating: listen to what life calls you to do, connect with people and contexts related to that call, and convene constellations of core players that spark and inspire common intention.

Introduction


• Co-sensing: form a core team that takes a deep-dive learning journey that brings you to the places of most potential—observe, listen, and share with your mind, heart, and will wide open.

• Co-presencing: go to the place of individual and collective stillness, open up to the source of creativity and presence, and link to the future that wants to emerge through you.

• Co-create landing strips of the future by quickly prototyping living microcosms in order to learn by doing and by linking head, heart, and hand.

• Co-evolving: co-develop a larger innovation ecosystem that connects and coordinates through seeing from the whole and that grows through differentiating and interweaving its functional spheres across organizational boundaries.

Rising from the Rubble

We all know enough about what isn’t working today—about the dying of the old social body of collective behavior. We also know that we live on a thin crust of order and stability (as a society or civilization) that could blow up at any time.

But where are the sources of the new? What is rising from the rubble?

What’s rising from the rubble is a new form of connection among small spheres or networked communities of people. It’s a different social field of thinking, conversing, and acting together that starts happening when people begin to connect to their source. When that shift happens, people enter into an experience of “presencing” by noticing some tangible changes in their social space (a decentering of the spatial experience), social time (a slowing down of the temporal experience to stillness), and the self (a collapsing of the boundaries of the ego, experiencing a different quality or state of self).

A group that has entered into this stage of operating once usually finds it easier to do so a second time. It is as if an unseen, but permanent, communal connection or bond has been created. It even stays on if new members are added to the group.

That form of deepened presence in groups gives access to another whole dimension of power. The outcomes of such a field shift include a heightened level of individual energy and awareness, a greater level of authentic presence, a clearer direction, and usually profound long-term personal and organizational changes and innovations.

This study is based on ten years of research and field work in leading innovation and change, from1995 through 2005. It integrates 150 interviews with eminent thinkers and practitioners in strategy, knowledge, innovation, and leadership around the world, numerous reflection workshops with colleagues and co-researchers, as well as the results of consulting and “action research” projects with leaders of companies such as Fujitsu,



Daimler-Chrysler, GlaxoSmithkline, Hewlett-Packard, Federal Express, McKinsey & Company, Nissan, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Shell Oil, and with grass-roots movements in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

In taking us on this field walk, I refer to and use three methods: phenomenology, dialogue, and collaborative action research. All three address the same key issue: the intertwined constitution of knowledge, reality, and self. All of them follow the dictum of Kurt Lewin, the founder of action research, who observed that “You cannot understand a system unless you change it.” But each method has a different emphasis: phenomenology in the first-person point of view (individual consciousness); dialogue in the second-person point of view (fields of conversation); and action research in the third-person point of view (enactment of institutional patterns and structures).

The first part of this field walk deals with different aspects of the blind spot. The second part of the field walk explores the deeper grammar of this territory—Theory U—that deals with effecting social change by shifting the source of a collective field. The third part of the field walk focuses on the principles of presencing, a new social field theory and leadership technology. The book concludes with ideas and a broad plan for a global action research university that puts the above principles into practice.

1 This paper is the introduction to a forthcoming book with the same title. See www.ottoscharmer.com

2 President Vaclav Havel, speech in Philadelphia, July 4, 1994. I am indebted to Goran Carstadt for calling this speech to my attention.

3. “World Hunger Fact Sheet” published by the World Hunger Education Service: http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm.

4. “Working Out of Poverty: Making Jobs the Objective,” World of Work Magazine (http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inf/magazine/48/poverty.htm).

5. The State of the World's Children 2005: “Childhood under Threat” http://www.unicefusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=duLRI8O0H&b=262152

6 I owe this point to the peace researcher Johan Galtung. See (get reference).

7. Claus Otto Scharmer, “Organizing around Not-yet Embodied Knowledge,” in Knowledge Creation: A New Source of Value, ed. G. V. Krogh, I. Nonaka, and T. Nishiguchi (New York: Macmillan, 1999).

8 Scharmer, 2000, Senge, et al, 2004

9 A detailed account of this journey as well as a first introduction into the territory that this book continues to deepen and to explore can be found in Senge, et al, 2004.

10. See the full interview with Jonathan Day conducted by Claus Otto Scharmer, July 14, 1999, at Dialog on Leadership (www.dialogonleadership.org/interviewDay.html).

11. Personal conversation with Miha Pogacnik in New York, 1999.

12. http://www.dialogonleadership.org/Arthur-1999.html

13. Pokorny, 2002, 672.

14 Und kennst du nicht dies stirb und werde, so bist du nur ein trüber Gast auf Erden.

theory u intro sept 05

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