COMMON SYSTEMS THINKING GOOD
The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications
A book excerpt by Otto Scharmer, Mobius Senior Expert, Senior Lecturer MIT and co-founder of the Prescencing Institute
A Framework for Seeing the Field The Blind Spot Some people say that, for all the talk about change, We live in a moment of profound possibility and very little actually happens. But in my experience that disruption. A moment that is marked by the dying of is not true. I have seen tectonic shifts several times an old mindset and logic of organizing. And one that in my life. I saw it when the Berlin is marked by the rise of a new Wall collapsed in 1989 – and with awareness and way of activating Explore the future it the Cold War system. I saw it generative social fields. What when the apartheid system ended is dying and disintegrating is a by doing, by building in South Africa. I saw it when a world of Me First, bigger is better, youth movement swept the first and special interest group-driven small landing strips African American president of decision making that has led us into for the future that the United States of America into a state of organized irresponsibility. office. I saw it when the center What is being born is less wants to emerge. of the global economy shifted clear. It has to do with shifting our from the West to East Asia over consciousness from ego-system to the past two or three decades. And I see it now in eco-system awareness – an awareness that attends to the the recent rise of autocrats, nationalists, and far- well-being of all. In many places around the world we can right movements as a counter-reaction to a single actually witness the awakening of this awareness and its sided globalization and as an overlay to something underlying force: an activation of the intelligence of the of even higher significance: the awakening of a new heart. Groups that begin to act from such an awareness awareness across the planet. can, in the words of UC Berkeley cognitive psychologist Even though not every one of these changes Eleanor Rosch, “be shockingly effective.” amounted to a tectonic shift, this much I know: The beginnings of this shift may seem small and today, anything can happen. I believe that the most insignificant in comparison with the vast challenges important tectonic shift of our lifetime is not behind that we face worldwide. And in many ways they are. but right in front of us. That shift has to do with the Yet I believe that they hold the seeds for a profound transformation of capitalism, democracy, education, civilizational renewal that is called for in order to protect and self. and further activate the essence of our humanity.
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Reprinted with permission from The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Copyright 2018.
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