Otto Scharmer of MIT over the last decade has created a model of how the 21st century organization and economic system will evolve from a hierarchical command and control structure to one where cooperation, interconnectedness, and service to others are what drive success. His book Leading from the Emerging Future, co-written with Katrin Kaufer, provides a wonderful playbook for transforming ourselves, our organizations, and eventually society through understanding issues from a Systems Thinking perspective.
People, societies, and systems all evolve over time. The impetus for that evolution is usually that the current way of doing things is no longer optimal or is causing significant problems. Scharmer shows us in the systems thinking ice-berg graphic below that our current organizational economic model is producing a number of issues that are leading to break-downs in various societal systems. The three major areas are: (1) An Ecological Divide; (2) A Social Divide; (3) And, a Spiritual Divide.
In the Ecological Divide, we have exceeded the safe operating limits of the Earth and are currently using 1.5 times the amount of sustainable resources the earth can provide and are headed up to 3X as the global population rises from 7 billion to 9 billion over the next 30 years. We have essentially become disconnected from our Natural Environment which sustains us. The causes of this are driven by our financial system which is based on a constant need for growth with little regard to the societal and environmental impacts of that growth.
There is a disconnect between the infinite growth imperative and the finite resources of Planet Earth. The disconnect between the infinite growth that current economic logic demands and the finite resources of Planet Earth has produced a massive bubble: The overuse of scarce resources such as water and soil has led to the loss of a third of our agricultural land globally in roughly one generation’s time.
A perpetual growth financial model exists because with abundant, almost free money being loaned by banks (who actually don’t have most of the money they loan as their reserve ratios are very low – it’s as if nonexistent money magically creates more nonexistent money), that money is constantly chasing things to invest in and make a financial return on (a bit like a Ponzi scheme…). This causes ever more natural resources to be used (ok, until you use up all of the sustainable amount of your finite natural resources – which we have already done). With the constant production of new goods, companies must gin up consumer demand to buy those items (which we really don’t need). In the process, prices rise for most goods and services. Eventually, the loaned money needs to be paid back and (ironically) more loans (of fictitious money) are taken in order to do that. The cycle of credit and debt then begins again, and again, and again until the bubble bursts. This time however, the bubble that is bursting is the Earth’s environment itself. But as should be apparent, catastrophic climate change is a burst bubble we can’t afford.
Our Social Divide stems from our mistaken belief in seeing ourselves as separate from others. The “Us vs. Them” mindset pervades almost every aspect of our lives as we take as gospel that “as long as we get ours, that’s what counts”. This can be called a “Service to Self” mind set. This thinking seeps into our work places, our sports, our schools, and of course our politics. It’s a sort of Tribalism that violates the fundamental reality of our inherent interconnectedness and wholeness. When we re-engage with that interconnectedness, we naturally migrate to a “Service to Others” mindset as we begin to realize that the “other” is actually ourselves.
Transforming our current ego-system economy into an emerging eco-system economy means reconnecting economic thinking with its real root, which is the well-being of the whole house rather than money-making or the well-being of just a few of its inhabitants. But while the whole house was for he Greeks something very local, today it also concerns the well-being of our global communities and planetary eco-systems.
Our Spiritual Divide, as Scharmer identifies it in the book, is that we have lost touch with who we really are. Too many of us still don’t see our spiritual truth – that we are spiritual beings having a material experience. The illusion has not been unveiled by enough of us. Yet, optimistically, there are signs that more are waking up and elevating their level of consciousness.
These divides create a number of different bubbles: Ecological, Income, Financial, Technology, Leadership, Consumerism, Governance, and Ownership. They in turn produce issues such as exceeding the earth’s resources and destabilizing our climate, creating artificial financial markets versus focusing on the real economy, losing ourselves in technology and entertainment versus addressing real human needs, ending up in political paralysis, and confusing GDP with true happiness.
At the core of resolving these issues is that our Ecological, Social, and Spiritual Divides are based on a crisis in consciousness. We need to elevate our level of awareness of the true nature of reality – one that is inherently holistic, rather than the separate and atomistic vision we have been operating with over the last four hundred years. That vision – which is Ego focused – results in conflict, hyper-competition, political gridlock, large economic disparities, and a lack of happiness and well-being across vast swaths of our population.
Lastly in the diagram above, Scharmer describes the four stages of organization evolution we have seen over the last few hundred years:
The 1.0 Economic Operating System is based on traditional awareness and hierarchical thinking. The 2.0 Economic Operating System is based on ego-system awareness and me-centric thinking (in neoclassical economics, this ‘me’ is referred to as homo oeconomicus, an idea of a human being who acts only by maximizing self-interest). The 3.0 Economic Operating System is based on institutional stakeholder awareness and some negotiated coalitions that internalize concern for the well-being of key stakeholders. For example, corporations negotiate with and partner with labor unions. The emerging 4.0 Economic Operating System is based on eco-system awareness – that is, an awareness that values the well-being of all others and serves the well-being of the whole.
2.0 is of course where most modern profit maximizing businesses operate. 3.0 is where you see non governmental organizations serving those in need around the world as well as non-profits addressing the most pressing social issues at home. 4.0 is where it starts to get really interesting and you start witnessing the emergence of organizations that are addressing People, Planet, and Profit (Benefit Corporations as an example), or progressive companies where the standard pyramid of organizational hierarchy has been turned upside down and decision making and work planning are handled completely by self-managed autonomous teams (see Frederic Laloux’s excellent book – Reinventing Organizations – for good examples).
The transition to 4.0 organizations for Scharmer come down to three key items:
The Journey from ego-system to eco-system awareness, of from “me to we”, has three dimensions: (1) better relating to others; (2) better relating to the whole system; and (3) better relating to oneself.
The approach encapsulates the best of holistic thinking – which unfortunately is the opposite of how most things work in today’s world.
What we do instead is address issues and problems in a piece-meal basis – from education, fighting poverty, health care, economic growth, and more. Let’s take health care as an example – the whole system is meant to address a problem after it happens. That’s when the insurance system will pay and that’s when a doctor will take action. And, the action the doctor will take will be to treat the specific symptom you came in with – but the compensation model does not incentivize him or her to look at your health holistically and find the root cause of your illness. This would require a multi-disciplinary, team based health care approach – say where a primary physician is working with a psychologist, nutritionist, and exercise specialist to take a proactive team based approach to someone’s health. In this approach the team is analyzing the patient from a systems viewpoint and focused on total health of the individual not just resolving the symptoms of one issue. More importantly, understanding the state of one’s health is influenced a wide variety of physical, mental, and environmental circumstances where the dots need to be connected to resolve the root cause of poor health.
So how do we have more people understanding the interconnections between themselves, others, and various systems overall? Otto Scharmer’s solution has been to create the Theory U and the art of Presencing. Essentially it is a form of raising one’s consciousness through a practice of mindfulness.
The model is about increasing our awareness to new levels, to see with fresh eyes and a perspective that allows us to move beyond the dualistic model of you and me to the holistic model of us and we. When your awareness moves to that level you look to create solutions that are in the best interests of everyone, not just a small group of stakeholders. As Scharmer says :
The gist of the framework is simple: The quality of results produced by a system depends on the quality of awareness from which people in the system operate. The formula for a successful change process is not “form follows function”, but “form follows consciousness”. The structure of awareness and attention determines the pathway along which a situation unfolds.
Awareness and attention in the model is generated by the idea of Presencing: “Presencing is a blended word combining sensing (feeling the future possibility) and presence (the state of being in the present moment). It means sensing and actualizing one’s highest future possibility – acting from the presence of what is wanting to emerge.”
When we are truly present, we are able to remove the filters that we have built up over a life time of conditioning (from parents, society, schools, media, etc) and more accurately seeing the truth. That’s at the heart of the left side of the U – hearing, seeing, and sensing without these filters so that we can allow in a new reality. As the diagram shows, to do this we need to open our hearts and minds, and allow our intuitive self to connect to the Source of All. Once we make that connection, we move to the right side of the U and we start receiving guidance in any situation that goes beyond the small hard-drive in our heads and connecting to a much more powerful information source which can guide us to a new way of being and thinking that connects us to others. These new connections allows us to co-create new solutions that create win-win outcomes that go beyond the win-lose, win-at-all-costs, self-focused mindset of much of modern society.
As a global community, we must ask ourselves whether we are willing to accept that we are not separate from one another, but are ecologically, socially, and spiritually highly interdependent and connected. And if we agree that we are, are willing to lend a hand to one another?
Leading from the Emerging Future is an important and timely book. Many of our societal, economic, and environmental systems are under grave threat. Addressing these issues means we cannot keep looking at them through the same lens or consciousness that sees separation between things versus the connections.
Today’s real economy is a set of highly interdependent eco-systems, but the consciousness of the players within them is fragmented into a set of ego-systems. Instead of encompassing the whole, the awareness of the players in the larger system is bounded by its smaller subparts. The gap between eco-system reality and ego-system consciousness may well be the most important leadership challenge today – in business, in government, and in civil society.
Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer have given us a wonderful model of how to do that at a personal, organizational, and societal level and move from ego-system to eco-system thinking. You’ll find the book a wonderful and meaningful read and hopefully a great source of tools to put into practice into your own personal and organizational life.
You can also take Otto Scharmer’s MIT class for free on line at edX: Transforming Business, Society, and Self with U.Lab
-Jay Kshatri
www.ThinkSmarterWorld.com
Here are some additional resources to aid in the elevation of your personal consciousness:
- Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, by Marc Gafni
- Mindfulness, Pathway to Divine Consciousness
- The (re)-Discovery of the Human Energy Field
- The Core Principles of the New Spiritualist
- 20/20 Consciousness
- Seeing the Oneness of our Reality
- Mindfulness – Experiencing Reality in HD
- How Yogic Breathing Transforms the Mind and Body
- What the Mind Needs to Tune into Cosmic Intelligence
- Co-Creating with Source Energy – The New Paradigm of Success
- Eckhart Tolle – Living with Meaning, Purpose, and Wisdom in the Digital Age (video)
