Simple resource to introduce Theory U

[Amanda Fenton]

From the email list in January 2013...

I want to introduce Theory U to the women in a leadership circle that I'm co-hosting. We don't have a lot of time to go into the complexity of it, but I think it's still worth bringing in as part of our learning on facilitating change. Does anyone know of a fairly simple resource/article/handout that presents it in an accessible way?

These are women in rural communities, and most of them are emerging leaders of local community change rather than corporate change, so something that fits their language would be best.

Heather Plett

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It's a pretty simple model to introduce.  I just draw it out for people, explain the three stages of sensing, presencing and realizing and then talk about Open Min, Open Herat and Open Will.

From there, you can lead then through Otto Sharmer's journalling questions if they want a small taste of the model in an experiential way.  But that should be where the simplicity ends.  Lots of resources and slide decks at www.presencing.net

It's a deep dive social technology.  I think folks need to remember that when you are using it, that it really represents something to commit to for a ChangeLab or a longer term process.  Theory U explicitly addresses the concern that we often act on major shifts by simply moving from the sensing phase across to the realizing phase, that we take a simple view of problems.  Theory U offers a road map to go pretty deep into a committed change initiative that is rooted in the self.  So I do explain the model to people with simple diagrams, but I don't use it without a lot of commitment.

Chris Corrigan

[Amanda Fenton]

Update to the conversation on the email list...

First of all, I extend gratitude to all of those who shared ideas and resources when I invited them last week. What you sent was helpful for crystallizing my ideas.

Though we didn't have much time for a deep dive, we had a very meaningful change lab at yesterday's session and some beautiful things emerged. I've written a blog post about the experience and shared some of my ideas/tools for a session like this. You can find it here:http://heatherplett.com/2013/02/hosting-the-future-that-wants-to-em...

When I introduced Theory U to a similar circle of women in Ontario last year, one of the women pointed out that my diagram looked like a woman's breast. She said it with laughter, but when we started to unpack that, we realized that there was resonant truth to what she witnessed. This process definitely has a feminine aspect to it (as is discussed in this article by Arawana Hayashi:http://www.oxfordleadership.com/journal/vol1_issue2/hayashi.pdf) and it relates well to an infant suckling at the source of his/her life. It’s about going back to Source, it’s about seeking nurturing and rebirth, and it’s about the kind of rest and retreat that a mother must seek every few hours when an infant needs to suckle. It’s about being innocent, vulnerable, uneducated, without judgement, and open to a new future, just like that tiny baby. Since that first observation, I’ve brought up the idea every time I introduce it, and it always opens up interesting dialogue.

I bring this into this circle, because I'm curious if this has come up in other conversations and whether it resonates with your experience.

May you all be blessed this week.

Heather Plett

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Hi Heather, 

I love this!  So excited to read it. 

I posted this and the following thread at the Presencing Institute 4 years ago now (good lord!) http://community.presencing.com/forum/topics/learnings-from-physica...   At the time I was both thrilled to see birth and the feminine included and also saw the possibility of so much more depth beyond the very surface use of the metaphor.  I had not seen the 'breast' before but definitely the womb in the U….

A few years later, if not wiser, and having had a second child myself, I have recently started as well a book (very 'started') mapping the physiologic birth process to the systemic birth process as I believe there is so much untapped wisdom waiting for us here.  I would love to be in touch with anyone else interested to explore this further. 

Very best and thank you again for posting!

Cari

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Thanks Heather…

I really appreciate it when people as the list for advice and then share the story afterwards of what they did and how it went.  It is such good learning, and such a lovely way to appreciate the gifts that have been given.

Thanks for the design Heather…I'll use it!

Chris

(PS By the way, speaking of anatomy, Christina Baldwin was teaching on a team with us one year and she remarked that she had seen the chaos/order diagram drawn with the chaordic path as an upright and erect arrow emerging from two round balls.  She said it was "very male"

So, to be cheeky, when I taught that the next day, I drew the circles of chaos and order at the top of the page and made the chaordic path an big arrow moving down to a point at the bottom of the page.  I called them "the ovaries of chaos and order and the uterus of chaordic leadership."  I'll never forget the look on Christina's face as she chuckled through my whole teaching!)

(PPS  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!)

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Hi Cari and Heather

As a new mother of almost two months I have been thinking a lot about this - not just relative to Theory U but to our approach to midwifing change. My experience has been filled with powerful metaphors. 

For example, I was 14 weeks pregnant before I knew it! At 47 getting pregnant, especially after 7 years of trying, was no longer in our realm of perceived possibility. Even while experiencing some signs of pregnancy, I didn't recognize them as such as I believed they were associated with other things. Two different doctors didn't suspect it either!

I see this as such a powerful metaphor for our work - often I think groups fail to see the possibilities that are already present! Our ability to sense into existing reality is often derailed by limiting beliefs.

My experience has blessed me with not only a beautiful baby boy, but many additional insights into how life, especially the birthing process, can inform our work. I've also gained new insights about midwifing a paradigm shift by attempting to have a natural birth in a highly medicalized world. 

Cari I'd love to explore with you and others interested in this topic.

Christina

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Fascinating to hear your interpretations of your experience. I work as a nurse in community with families and newborns including a postnatal group.  I have attended the recent AoH in Montreal and stepped out of that and implemented a world cafe with the postnatal group. Our harvest included - two weekly meetings rather than one, an interest to explore spirituality, sharing specialties including eating well, yoga and  developing an on-line community. I am still reflecting on how to keep the functioning in line with the rules of the gvt run centre yet am loving the openness it has given to the sharing.

The story we tell around the birth is often self-centred until babe arrives. I liken the inclusion of babe in the process - just as AoH values the role of all in the process. How do we grow mom's relationship with her fetus and create disconnect with the things for sale?  I dream of a prenatal AoH (The Art of Parenting Together) group to explore community potential before the babe arrives. Has this ever been done?

In the morning with our first thought, we are birthing our day.  When we speak, ask questions, make comments we are birthing our future (and our child's). I loved learning about the power of the right question and would love to explore this in greater depth. Like the question we can ask a delivery room doctor who proposes an intervention. We can always ask: "And if we don't do that, what can we expect"?

Can we gather future parents with a theme of growing their openness and willingness to participate as a whole on the journey of parenting?

Janet Clancy

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Thank you Heather. I love the article by Arawana Hayashi. The listening,
and presencing, the spaciousness which allows wisdom to arise, are all
part of Council process and what i learned "Bearing Witness" and Arawana
states it beautifully and simply.

There is truly nothing new under the sun. These are, I believe, among our
most ancient wisdom ways of meeting a situation and responding to it...and
these qualities survived humanity well for a long time. Surely humanity's
best insights and inspirations for ceremony, conflict resolution,
grieving, ritual etc. emerged from processes such as these, whether they
"happened" in an individual in Council with Nature or in Council with
community.

Anyway, lovely to see it written in this way..

Thank you again,
Rose

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This phenomenon keeps happening to me too. In my thesis process about systemic change towards sustainabilty, our model mixed a gestalt 'n' curve of energy and interest in a project with the theory U curve of discovery, we ended up with something that we called a Canoe shape, but later someone looked at it the other way noticed how much it looks like a vigina. 

And this weekend I was graphic recording with a group who is not exposed to the Art of Hosting or Theory U lingo, and the same thing happened. We were mapping out the flow lines of the commons area of an 'new ruralism' community/farm development.  Three people where thinking and drawing lines and connections and then we all burst out laughing when the third person, without realizing it at all, coloured in the area between two circles in red, in the location that 'completed' the image of a woman's waist and thighs.  The most 'capitalist' of the group had already remarked, only half sarcastically, we were using the Purple colour to signify rebirth.  It all connects as significant coincidences to me.

The women running the Feminine Power online courses, also use nine months as the time a person takes to really integrate transformative change into their life and use the birth metaphore.  They often say things like: we notice women feeling ten months pregnant with the possibilites we are yearning to birth into the world, that life is calling us to step into, our creative, related leadership. 

I also felt energetically, that I will be a sacred mother, birthing something new at my place of work ...Tucker House.   maisontuckerhouse.ca.

I hope to become a mother in the near future as well.

Much love,
Kara

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I wonder why we are so surprised that life asserts itself again and again, no matter what we are doing.

Smiling at the nature of what we notice,

Mary Alice