The Presencing Institute (PI) is an awareness-based action-research community that creates social technologies, builds

capacities, and generates holding spaces for profound societal renewal. This community tries to contribute to shifting the
economy from ego to eco, and toward serving the well-being of all.
A ten-year research project we started in 1996, conducted by Otto and his colleagues, including Joseph Jaworski and Peter
Senge, at MIT, resulted in a consciousness-based framework of leadership and change. That framework, referred to as
Presencing or Theory U, says that the quality of the results that a system creates is a function of the awareness from which
the people in that system operate. The findings have been published in the books Theory U (by Otto Scharmer)
and Presence (co-authored by Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers).
The second phase focused on many applications that resulted in a global ecology of laboratories, projects, programs, and
initiatives that link partners in business, government, and civil society. The delivery of these projects and programs occurred
directly through PI or its partner institutions, including MIT, Synergos, theSustainable Food Lab, United in Diversity (UID),
the GIZ Global Leadership Academy, Tsinghua University, FGVand FDC (Brazil), SoL (the Society for Organizational
Leaderning), and others. Throughout this period, the online community of PI grew to over ten thousand members.
The third phase starts now, with the publication of Leading From the Emerging Future (co-authored by Otto Scharmer and
Katrin Kaufer), which introduces the 4.0 framework and the concept of the U.school as a global platform for helping a new
generation of 4.0 eco-system entrepreneurs to act more creatively and intentionally and to be more connected.
INTRODUCTION

Theory U proposes that the quality of the results that we create in any kind of social system is a function of the quality of
awareness, attention, or consciousness that the participants in the system operate from.
Since it emerged around 2006, Theory U has come to be understood in three primary ways: first as a framework; second, as
a method for leading profound change; and third, as a way of being - connecting to the more authentic of higher aspects of
our self.
SHIFTING THE INNER PLACE FROM WHICH WE OPERATE

During an interview, Bill OBrien, the late CEO of Hanover Insurance, summarized his most important insights from leading
transformational change in his own company. OBrien said: The success of an intervention depends on the interior
condition of the intervener. We might say it this way: the success of our actions as change-makers does not depend
on What we do or How we do it, but on the Inner Place from which we operate (see Figure 1).
When Otto first heard Bill OBrien say that he thought, What do I really know about this inner place? I know nothing! Do we
have one or several or an infinite number of these places? He did not know because that place is in the blind spot of our
everyday experience. We can observe what we do and how we do it. But the quality of the source (or inner place) from
which we operate in the Now tends to be outside the range of our normal observation, attention, and awareness.
That puzzling insight into the deeper source level of social reality creation set us on an intriguing path of inquiring and
integrating recent findings in leadership, management, economics, neuroscience, contemplative practice and complexity
research. The essence of that view is that we cannot transform the behavior of systems unless we transform the quality of
awareness and attention that people apply to their actions within these systems, both individually and collectively.

Fig. 1: The Blind Spot of Leadership

LEADING FROM THE EMERGING FUTURE

In exploring this territory more deeply, we realized that most of the existing learning methodologies relied onlearning from
the past, while most of the real leadership challenges in organizations seemed to require something quite different: letting go
of the past in order to connect with and learn from emerging future possibilities.
We realized that this second type of learninglearning from the emerging futurenot only had no methodology, but also
had no real name. And yet innovators, entrepreneurs, and highly creative people all express an intimate relationship with this
deeper source of knowing. Otto started referring to it as Theory U and presencing. Presencing is a blended word
combining sensing (feeling the future possibility) and presence (the state of being in the present moment): presencing
means sensing and actualizing ones highest future possibilityacting from the presence of what is wanting to emerge.
The proposition of Theory U, that the quality of results in any kind of socio-economic system is a function of the awareness
that people in the system are operating from, leads to a differentiation between four levels of awareness. These four levels
of awareness affect where actions originate relative to the boundaries of the system. Consider the example of listening.
We call the first level of listening downloading. Downloading describes habitual behavior and thought and results in same
old, same old behaviors and outcomes: This type of listening originates from the center of our habits, from what we already
know from past experience.

In contrast, level 4 listening, called presencing, represents a state of the social field in which the circle of attention widens
and a new reality enters the horizon and comes into being. In this state, listening originates outside the world of our
preconceived notions. We feel as if we are connected to and operating from a widening surrounding sphere. As the
presence of this heightened state of attention deepens, time seems to slow down, space seems to open up, and the
experience of the self morphs from a single point (ego) to a heightened presence and stronger connection to the
surrounding sphere (eco).
What does it take for individuals, teams, institutions, and larger systems to perform the same sort of shift from downloading
to presencing?
We answer this question in much more detail in two books, Theory U and Leading From the Emerging Future. But for
now, let us share a few key principles that reflect what we have learned over the past few years and that may resonate with
some of your own experiences.