Learning, Innovation and New Thinking in Organizations and Society
By Steen Hildebrandt
Professor at The Institute of Organization and Management, Aarhus School of Business, Denmark
This is a totally unique book. You could say that about all books, but there is a definite difference. This one is in a class of its own. Four of the world's leading management researchers and theorists have met each other regularly over a couple of years and talked about innovation, learning, leadership, and much more. They've thought, listened, asked, written, e-mailed and asked and interviewed others. Together they've produced a report, a journal, a pile of interview transcripts and a book. It's not an easy book. You can't write an easy book about change management, innovation and parts and wholes if you have a deep-seated respect for the fact that they are living systems.
The book is called Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future. Everything in it is based on a holistic worldview with a mutual relationship between the parts and the whole. Living organisms like a tree or a human being are not just a collection of parts, but living organisms in a state of constant existence and manifestation. Constant renewal and recreation. The part is a manifestation of the whole rather than a detached element, or as the physicist Henri Bortoft puts it: Everything is in everything. ”The part is a place for the presencing of the whole”, as the four authors say – the basic message of the book.
It is this fundamental acknowledgement of connections and wholeness that we lose if we start looking at wholes as if they were machines, machines where parts can be replaced as needed. A lot of management theory and tools have this ‘spare part' mentality, looking at the separate parts of an organization without taking account of the whole the part is an element of and that's an element of the part.
This mechanical view of the world drives much of what we do with our businesses, institutions, bodies, society, schools, universities, etc. But these are living organisms, constantly recreating themselves through the people that are part of them. As long as these people are governed by industrial, mechanical words and images like control, regulation, predictability and a ‘the faster the better' mentality we'll keep on recreating institutions as we know them, despite the growing disharmony between them and the wider world they are part of. How do we stop it? How do we get out of it? That's one of the questions of the book. In other words, as long as we keep downloading and repeating the mental models of the past nothing new will happen. How do we stop the reiteration and repetition?
And what would the world look like if we learned – individually and collectively – to access our deepest capacities to sense and create the future? How do fundamental changes take place? Where do they come from and how are they created?
Over several years the authors of Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future have interviewed 150 researchers, managers, artists, etc. What they've asked is: What are you interested in? What issues are essential to your work? How do you get new ideas? What role does intuition play in your reality? How do you convert intuition into practice? And at a deeper level: Where do new things come from? What are the sources? How alert are you, and from what level of consciousness do your realizations and ideas come? Many of the 150 interviews are on-line at www.dialogonleadership.org.
The authors of the book are Betty Sue Flowers, former professor at the University of Texas in Austin, where she now heads the President Johnson Library and Museum. She's a highly respected author, advisor, poet, editor, and much more. Peter Senge became world-famous with his book The Fifth Discipline on learning organizations. Joseph Jaworski was the initiator of the Global Leadership Initiative, and has written the autobiographical book Synchronicity on synchronicity, leadership and learning. Finally there's Claus Otto Scharmer, who recently visited Denmark to hold a series of lectures on his research. Scharmer is a professor at MIT in Boston, and has written a wide range of academic articles and books on change, management and learning.
Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of Future is a book that points ahead in terms of learning, perceptions of change, and management. The authors seek a new awareness that can then lead to new awareness. Their work is sustained by a holistic view of people and nature, and the optimistic belief that there is vast potential and possibilities if only we open our eyes and see and grab them.