Otto Scharmer - Presencing: Human Potential and the Field of the Future

Otto Scharmer, MIT professor, organizational consultant, and co-author of Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, believes we must shape our future by responding to it now. To achieve this, he and his associates at SOL (the Society for Organizational Learning) have described and developed a technique called “presencing” (as in pre-sensing the future). In this presentation recorded in Boston, Scharmer discusses the power of presencing, his organizational model centered on presencing, called the “U-Theory,” and his global vision for consciously evolving ourselves and our civilization.

This talk is in four parts:

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: The Blind Spot of Leadership

Part 3: Three Global Shifts

Part 4: Seven Propositions for Emergence

BIO

Dr. C. Otto Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a founding co-director of ELIAS (Emerging Leaders for Innovations Across Systems), a joint leadership development initiative of the UN Global Compact, and the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), along with leading global companies, the World Bank, and NGOs. ELIAS uses the U process of presencing to help young executives co-create profound systems innovations for a more sustainable world. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Center for Innovation and Knowledge Research, Helsinki School of Economics. An international action researcher, he is a co-founder SoL and has consulted with multinational firms and international institutions in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Scharmer holds a Ph.D. in economics and management from Witten-Herdecke University, Germany. His article “Strategic Leadership within the Triad Growth-Employment-Ecology” won the McKinsey Research Award in 1991. His most recent work has included research in the form of dialogue interviews with 150 eminent thinkers on leadership, strategy, and knowledge creation. A synthesis of this research has resulted in a theoretical framework and practice called presencing, which he elaborates in his forthcoming book, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, as well as in a co-authored book with Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers, Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (2004). With his colleagues, Otto has used presencing to facilitate profound innovation and change processes both within companies and across societal systems. He lives with his wife and their two children in Boston, Massachusetts.