Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
- ISBN13: 9780385516242
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Presence is an intimate look at the development of a new theory about change and learning. In wide-ranging conversations held over a year and a half, organizational learning pioneers Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers explored the nature of transformational change—how it arises, and the fresh possibilities it offers a world dangerously out of balance. The book introduces the idea of “presence”—a concept borrowed from the natural world that the whole i
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(out of 31 reviews)
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Review by Robert D. Steele for Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
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This is a fairly annoying book if you are at all well-read, and especially so if you read Charles Hampden-Turner’s Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development. in the 1970’s and are familiar with a sampling of Eastern “connectedness” thought as well as the range of human and global problems and solutions literature running from the Club of Rome to the econological economics of Herman Daly to the integrative science and humanities of E.O. Wilson and Margaret Wheatley to the World Bank and United Nations global studies.
The book is especially annoying because it is so self-absorbed and undisciplined in its presentation. Essentially, four smart people, each a world-class performer in their narrow domain (and familiar with the standard range of knowledge management and futures forecasting literature), but not at all well-read across either the spiritual or the ecological and game of nations literature, cooked up a plan for tape-recording their conversations and turning it into a book
The book is double-spaced throughout, and its obliviousness to the larger body of literature created in me, as I moved from chapter to chapter looking for gems, a growing sense of impatience and annoyance.
The “U” is a cute idea if you have not heard of self-awareness, collective intelligence, synergy (an over-used word, but one that existed with meaning long before this book or the “U”), or informal “think globally, act locally” that the Co-Evolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Review were pioneering long before these authors decided it would be cool to fund their reflections among themselves.
Don’t waste your time or money. Instead, buy Charles Hampden Turner’s Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development. Robert Buckman’s Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization and any of Margaret Wheatley’s books. This book is a very weak and rather poorly executed second-hand rendition of the thoughts of others, both those the authors’ have been exposed to, and the many others the authors have not bothered to read into.
There is one serious thought in this book that bears quotation. It is on page 216. “At the heart of the challenge facing HP–and lots of other businesses–is the way information moves around the world. In order to grow in line with our business, new ways of experiencing information will be needed. When Humberto says that ‘love is the only emotion that expands intelligence,’ it reminds us that legitimacy and trust are crucial for the free flow of information and for how information gets transformed into value.” Perhaps I expect too much, but the fact that the authors fail to cite the Nobel Prize awarded for the proof that trust lowers the cost of doing business, and they have no awareness of key works on legitimacy as the foundation for global stability, such as the edited work by Max Manwaring on The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century simply confirmed my sense that this book is “disconnected” from a larger body of thought.
Reading this book was like being forced to sit next to four active cell-phone users for three hours in a cramped space. Not fun at all.
Review by William Veltrop for Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
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That this book is not for everyone is quite clear from the mix of reviews.
So, why am I giving it five stars?
I can measure of the value (to me) of a non-fiction book by the amount of “damage” I’ve inflicted in terms of annotations, turned-up page corners, highlighting and underlining. By this measure Presence easily earned all five of my stars.
Where am I coming from?
I’ve been involved with large corporations for over 50 years and have focused on organizational learning, design and change for over 30 years. Though I deeply respect the miracle of large organizations, I’m also convinced that they’re at a very early stage of their evolution. As I see it, our corporations and other major institutions have only reached adolescence, at best. Some might argue that they’re at an even earlier stage of development. Considering how our systems are collectively fouling their nest they’ve got a point.
James Carse, in his wonderful book, Finite and Infinite Games, suggests:
There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
The finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play,
…and bringing as many persons as possible into the play.
Finite players play within boundaries;
infinite players play with boundaries.
In the last several decades it’s become increasingly clear that our various institutions are collectively engaged in devastatingly finite games. Our western culture tends to most reward players who master finite games, e.g., in business, sports, entertainment, communications and politics.
As I see it, the future of life on our planet is dependent on our developing the capacities needed to make the journey, as a collective, from finite to infinite games. This is new territory for us as a species. We have no maps.
Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski and Flowers have given us a unique multifaceted gift–a beginning map. The following three facets of this gift were particularly important to me:
1. I get to sit in on a dialogue involving four highly informed and deeply committed “infinite players” as they share those aspects of their journeys that seem most relevant to our larger journey as a species. I respect the unique gifts that each brings to this conversation and enjoyed the unfolding process.
2. Their “Theory of U” has legs. I’m excited about the huge implications it has for the fields of organizational learning, design, change and leadership development. It describes seven special learning capacities that leaders, and the systems they serve, will need to master if we are, to use David Korten’s language, to make the shift from the “Great Unraveling” to “The Great Turning.” The seven capacities all seem foundational to our shifting from finite to infinite games.
3. I greatly appreciate their picturing our great learning journey as necessarily involving both inner and systemic work every step of the way: “As within, so without. As without, so within.”
I very much look forward to Otto Scharmer’s forthcoming book, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges. I understand that it builds on Presencing and makes Theory U more accessible to and useful for practitioners in the field.
Review by Michael Lynn for Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
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Most books on systems thinking, leadership, and organizational change lay out ideas up front and progress logically through the presentation of those ideas, “Presence” is unique in that the four authors, accomplished academics, have chosen to invite their readers along on their journey, and that of dozens of successful scientists and business folks they have interviewed, of talking about a theory on learning and living systems they have been working out for several years. In one way you can think of this book as an opportunity to see how deep thinkers cultivate a theoretical idea over time.
What is that theory? They are trying to understand the deeper dimensions of transformational change that look not so much at the what leaders do and how they do it to initiate change, but at who we are and the inner place or source where we operate, both at the individual and collective level, to help realize our futures. They call it U Theory. Is this unique? The authors are first to admit that the wisdom throughout the ages and the great works in spiritual traditions reflect a lot of their ideas. But the authors feel they needed to put these ideas into “a language that fits the present time-that can deal with the collective as well as the individual, and that transcend traditional boundaries of tribe,nation,culture.” Overall, the authors are aware that new theory is useful only to the extent that enough people’s experiences have brought them to a point of needing different ways to see things and they can recognize they are not alone in the world. (p. 232). This may be hard to believe, but scholars also must arrive at certain points in their careers when they must realize that what may have been obvious to them as children, they lost along the way in their pursuit of knowledge. I’m delighted that four individuals have made an attempt to let down their guard a little to be more human, more vulnerable with this publication.
Is there convergence with other models you have read about? Certainly. But again, the method the authors have chosen to use to convey their journey is different. This makes the book unique. The authors use the synergy of the trust and respect they have in each other to let down their guards as well-known academics and just be ordinary people who can admit that they do not have all the answers about our purpose for being here (individually and collectively) and it is time they begin to step back and start looking at the whole of our existence. The authors did this by meeting at Otto Scharmer’s home in Cambridge (NOTE: same home where “Jurassic Park” was written) and `breathe’ their book into existence. The writing of their book is informal, collaborative writing with a lot of story telling to fill in the pages.
Is it a must read? It’s not for everyone. However, I have found it to be a timely read for myself for four reasons. First, a book on human purpose and the field of the future that is made up of interviews from great thinkers of the past and present should not be overlooked. Second, the unique style in which the book has been written is a refreshing change from reading a manual-like business text. You can imagine yourself having private engagement with four established academics of our time who are opening up their life experience with you. Third, this book would be a timely read for anyone who has read such books as Dialogue, Cultivating Communities of Practice, Enabling Knowledge Creation, The 8th Habit (there are a lot of similarities here), Activity Theory, Leading Change, The Leadership Challenge, The 5th Discipline, Leadership Challenge, In Defense of Globalization, The Art of the Long View, The Bible. Elements from all, and more, are contained in this read. Again, it is subtle, but this may be what you need to let some of the concepts of the above references register if they have not sunk in yet.
Finally, I should add that in terms of a breakdown of the book, the first three parts of this book are about the process of deepening collective learning. The Fourth part of the book places this process in a context of a more integrative science, spirituality, and practice of leadership at the individual, organizational, and global change levels.
Review by Philippe Vandenbroeck for Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
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“Presence” emerged from the fear that our world is going to hell in a handbasket. If we are not careful, its authors tell us, we are headed for a “requiem scenario” that spells doom over our planetary society. We all in affluent industrialised societies have a responsibility to stop this slide towards a final armageddon, to renew ourselves and our institutions, particularly those engaged in making money. “Presence” proposes a 7-step plan to help us doing just that. It starts with a downward movement along a U-diagram, leading us (as individuals) away from our trusted mental maps towards a higher sense of purpose. The bottom of the U-diagram is a state of “presence” (hence the book’s title) from which we can perceive our highest future possibility as a particular human being. This awareness leads us up on the other side of the U, into a co-creative field of building new partnerships and institutions.
I think this book is a brave attempt to bring spirituality to the heart of doing business. It’s true there have been quite a few others who have gone this path before. But given the resistance of our institutions to these kinds of ideas, it’s definitely worthwhile to keep on trying. Furthermore, the concept of “presence” is really powerful. Again, it’s something that many authors writing from a spiritual tradition have highlighted. But I find that Senge and Co offer a nuanced and persuasive argument about what it means – for our sense of purpose and our level of commitment to realise it – if we can develop the capability to visualise our own, full “opportunity space”.
That being said, the book shows a few manifest weaknesses. Its conversational tone sounds contrived and I have difficulties in seeing real-world people behind the four voices. Also, the argument is developed in a fairly rambling, undisciplined way – veering off too often into distracting storytelling and showering the reader with a sprawling, new agey jargon.
On the more substantive side, I have a real issue with the naiveté, particularly related to institutional matters, that is reflected by this book. First, although it criticises many aspects of the business world, structurally limiting governance issues such as the stranglehold of anonymous shareholders and their quest for the highest return are hardly mentioned.
Second, I think it is willfully naïve to assume that a personal transformation process will “effortlessly, almost automatically” lead to more “integrative solutions” at an institutional level. (This reminded me of a cartoon showing two scientists debating a long and complicated equation on either side of a blackboard, linked in the middle by an amorphous blob mentioning simply “… and here happens a miracle”.) Even when we are completely aware and fully committed, the business of building new institutions remains a very long, messy affair.
Finally, despite all the nice words of these authors about their higher purpose in life, we shouldn’t forget that behind this “presencing” sits a handsome business model. The “Global Leadership Initiative” that emerged from the story told in this book is actually about codifying, packaging and selling the U-process to mixed consortia of global corporations, NGOs and foundations. To my mind, putting a U-process in a commercial, project-driven straightjacket is tantamount to trivialising it. It makes me wonder whether a world governed by this kind of “presence” will be so different after all.
Review by Arturo J. Bencosme for Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society
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This outstanding book has been published in several editions under the same title. It is about how to pursue group endeavors capable of changing organizations, communities and the world for the better. To that end, Senge et al explain the details of the path to be taken which they named as “The U Process”. I would say that Presence’s concepts pushes the envelop in organizational learning, visionary leadership and strategic thinking. I personally see the “U Process” as a set of guidelines for a “Hero’s Journey” to be followed collectively by a group. Most fascinating and enlightening.
From conversations with my colleagues, this “U Process” appears to them as being so novel that it is perhaps way ahead of our times. Yet I would suggest that its far reaching implications are practical, useful and important. In my work in facilitating epic spirit workshops and strategic thinking, this “U Process” helps people get in sync with their overall environment. Furthermore, the U Process allows them to become more conscius of being a part of that same environment thus leading into a higher plateau for individual, organizational and collective learning. It is worthwhile to note that going through a Presencing experience at a personal level might be a prerequisite to fully grasp its power for organizational and or collective learning.
Just as is often the case for many new approaches, Presencing experiences will contribute to enlighten disbelievers. For those of us that are putting this book’s concepts to work, the adventure has already started to bring rewards.