Yet another new trend in organizational management, this time from the USA. It's a new trend, yet it's based on principles that have been known for thousands of years, and on one question: How can intuition and rationality be reconciled?
How can we make forward-looking decisions by focusing on meditation rather than action?
It's astonishing that it has taken so long for intuition to be recognized as a management tool, when until recently rationality told us to be wary of it. Yet that's exactly what Otto Scharmer's Theory U d does.
This book is about the emergence of the future, about visions emerging from organizational leaders listening to their inner voice, about the liberation of creativity simply by being present to oneself.
In a nutshell, what are the main points of the theory?
Two decision-making models coexist:
One, which is usually taught in our universities as the keys to success, the vade mecum of good eating, management based on observation and modeling of past experience, which can be summed up as follows: I act, I observe, I reflect, I plan, I act.
The other, which is based on listening to the future as it emerges; to put it more simply, I listen, I act. And listening anticipates action, which represents a real managerial revolution!
All this is based on a definition of management as the management of change.
And for Otto Scharmer, there are four levels of response to change: The first is to respond to a new situation with rapid, immediate action. The second consists of reformulating rules, reanalyzing processes and structures. The third level becomes more sophisticated and intangible: values and beliefs are questioned or reassessed in the light of changes in the organization and its environment. But there's a fourth level, which consists in finding the sources of primordial energy and “re-connecting” to them before the breath dies out, in order to regain or keep what made the organization successful in the past.
Because the development of any structure, or the product of a structure, like all living things, follows a Gaussian curve, i.e. is born, believes, lives and dies, unless the new idea is found in time to bounce back. This idea, this source of inspiration, is not in the head of a leader, however brilliant he may be, but... in the air of the times, and therefore of a collective nature, like an egregore of which we need to be aware.
And responding to change at this level means rediscovering those sources of energy, motivation and inspiration that have made the organization so successful.
How? By going inside ourselves, by listening to our inner voice, which we call intuition or inspiration, what Otto Scharmer calls the “black hole of leadership”, because just like in the galaxy, we don't really know how it happens because we can't observe it, and yet it represents a considerable source of energy, because we reach the very source of creative information. And this information is registered within us.
And it is in this sense that this theory fits in with the quantum approaches to science as described by Erwin Laszlo, philosopher of science, whose observations on the latest scientific discoveries re-enchant a universe disenchanted by science: “at the roots of reality lies not only matter and energy, but also a more subtle and equally fundamental factor that could be described as active and powerful information, namely in-formation”.
The letter U symbolizes this new management system.
First, the first limb of the U, descending, asks us to observe again and again; the base of the U advises us to go within ourselves, then we move up along the third limb, acting quickly.
Otto Scharmer gives the details of this process, which would take too long to go into here. But he provides numerous testimonials on the success of this approach in various public and private organizations.
An approach based on listening to others and to oneself, on opening up the intelligence, heart and desire, and on expressing what we feel without any complexes. This book reflects a profound societal shift from management based on “masculine” values to more “feminine” values, from animus to anima, from action to intuition.
The contribution of this theory is to give us access to other fields of consciousness in a management sector where, until now, intuitions had to be justified by market research, that of power, with all its known abuses. This theory has been developed on the basis of success stories, and so it works. It calls into question hierarchical systems in favor of collaborative ones; but this of course presupposes acceptance and freedom, for oneself and for others.
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