Likewise, in a time when the global system is spiraling toward unprecedented change, those of us who want to make a difference must jump into a rabbit’s hole in order to understand and change our reality. The other option is to remain standing at the edge, looking down, and endlessly treating the symptoms of much deeper problems, both out of sight and out of control.

Changing the Paradigm

The late Donella Meadows, a renowned systems thinker, converted the metaphor of the hole into systems language in her essay, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in the System” (Sustainability Institute paper, 1999). She described 12 leverage points for effecting change, found deeper and deeper in a system, each with greater power than the last. At the top of this rabbit’s hole, we use linear thinking to tinker with parameters, numbers, and constants, such as taxes and subsidies, as mechanisms of social change. But as we descend deeper into the hole, we reach other, harder-to-see but more powerful leverage points, such as managing feedback processes, information flows, rules, and goals. At the bottom of the hole, in the darkness, lurks the ultimate payoff — a system’s paradigms. Meadows wrote, “People who manage to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.”

In a time when the global system is spiraling toward unprecedented change, those of us who want to make a difference must jump into a rabbit’s hole in order to understand and change our reality.

In her writing over the years, Meadows regularly sought to undermine many conventional paradigms, including:

• One cause produces one effect.
• Improvements come through better technology, not better humanity.
• Economics is the measure of feasibility.
• Possession of things is the source of happiness.
• The rational powers of human beings are superior to their intuitive or moral powers.
• We know what we are doing.
• Growth at any cost is good.

But these paradigms aren’t separate and unique, littering the bottom of the hole like autumn leaves lying on the ground. They fit together into a larger, cohesive structure. Some call this structure “mythology” or “cosmology.” Others call it “worldview.” Although we popularly equate the word “worldview” with “mindset,” scholars define it as a story that answers the big questions of existence: Who are we? What is our significance? What are the laws of the universe? How was the universe created?

At the root of every system, every set of paradigms, beats a story so deep that most people are born into it and then die without ever knowing that a different way of viewing the world might exist. Our worldview operates like a cosmic screenplay that we enact each moment of our lives, guiding our actions and, ultimately, creating our reality. When we don’t realize it exists, our worldview manipulates us like a disembodied puppeteer, guiding our actions and thoughts.

Daniel Quinn traced the origins of civilization’s current worldview in his famed book, Ishmael. He writes that, 10,000 years ago, one culture among thousands that populated the earth took up intensive agriculture. As a result of food surpluses, its population exploded, requiring more land to accommodate its new numbers. With more land, its population grew again and annexed still more land. Quinn calls these people “Takers.” Their culture spread across the planet, assimilating other cultures, taking land, and converting wild lands to agricultural fields.

To justify this unprecedented activity, the Takers separated humanity, nature, and spirituality. In the new paradigm, nature was merely a resource, not a source of sacredness. Productivity became the measure of progress. The Takers believed there was just one right way to live and crushed all those who lived differently. These deep beliefs survived the rise and fall of many civilizations. Now every country in the world and 99.9 percent of the human population participates in this system. The few remaining indigenous cultures (, “Leavers,” according to Quinn) exist on the margins of civilization, often exiled in poverty and isolation.

Critics often rebut the assertion that there is just one dominant worldview, citing the many distinct cultures and worldviews that coexist today — East and West, for example. But, in the grand scheme of Takers and Leavers, the difference between most cultures that participate in the global economy is minor, a question of degree rather than of basic view of the cosmos. To see a truly different paradigm requires studying an indigenous culture, looking back 10,000 years to the birth of civilization, or looking forward to the new spiritual stories that are trying to supplant the dominant mindset.

Most social and environmental change programs deal only with symptoms: erosion mitigation, alternative energies, poverty reduction, and pollution control. They never reach the level of changing the underlying paradigm. At best, these efforts can only slow the degradation. As Quinn says, “Vision is the flowing river. Programs are sticks set in the riverbed to impede the flow.” Only a change of vision, a new story, can redirect the flow away from catastrophe and toward sustainability.

An Emotional Shift

Thus, systems thinkers must go after worldviews. Many social change advocates generate data and arguments about why we need to alter our global behavior to avoid terrible consequences. But as Thomas Kuhn wrote in his classic Structure of Scientific Revolutions (from which Meadows adopted the term “paradigm”), when scientists ultimately change from one paradigm to another, they don’t do so because they have proven the new one to be true; they do so because they experience an emotional shift or awakening. Stories can reach these deeper affective levels and, as such, are an intrinsic part of every systemic change process. Changing people’s stories re-orders their relationships with others and the world around them, and thus the system structure in which they live.

Some people have targeted our shared worldview head-on, identifying the assumptions that anchor people’s cosmic story. Physicists Albert Einstein and David Bohm did it; philosopher Ken Wilber and many in the spiritual evolution camp do it. But suddenly seeking to alter a worldview can provoke a maelstrom of resistance. Meadows took on the challenge willingly, illuminating hundreds of murky, deep-seated social beliefs. And she memorably experienced the force of resistance after she, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William Behrens published their world-shaking book, Limits to Growth, in 1972. Donella wrote, “We could not understand the intensity of the reaction our book provoked. It seemed to us far out of proportion to our simple statement that the earth is finite and cannot support exponential physical growth for very long. We wouldn’t have guessed that that idea could generate so much surprise, emotion, complication, and denial.”

As most systems thinkers know, treating symptoms at the mouth of the rabbit’s hole usually generates policy resistance because it leads to unintended and unforeseen consequences. Working at the bottom, too, provokes a different kind of visceral reaction, one that Meadows herself learned could actually be seen as a positive sign. No one can change their view of the universe without significant experiential shaking. Resistance may indicate the labored thinking of changing views.

We don’t yet understand what it takes to change the worldview of the earth’s population. Very likely, when enough individuals set off on their own change journeys, their numbers will reach a certain threshold or tipping point, allowing the rest of us to make the transition more quickly. Wilber says this positive feedback loop creates a structure — a field — that drives exponential change. He calls it a “Kosmic habit”:, “And the more people [that] have that [spiritual] experience, the more it becomes a Kosmic habit available to other human beings.”

I took up non-fiction writing at Dartmouth College, where I studied environmental journalism under Professor Meadows, and have been in the field for the past 15 years. Now I write fiction as well, so I can illustrate system dynamics in action. By doing so, I hope to help people see their worldview from the outside and envision a different future through the less-threatening medium of stories.

In the process, I’ve come to believe that, as systems thinkers, we must grit our teeth and jump down the rabbit’s hole, no matter the risk. The farther we fall, the more impact we are likely to have. As Meadows wrote, “It is in the space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.”

Jon Kohl is a writer and consultant working to combine systems thinking, spiritual evolution, and global change in his projects, prose, and fiction. For more information about his work or to contact him, visit www.jonkohl.com.

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In our world today, we increasingly face problems of a new kind of complexity, such as HIV epidemics or climate change, in which it is virtually impossible to clearly define cause and effect, the relevant stakeholders, or even the problem itself. Our traditional institutions and problem-solving patterns often fail in providing the right answers or even asking the right questions. In this context, we do not need “more of the same” but rather a shift in paradigm. Thus, Scharmer proposes a new model for understanding and facilitating profound change and deep learning. Instead of analyzing and referring to patterns of the past—which are often inadequate or might even be part of the problem itself—his approach centers on learning from and bringing into life the best of all future possibilities. Scharmer calls this process presencing.

In presencing, the leverage point for change is less on what we do or how we do something and more on how we approach or attend to a situation before we act: our interior condition, the so-called inner place or source from which we operate. This interior condition structures our attention and shapes the quality and result of any action. Scharmer points out that this perspective is often missing in our daily perception of the world, in management and leadership literature, and even in science in general, which is why he calls it the “blind spot of our time.” By becoming aware of our blind spot, we at the same time discover an untapped resource and potential source of power that we can use to find innovative solutions to current problems and live up to our best potential— whether personally or professionally, organizationally, or even globally.

The Journey Along the U

Theory U captures and structures the different movements of this deep change and learning process, which takes the shape of a “U.” You start the journey down the U by observing the world or a specific challenge with “fresh eyes” and an open heart and mind. You connect to the world outside of your own personal or organizational system and transcend your habitual and often narrow patterns of perception by suspending your inner voice of judgment and cynicism. Next— at the bottom of the U—you retreat from the outside world, find silence, and connect to what is emerging from within yourself, using your inner source of inspiration and will.

Scharmer believes that every person is made up of two selves: our current or old self that is often well known and shaped by past experience, and our future Self, implying our highest and best future possibility. At the bottom of the U, these two selves start to resonate with each other—we experience this feeling as a deep inner knowing of what we truly want to be and create in our lives. This source of inspiration and intention is a powerful tool and catalyst for action; it can take individuals as well as teams and organizations from good to top performance.

Finally, as you go up the other side of the U, you bring the future into the world not by mere reflection and planning but rather by practice and doing. You develop prototypes of the future you want to create, and test and adapt them again and again before you finally implement them.

Three Ways of Reading the U

Theory U is a treasury full of analytic vigor and empowering inspiration. It can be read and applied for practice in a threefold way. First, it offers a multi-step template for understanding how the process works. Second, it offers a range of principles and practices for individuals, teams, and organizations for training our senses and bringing the process alive. Finally, and on a personal level, it offers inspiration for sensing what life is calling you to do and discovering that there might be an even higher and greater future possibility that you could not have imagined before.

This book is sure to make an important contribution to not only the current discourse on change management and leadership theory but also to a growing community of practice committed to collectively creating profound change and innovation around the world.

Christine Wank works as a consultant and senior project manager responsible for organizational development for InWEnt Capacity Building International, Germany, an international human resource development and training organization. She has designed and conducted trainings applying the Theory U methodology and uses the approach for process consulting and facilitation of large-group change processes. In her work, Christine focuses on cultural and organizational change and innovation, leadership development, and systemic approaches to consulting and coaching.

The post Leading and Learning from the Future appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

• The First Horizon: Our past consciousness projects the forecast of the immediate future. Past becomes the stimulus for the future. It resides in the realm of mechanistic worldview and logical analysis—the logos—left-brain dominance. It is guided by problem-solving intervention.
• The Second Horizon: Insight or intuition, drawn from our mythic past—the collective unconscious—projects the foresight of a distant horizon. It resides in the holistic paradigm—the right-brain dominance and the mythos. It is facilitated by the interplay of polarities and paradoxes.
• The Third Horizon: Foreknowledge of the distant future can be experienced by being in the present—contraction of time and “self” (in humility), and expansion of “self” (in compassion). This resides in the co-evolutionary paradigm and mystical realm—the mystikos. It can be facilitated through an authentic dialogue.

This article will describe the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of the three strategies for developing the three horizons. Each of the interventions proposed requires an appropriate catalytic environment for its fruition. Some of them include metaphors, art, music, humor, story-telling, and dialogue.

FORECASTING THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE

Projections of the past into the future often make us repeat our past mistakes or limit us to past successes. As Einstein pointed out, a problem cannot be solved by the same consciousness that created it in the first place.

First Horizon

Greek philosophers of the seventh century B. C. made sense of their external world through reasoning and logical analysis—the logos. This tradition marks the genesis of Western scientific tradition embracing observation, rationalism, and naturalism. It seems that the influence of Greek philosophy and classical science (Newtonian physics) has given us an enduring legacy of mechanistic thinking. With our problem-solving worldview shaped by our mechanistic thinking of cause-and-effect, we fix problems in anticipation of a quick desired future. But this approach has many shortcomings:

Shackled to the Past. . We reflect on the past and project it into the future to give us a short-range forecast as shown in “Forecasting the Immediate Future.” Projections of the past into the future often make us repeat our past mistakes or limit us to past successes. At best, it can provide us with a limited forecast of the immediate future. For example, today’s weather may give us some indication of what one may expect over the next few days, but not in the distant future.

World of Chaos. Isaac Newton’s laws of motion have enabled us to predict fairly accurately the location and the movement of the celestial bodies. But their application to complex situations in our turbulent environment such as those encountered in our social, political, and economic domains is inapt. The world of chaos carries the potential for unexpected amplification of weak signals, popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. For example, a single terrorist proclamation can precipitate a cascade of events that impact the entire economy.

Pitfalls in “Fixes That Fail” Archetype. In analyzing the dynamics of systems, we frequently use the “Fixes That Fail” archetype as a lens to explore the unintended consequences of our problem-solving actions. But if we do while entrenched in the mechanistic paradigm, such analysis can be accompanied by pitfalls:

• Stuck in a reactive mode, we generally rush in to fix the problem without adequately investigating the root cause.
• Our choice of unintended consequences can itself be driven by our problem-solving mindset. We proactively look for potential problems that will need to be solved, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• When we explore the unintended consequences, we rarely look for possibilities of good outcome or opportunities; nor do we distinguish between the consequences that we will need to adapt to and those we could influence.
• Every unintended consequence has its own expectancy of occurrence. Some are expected to occur in the immediate future and some later. Thus the ability to foresee the distant future becomes imperative if we want to have a broad systemic view of the whole.
• In certain cases, the so-called unintended consequences may in fact be undeclared “intended consequences,” in the hope of fulfilling some political agenda.
• When we notice each detrimental consequence, we treat it as a problem and proceed to fix it, which generates its own set of unintended consequences, each of which becomes a problem. Thus we launch an endless cycle of problems, which all proliferate from one single problem.To illustrate this proliferation, let’s examine the problem of starvation in a given country. Our immediate reaction would rightly be to send food donations. But such action can be followed by myriad unintended consequences. They include collapse of local agriculture, increase in population, corruption, dependency, and so on. Each of these unintended consequences represents a problem, which, if solved in the reactive mode, would precipitate its own set of unintended consequences. Thus a single problem can generate chaos and disorder. Each unintended consequence exacerbates the problem, creating a paradox. This is illustrated in “Proliferation of Problems and Paradoxes in a Quick Fix.”
• As every unintended consequence exacerbates the original problem, it represents a paradox. Since each one of the unintended consequences becomes a problem, with its potential to present a paradox when solved, a whole array of paradoxes can precipitate from a single problem. Can such an assortment of paradoxes liberate us from the bondage of the mechanistic paradigm and serve as an intuitive framework for exploring future scenarios? To sound a note of caution, awareness of the paradoxes by itself cannot stimulate the shift, unless catalyzed by an enabling environment.
• In the above analysis, we, sadly, do not see the problem as universal suffering of humankind but suffering of the “other,” thereby stripping us of a sense of compassion. Our actions then tend to be driven by self-interest, under the cloak of some acceptable ideology such as charity, goodwill, freedom, democracy, and so on. Systems thinking, by its very designation, implies thinking conditioned thoughts and is unmindful of the complexity of the human psyche, the same way the proverbial fish is unaware of its ambient water. Otto Scharmer lucidly describes this unawareness as a blind spot in social sciences.

Second Horizon

Our ancestors constructed legendary narratives of supernatural origins gods, goddesses, demons, and so on to make sense of changes in their external environment. They internalized the myths by coacting with the gods and demons in the cosmic theater. Their narratives and accompanying rituals permeated into the very core of their being—their psyche. The Greeks call it the age of mythos. It existed in almost every ancient culture and civilization.

PROLIFERATION OF PROBLEMS AND PARADOXES IN A QUICK FIX

Consider a starving nation that receives food donations. In the short term, the intervention relieves the starvation. However, unintended consequences exacerbate the “problem.” Conventional Metaphor: Food relieves starvation. Paradox: The more we feed, the greater the starvation.

• Carl Jung concluded that mythology was a universal phenomenon of the collective unconscious—an archetypal field of the human psyche.
• Albert Einstein contended:, “The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”
• Can we draw intuition from our collective unconscious to foresee the future? We can delineate logos, mythos, and mystikos on a continuum of time and beyond, ranging from chronos to kairos. Each phase holds a specific quality and intensity of creative work. Along this continuum, there is a phase in which ones passion for creative work evokes a sense of distortion of time.
• When we want to bring about a quantum shift in our consciousness to meet a new challenge, we can spark creativity through intrinsic motivation that causes a psychological distortion of physical time.
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called it the flow. In this state, the creator gives total attention to what is being created with exclusion of all distractions. Time flies. Every moment of the journey becomes its destination.
• The experience of a creative flash (Ah-ha) is arguably more intuitive than analytical (right-brain activity, according to Ned Herrmann). Therefore if we can foster a creative environment, it can stimulate the intrinsic motivation and intuition necessary for foreseeing the distant future.

The Third Horizon

There is an existential dimension of human faculty, the mystikos a state, in which one can experience higher intelligence. Through such transcendent awareness, we can gain a holistic foreknowledge. The fifth-century Roman philosopher Boethius described such awareness as totum simul, meaning the perception of the whole in the same instant. In this state, we experience the “now,” as lucidly expressed by William Black in his famous verse:

To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower; Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.

Though mystikos is not something we experience everyday, a collective ascent to a higher metaphor—combined with a fitting narrative and dialogue—may help to compress time sufficiently to invoke the glimpse of the unknown-unknown.

Can we draw intuition from

our collective unconscious to

foresee the future?

Process for Navigating the Emerging Future

Driving a car provides a simplistic and heuristic metaphor to illustrate these three aspects of the journey:

• As we drive along a meandering road, an awareness of a linkage between what we have passed to what is passing—can give us a forecast of the emerging future the first horizon. It requires a regular scan through the rearview mirror. It represents “one path, one journey.”
• Sense of the second horizon requires intuition about the direction we want to take. It represents making a choice from several plausible scenarios. Our adaptive competence would guide our choice of a viable path.
• Finally, we enter a terrain that has no path. It is a “pathless journey” of discovery. It requires us to be in the “now,” as we adapt to the terrain and influence the creation of a path to the third horizon.

There are a number of ways in which this process can be designed and implemented in an organization, bearing in mind the importance of creating an appropriate enabling environment described above. In one such design, we can divide a group into three teams. Each team could be asked to develop one horizon. The three teams can then get together to carry out a conversation such that the three findings can form a set of Russian Matriôcha dolls: the first horizon nested in the second, and both nested in the third. Thus, they would end up with a plausible map of an emerging future. Such a map would require continual monitoring to ensure co-evolution with the rapidly changing environment in which it exists.

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