Dr. C. Otto Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges (SoL, 2007). In this new book, Otto expands on the “U” methodology of leading profound change that he first introduced in earlier articles and in the book, Presence with co-authors Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers. As we anticipate Otto’s keynote presentation at this year’s Pegasus Conference, we invite you to enjoy this excerpt from the introduction of Theory U. In it, he describes the “blind spot,” that inner place from which we operate that we must come to understand in order to bring forth the profound systemic changes so needed in business and society today.

The Blind Spot
The blind spot is the place within or around us where our attention and intention originates. It’s the place from where we operate when we do something. The reason it’s blind, is that it is an invisible dimension of our social field, of our everyday experience in social interactions.

This invisible dimension of the social field concerns the sources from which a given social field arises and manifests. It 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 as she stands 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 or source dimension).

If we apply this artist analogy to leadership, we can look at the leader’s work from three different angles. First, we can look at what leaders do. Tons of books have been written from that point of view. Second, we can look at the how, the processes leaders use. That’s the perspective we’ve used in management and leadership research over the past fifteen or twenty years. We have analyzed all aspects and functional areas of managers’ and leaders’ work from the process point of view. Numerous useful insights have resulted from that line of work. Yet we have never systematically looked at the leaders’ work from the third, or blank-canvas, perspective. The question we have left unasked is: “What sources are leaders actually operating from?”

I first began noticing this blind spot when talking with the late 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 is that the success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.

That observation struck a chord. Bill helped me understand that what counts is not only what leaders do and how they do it but their “interior condition,” the inner place from which they operate or the source from which all of their actions originate.

The blind spot at issue here is a fundamental factor in leadership and the social sciences. It also affects our everyday social experience. In the process of conducting our daily 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. Yet if we were to ask the question “From what source does our action come?” most of us would be unable to provide an answer. We can’t see the source from which we operate; we aren’t aware of the place from which our attention and intention originate.

Having spent the last ten years of my professional career in the field of organizational learning, my most important insight has been that there are two different sources of learning: learning from the experiences of the past and learning from the future as it emerges. The first type of learning, learning from the past, is well known and well developed. It underlies all our major learning methodologies, best practices, and approaches to organizational learning. By contrast, the second type of learning, learning from the future as it emerges, is still by and large unknown.

A number of people to whom I proposed the idea of a second source of learning considered it wrongheaded. The only way to learn, they argued, is from the past. “Otto, learning from the future is not possible. Don’t waste your time!” But in working with leadership teams across many sectors and industries, I realized that leaders cannot meet their existing challenges by operating only on the basis of past experience, for various reasons. Sometimes the experiences of the past aren’t very helpful in dealing with the current issues. Sometimes you work with teams in which the experiences of the past are actually the biggest problem with and obstacle to coming up with a creative response to the challenge at hand.

When I started realizing that the most impressive leaders and master practitioners seem to operate from a different core process, one that pulls them into future possibilities, I asked myself: How can we learn to better sense and connect with a future possibility that is seeking to emerge?

I began to call this operating from the future as it emerges “presencing.” Presencing is a blending of the words “presence” and “sensing.” It means to sense, tune in, and act from one’s highest future potential—the future that depends on us to bring it into being.

This book describes the process and the result of a ten-year journey that was made possible only through the support and collaboration of a unique constellation of inspirational colleagues and friends. The question that underlies that journey is “How can we act from the future that is seeking to emerge, and how can we access, activate, and enact the deeper layers of the social field?”

Excerpted with the permission of Society for Organizational Learning from Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges by C. Otto Scharmer. Copyright 2007 C. Otto Scharmer. All Rights Reserved.

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Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges by C. Otto Scharmer