Original Source
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Presencing - A Social Technology of Freedom
Interview with Dr. Claus Otto Scharmer
published in Trigon Themen
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2/20021
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The interview was conducted by Werner A. Leeb after a workshop on presencing
in March 2002 in Austria.
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Otto Scharmer is a lecturer and co-founder of the MIT Leadership Lab at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a visiting professor at the
Helsinki School of Economics. He also is a co-founder of the Global Institute
for Responsible Leadership.
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Question: Dr. Scharmer, what issues are you working on and researching now?
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Scharmer: I'm working on the question of why today, all over the
world, we're facing amassive failure of institutions-they're "crashing" in
practically all parts of society. Nomatter where you look, the need for major
change is evident, but at the same time it's also clear that this needed change
isn't taking place. Everyone wants change, everybody talks about change - and
yet, more often than not we see nothing much happening. Instead, wefollow the
pattern of "more of the same"! For increasingly larger parts of society we're
collectively producing results that no one actually wants. My question is: why
is this so? And what can we do in order to sense the future and bring it into
the present - into the now?
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Question: Why does this particular subject appeal so much to you?
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Scharmer: Two experiences were instrumental for me. As an activist in
the European Peace Movement in the 1980s, I experienced the omnipotence of the
Cold War system, materialized in the form of the Berlin Wall, first-hand and on
both sides of the East-West border throughout Europe. The fall of the Wall and
the opening of the Iron Curtain in 1989 taught me how shaky the foundation can
be on which the apparent irrevocability of a contemporary system is based. The
ground of stability on which we're standing is often only a thin skin wrapped
over the sphere of chaos and "becoming." The question is: what is it, now that
the East-West conflict of the 20 thcentury is over, that characterizes the
basic conflict of the 21st century? What is, then, the Iron Curtain of the
21st century? The Iron Curtain of our current era, I believe, is the "prison"
formed by our collective institutional behavior patterns. We are being held
tightly as never before in the grip of our past and our old patterns. How do
we escape from this viselike grip?
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The other experience that affected me was my work with management teams from a
variety of companies and industries. What fascinated me was seeing how
decision-makers everywhere are being confronted with the same challenges, and
that for a company to deal successfully with these challenges a new ability to
learn is required: a learning that is not based on reflecting the past, but
rather on feeling, tuning in to, and "bringing-into-the-present" all future
possibilities. This I refer to as "presencing."
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Question: In which situations, or with which problem areas or questions,
can you provide concrete help to people or organizations with presencing?
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Scharmer: Presencing is based on an inner change of location.
Presencing means: liberating one's perception from the "prison" of the past and
then letting it operate from the field of the future. This means that you
literally shift the place from which your perception operates toanother vantage
point. In practical terms, presencing means that you link yourself in a very
real way with your "highest future possibility" and that you let it come into
the present. Presencing is always relevant when past-driven reality no longer
brings you forward, and when you have the feeling that you have to begin again
on a completely new footing in order to progress. For example, my colleagues
Adam Kahane, Joe Jaworski, Katrin Kufer, Ursula Versteegen, and I use the
presencing approach to facilitate profound innovation and change processes both
within companies and across societal systems.
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Question: Are you bound to a specific intellectual tradition?
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Scharmer: I've been influenced by many schools of thought, the German
and Anglo-Saxon intellectual spheres, but also the Gandhist tradition of
Southern Asia and the Buddhist-Confucian and Daoist tradition of Eastern Asia.
My first two intellectual teachers were the Gandhi-inspired peace researcher
Johan Galtung, and the management researcher Ekkehard Kappler, both of whom
were inspired by critical theory. Here at MIT I joined the 20th-century
movement of action research in working with Peter Senge, Ed Schein, Bill
Torbert, Bill Isaacs, and others. Philosophically I am inspired and influenced
by the work of Heidegger and Nietzsche: Nietzsche viewed science from the
perspective of the artist, and art from the perspective of life. That's why he
is still important despite being so misunderstood throughout the 20th century.
This interest in an enhanced notion of science also links me with the work of
Bohm, Beuys, Goethe, and Steiner. What I'm really working on is a social
technology of freedom, a method for producing a common capacity for acting from
full presence in the "now."
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Question: To what degree is the subject of presencing a continuation or
further development of the ideas of Peter Senge?
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Scharmer: Peter Senge's first book, The Fifth Discipline, brought the
concept of organizational learning to a global audience. The new book that
Senge, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers, and I have just finished expands on
this approach in three directions: first,by widening the perspectives of teams
and organizations to encompass overall socio-economic systems; second, by
deepening the perspectives in regard to the personal depth experience and
consciousness development, meaning to explicitly consider the spiritual
dimension of social processes; and third, in view of the underlying learning
theory, by an expansion of the old Kolb learning cycles-learning through
reflecting on the past-through presencing, through the "becoming-present" of
the highest future possibility. My forthcoming book on presencing outlines the
methodological and theoretical foundations of this approach.
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Question: If the future can be "pre-sensed," then to what extent is our
future open? What role does coincidence play?
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Scharmer: Presencing is the ability to act in such a way that the
actions we perform originate in the coming-into-presence of the future. When
acting on this level, we let go of our "small selves" and turn into vehicles
for the coming-into-being of a deep evolutionary stream. How do we do this?
By carrying out a certain inner work, an inner work that is related to a
three-fold reversal process: turning one's thinking away from judging to
exploring; the reversal of feeling away from emotional reaction to appreciation
and seeing with the heart; and are shaping of the will away from hard ego
intentionality to a softer, more future-receptive will that the philosopher
Martin Buber refers to as "Grand Will." The opening to future possibilities
requires such reversals, that is, an inversion [Umstlpung] of the
mental-emotional-intentional field structure. Is such a future open? Yes,
every future is fundamentally open - the future is potentiality. Closure comes
into play with the past, and then when this past, which continues on, juts into
the present.
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Question: How far is today's "tough" management ready to go to
address and get involved with subjects like spirituality and ethics?
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Scharmer: Everyday spirituality and ethics are just as powerful forces
for change today as high-tech advances, globalization, and networked
structures. This doesn't mean, though, thateveryone accepts them. That's the
beautiful thing about life-that we humans have to decide on our own what to
accept or not to accept. In this sense, the question of ethics and
spirituality is in the highest degree a personal one. I would agree, though,
with something your question appears to be driving at - that we're dealing
today with a "localized" culture clash in every organization: between those who
want to lead through a technology of control,and those who seek to do this
through a technology of freedom. These are two fundamentally opposed
perspectives that are colliding full-force in almost every organization and
larger social system on earth.
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Question: Do you see business or socio-cultural differences between the
USA and Europe?To what extent can the presencing approach be transferred to
"good old Europe"?
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Scharmer: In America there is definitely a much greater openness to the
spiritual dimension of leadership. What is new is "good" and not, as it often
is in Europe, something that has to justify itself. But what I'm saying now is
directed at the mainstream culture of the functional elites. When you speak
with "normal people" you actually encounter the same thing everywhere: a much
greater openness than you ever expected.
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Literature
Arthur, W .B., J. Day, J. Jaworski,
M. Jung, I. Nonaka, C.O. Scharmer, P. M. Senge 2002. Illuminatingthe Blind
Spot. In: Leader to Leader, Spring 2002, 11-14.
Jaworski, J. and C.O. Scharmer.
2000. Leadership in the Digital Economy: Sensing and ActualizingEmerging
Futures. Society for Organizational Learning, Cambridge Mass., and
GeneronConsulting, Beverly, Mass.
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http://www.dialogonleadership.org
Scharmer, C.O.
Forthcoming. "Presencing: Illuminating The Blind Spot of Leadership. (working
title).
http://www.dialogonleadership.org
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Scharmer, C. O. 2001. Self-transcending
knowledge: Sensing and Organizing Around EmergingOpportunities. In: Journal of
Knowledge Management, Volume 5, No. 2, 2001, pp. 137-150.
Scharmer, C.O. 2000.
Presencing: Learning from the Future as It Emerges. Paper presented at
theConference on Knowledge and Innovation, May 25-26, 2000, Helsinki School of
Economics,Finland. www.ottoscharmer.com
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Scharmer, C. O. 1999. Organizing Around
Not-Yet-Embodied Knowledge. In: G.v. Krogh, I. Nonaka,and T. Nishiguchi
(eds.), Knowledge Creation: A New Source of Value. New York:
Macmillan,36-60.
Senge, P., and C.O. Scharmer. 2001. Community Action Research.
In: Peter Reason and HilaryBradbury (eds.), Handbook of Action Research.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.,238-249.
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Senge, P., J. Jaworski, C.
O. Scharmer, and B. S. Flowers. Forthcoming. Presence: Human Purpose,and the
Field of the Future (working title).
Versteegen, U., K. Kufer, and C.O.
Scharmer. 2001. The Pentagon of Praxis. In: Reflections: The SoLJournal on
Knowledge, Learning, and Change (Cambridge, Mass.), Vol. 2, no 3,
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Websites
http://www.dialogonleadership.org
http://www.ottoscharmer.com
http://www.SoLonline.org
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http://www.generonconsulting.com