Featuring the work of members of the SoL Sustainability Consortium, this new SoL resource was written as a vehicle for sparking conversation and encouraging dialogue about how to develop the confidence and capabilities to create a world we will be proud to leave our grandchildren. The collection of twelve articles and exercises is based on the Fifth Discipline fieldbook format, and is intended for leaders at levels, engaged in all types of enterprises, local and global.

Learning for Sustainability

Sara Schley

Joe Laur

Peter Senge

Bryan, Smith

SoL, the Society for Organizational Learning

Presence in Action: An Introduction to Theory U, is a DVD featuring C. Otto Scharmer's keynote address prepared for the opening session of the Society for Organizational Learning's Second Global Forum in September of 2005. One of the Forum design team members, Cristina d'Arce of Brazil, worked with Scharmer to set the stage for this gathering. Scharmer spoke to the question of how we can be more present to our experience, using the Forum as an immediate opportunity for the participants to experiment with the U process. In three segments, Shifting the Social Field, Facing Three Enemies, and A 12-Step Presencing Practice, Scharmer introduces the social technology of presencing to management and management science. The learning and change theories that guide leaders' actions are based on reflecting on past experience. But the complex challenges facing us today require a new form of learning one that connects us to the emerging future. Presencing, a blend of presence and sensing, refers to the ability to sense and bring into the present one's highest future potential. Scharmer shows us our current blind spot and encourages co-creation of a future that depends on each of us.

Presence in Action: An Introduction to Theory U

In this ground-breaking book, Otto Scharmer invites us to see the world in new ways. Fundamental problems, as Einstein once noted, cannot be solved at the same level of thought that created them. What we pay attention to, and how we pay attention - both individually and collectively - is key to what we create. What often prevents us from attending is what Scharmer calls our blind spot, the inner place from which each of us operates. Learning to become aware of our blind spot is critical to bringing forth the profound systemic changes so needed in business and society today. First introduced in Presence, the U methodology of leading profound change is expanded and deepened in Theory U. By moving through the "U" process we learn to connect to our essential Self in the realm of presencing - a term coined by Scharmer that combines the present with sensing. Here we are able to see our own blind spot and pay attention in a way that allows us to experience the opening of our minds, our hearts, and our wills. This wholistic opening constitutes a shift in awareness that allows us to learn from the future as it emerges, and to realize that future in the world. Theory U explores a new territory of scientific research and personal leadership, one that is grounded in real life experience and shared practices. Scharmer shares much from his own personal and professional development, and draws from a rich diversity of compelling stories and examples. Readers will find themselves drawn to new ways of thinking and acting as they read, completing a parallel journey of exploration and discovery. The final chapters lay out principles and practices that allow everyone to participate fully in co-creating and bringing forth the desired future that is working to emerge through us.

Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges

Business & Money

C. Otto Scharmer

Management & Leadership

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