Theory U Leading from the Future as It Emerges

Access the deepest source of inspiration and vision

We live in a time of massive institutional failure that manifests in the form of three major divides: the ecological, the social, and the spiritual. Addressing these challenges requires a new consciousness and 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 learning and leadership.

In most large systems today, we collectively create results that no one wants. What keeps us stuck in such patterns of the past? It’s our blind spot, that is, our lack of awareness of the inner place from which our attention and intention originate. 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. Theory U offers a rich diversity of compelling stories, examples, exercises, and practices that allow leaders, organizations, and larger systems to cosense and coshape the future that is wanting to emerge.

This second edition features a new preface in which Scharmer identifies five transformational trends and describes U process case stories around the world. There are also eight color drawings by Kelvy Bird that capture U journey applications and illustrate the concepts in the book, as well as new resources for applying the principles and practices.

C. Otto Scharmer is a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founding chair of the Presencing Institute. He is faculty chair of MIT’s IDEAS program; visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing; and a cofounder of the Global Wellbeing and Gross National Happiness Lab, which links innovators from Bhutan, India, China, Brazil, Europe, and the United States to prototype profound innovations in government, business, education, and civil society. He is the coauthor of Leading from the Emerging Future and Presence.

Foreword author Peter Senge is a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning North America and the coauthor of the bestselling book, The Fifth Discipline.

Color Insert Images by Kelvy Bird
Preface to the Second Edition
Foreword by Peter Senge
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Bumping into Our Blind Spot
Chapter 1 Facing the Fire
Chapter 2 The Journey to “U”
Chapter 3 Fourfold Learning and Change
Chapter 4 Organizational Complexity
Chapter 5 Shifts in Society
Chapter 6 Philosophical Grounding
Chapter 7 On the Threshold
Part II Entering the U Field
Chapter 8 Downloading
Chapter 9 Seeing
Chapter 10 Sensing
Chapter 11 Presencing
Chapter 12 Crystallizing
Chapter 13 Prototyping
Chapter 14 Performing
Part III Presencing: a Social Technology for Profound Innovation and Change
Chapter 15 The Grammar of the Social Field
Chapter 16 Individual actions
Chapter 17 Conversational actions
Chapter 18 Organizational actions
Chapter 19 Global actions
Chapter 20 Catching Social reality Creation in Flight
Chapter 21 Principles and Practices of Presencing
Epilogue u.school: awareness Based Systems Change
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
About the Organization