How can we get organizations to go deeper?

On December 8, the Learning Group had its second presentation by Otto Scharmer, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Society for Organizational Learning. In his September 2004 program on Presence, which he co-authored with Peter Senge, Joe Jaworksi, and Betty Sue Flowers, Dr. Scharmer explained presencing, a thought process used by individuals and organizations to reach a deeper level of meaning.

In this program, he previewed his forthcoming book Theory U: Leading from the Emerging Future. He reported on his recent 150 interviews with eminent thinkers and practitioners in strategy, knowledge, innovation, and leadership around the world and demonstrated tools for applying presencing in our work.

The U Process is a methodology for addressing highly complex challenges and represents a “social technology” for transformation of person, organizations and society. It begins with “co-sensing,” in which deeper discovery leads to a shared map of reality. It continues with “co-presencing,” which takes the individual or group to a deeper understanding of the system they are in and one’s relationship to it. Finally, there is “co-realizing,” the enactment of a new reality.

Both the topic and the program were rich and stimulating. With a vast number of ideas and question arising, it is fortunate that we have this new resource for ongoing discussion.

We’ve selected one Question of the Month that always comes up when we consider method that make greater demands and that was particularly cited at After Thoughts: How can we get organizations to go deeper? Where does the resistance shown by such responses are “there isn’t enough time” come from? How can we as OD practitioners encourage moving from superficial and short-term solutions to more profound and transformative results?

Of course there were many other thoughts provoked by this meeting and we urge both those who attended and those who could not to share their questions and ideas on presencing, Theory U, and their application.