Presencing and Self-Governance – Theory U and Sociocracy (Video)

December 13, 2022

Idit  

welcome. Welcome, everybody and good afternoon or evening, wherever you may be. 

And thank you also for joining us today in our conversation about presencing and governance. In the session today we will explore how sociocracy and theory relate to each other and how they may complement each other and support each other. 

And with me here today, we have Otto, Otto Scharmer the co founder of the presencing Institute, and they U-Lab school for transformation,also the author of theory you

we will put the full bios in the chat, so feel free to read them. There’s a lot to read, inspiring people here today with us. 

Also with us, a warm welcome to Ted, Ted Rau, who is the founder of Sociocracy For All, the co-founder of Sociocracy For All. He leads the member organization as executive director and as well as trainer and consultant.

Again, the full bio is in the chat now. 

And with us also today Pascale Mompoint- Gaillard,  if I say it right, and Pascal is a social psychologist. She combines research and practice. She’s the co-founder of Learn To Change. She’s also a SoFA member and now serves as the Chair of the Mission Circle.

 Myself I am Idit,  and I’ll be the facilitator for our call today. I also volunteered in SoFA in the Continuous Education Circle. I’m also the co-chair of the ICMTA and the founder of OneBody Healing Together. And in the background, I just want to name Thomas, who is also a SoFA member and the Operational Leader of SoFA Italia. Thomas is taking care of all our technical parts tonight. So if there’s any issues, please just write in the chat to Thomas and he will take care of it. 

Maybe just before we begin a quick overview of what we’re going to do today, so our call is about 90 minutes. We will have about 35 minutes of roundtable, Otto will also present to us the four levels of listening qualities. And then we’ll follow with some time for questions and answers. 

And in our second phase, we will move into breakout rooms for integration of the activity and the call, what we’re going to speak about, and I really do hope that you will take this invitation and stay for the duration of our call. Integration is an essential part of implementation of change in our own lives and in the world. So please do stay with us. 

So just as we begin as we go into the topic, our main question really for today,  why is it so important and we can see by how many people also registered and joined us today, how hot these topics are of these social technologies, and then our really fast and growing and complex world as a global citizen and part of our ecosystem were challenged. And we need social technology to inform our evolving system structure to support the development of our consciousness both personal and collective. Also our decisions, the ways that we take decisions and of course, our collaborations together. 

So with this in mind, I’d like to refer the first question to you, Otto. 

So you have been presenting Theory U for many years now and surely the way that you describe it has evolved over the time. How would you describe Theory U today?

Otto

Thank you for the invitation and for being part of this conversation. I mentioned yesterday when we had a little pre Convo that  the main reason why I agreed for the session is I wanted to learn right so I am very interested, I think and sympathetic with the principles of Sociocracy. but I’m mainly ignorant ,right, of the specifics, right? not really of the core principles. But really I want to learn more from you who have been pushing this forward and implementing it and learning from the experience or so that’s really what brings me into the conversation, mainly ignorance and curiosity. And in terms of your question, I would say Theory U is essentially an example of awareness based systems change,  and the way I would summarize awareness based systems change is with the three following principles. 

One, you cannot change a system unless you transform consciousness. And that’s probably how many of us have experienced, right kind of, unless we change the mindsets of people who are enacting systems, nothing really changes fundamental, really changes.

 And two of course, then it’s about how you do that. So you cannot transform consciousness unless you make a system See, Sense and Invert. itself. That’s the second learning see itself is obvious, right? That’s kind of a classical system thinking you need to look into the mirror. And often in social entities, this mirror is missing. So that’s really where we need methods and tools, but what we learned is seeing yourself is not enough because if I just know everything about what’s broken with the system, what’s broken with you, basically, that doesn’t mean that’s not healing in any kind of social situation, right? Because unless I feel the pain of those on the receiving end, say of structural violence and exclusion. I’m very unlikely to actually do anything substantial about it. So that’s the sensing right, that’s a heart dimension essentially, and then, Invert itself,  really is about consciousness. It’s kind of a shift of consciousness. It’s kind of the insight that the issues outside our mirror of the issues inside and that there is an interdependency and that should create a profound shift outside of us. And these patterns we need to first create a profound shift within ourselves. So these three make you cannot transform consciousness unless you make a system See, Sense Invert itself. And then the last one is you cannot lead systems transformation unless you sense and embody the future. So unless you sense and actualize the future would be another way of saying the same thing or a third way is unless you sense and step into the future. So if you double click on the word leadership, it literally means to step forth to move from one territory that we know very well current reality into another one. That is basically uncharted territory, particularly if we face moments of disruption. And that is only coming into being if we have the courage to step into that territory of the unknown. And that’s very much I think the first person experience of leadership today. And that’s what I’m interested in exploring and that’s what Theory U is exploring because it deals with this edge between the current and what is wanting to emerge through us.

Idit 

Thank you, Otto.  I’m just noticing as I’m hearing it again after a while, I did Theory U a few years ago and listening again how already from the listening. There’s another another part, something new that’s coming up, as I hear you speak. Thank you.

So Ted, a similar question for you really. Sociocracy has also been around for quite a while and SoFA, I think it’s been around for about five years or so

How do you see sociocracy has evolved in recent years and where is it heading?

Ted Rau  

Hello, yes. So a quick summary of Sociocracy because I assume that some people might be here who don’t know and I assume many people here do now. So I see Sociocracy really as a system to intentionally distribute power in an organization and different strategies to do that, like having small teams called circles and power to make decisions and a very defined domain and we do that so we can keep groups small and really allow for listening and deliberation within those teams. And as I said, empower them to make decisions locally. And there are clear rules about how those domains are distributed and how they can be passed on so that we have a fractal nested system. For example, any circle can power can pass power to a sub circle within other people in it and what that sub circles domain is decided by mutual consent. Consent  is one of those basic principles. To make sure that everything is aligned, that we’re not missing any crucial information. And that’s also how small groups make decisions together. They set the agreements or the policies basic agreements, to then create conditions where people can act autonomously. And really choose who serves as what, then there’s a way of having meetings and rounds, all of it serving better listening between people and also commitment to learning and improvement. Overall, in all the aspects that’s baked into Sociocracy. Sociocracy has been around since the 1980s or late 1970s. So it’s been a while longer than, about as long as I’ve been around on earth, not in Sociocracy. And it’s used now in business communities, nonprofits, grassroots groups, all over,  a strong and very experienced sector of Intentional Communities, but also Tech. And it’s now coming really strongly in some other sectors like coops and other industries and experiments in units of organizations. Sociocracy For All, was founded really to give people access to Sociocracy because it wasn’t as easily accessible, we found, and to help people learn and train and implement. As for the evolution of how it has changed, I think I mean, it has grown, that’s for sure. And we’ve been trying to support, in Sociocracy For All,  just making sure it’s easier to implement. It’s easier to find each other, for example, to learn with each other, from each other, from experiences already made. And another piece and that’s what leads us here today is that we’ve been working pretty hard also to see what the ecosystem is of Sociocracy and what are some other modalities, frameworks, systems concepts, whatever, that dovetail or complements sociocracy and that’s why we’ve been interested in Theory U as one of them to see, just like in sociocracy, we want several voices, right so that we hear kind of more of reality than just one person but one person has access to. And the same happens of course on a movement level Sociocracy has blind spots, and probably any other system as well. That’s a safe assumption. So how can we bring all this together and have a more coherent view of what’s happening? Yes, thank

Idit 

The words that come to me that connect both of your sharing is around wholeness. How do we bring all of ourselves into into the system into the organization with our mind, our heart, our body, our spirit, also talking about their evolutionary purpose and how we sort of sense and respond to the world as it happens rather than maybe force more controlled idea of how things should should go and should be. Yeah, this is very inspiring for me to hear. And maybe just before we go a bit deeper Otto, would you share with us some guidelines for the four levels of listening so we can use it and practice as we go deeper into our call today?

Otto

Well, I’m not sure about guidelines, but a distinction, right. So I can maybe share just the distinction on four different levels of listening and that may be then a tool kind of as you listen to this conversation, where you can track your own listening, which is actually then kind of the kind of level meta level of awareness that awareness based systems change is trying to cultivate and grounded in. So, the first level of listening is basically listening from what we already know. Right? And by definition, nothing new comes into the skull here, right? So it’s like, it’s as if you’re in a closed room and all you perceive is basically based on what you already know, kind of the experiences that you’ve got, which is the experiences of the past. And it’s basically as if you’re in a closed room and you project a movie to the screen. So. So what you see is what you project, it may be appropriate to a situation or not. But it’s you’re not actually seeing what’s going on outside. You’re projecting it, you’re limited by what you already know. And the result of that one is reconfirming what you know, and whenever you are sitting in a meeting where staff sort of what happens. What do you notice around you is reconfirming what you expect it to see then you’re downloading, it’s not good or bad. It’s just one out of four. And if that’s your only one, and you live in a moment of disruption, maybe that’s a recipe for trouble. So number two is noticing something new, right? noticing something unexpected. So the outcome of that is disconfirming data. So whenever you notice something that you didn’t expect to see, that’s number two, that’s what we call factual listening. And the gateway into that is really open your mind and leaning into what’s unexpected, what you didn’t expect to see. Basically, it means leaning into disconfirming data, right? So something that’s contradicting maybe your own opinions or expectations. That’s the skill you want to train there,  leaning into disconfirming data. So how would you know whether or not? it’s kind of do you pick up anything kind of anything that’s unexpected, then you’re on level two.  Level three is when the place from where you’re listening is happening is shifting. So and that’s what we call empathic listening, or most people call it actually, and it means that the place from where you’re listening is operating shifts from, you listen from in here and you’re out there and I noticed kind of what what you try to bring across here towards listening from the place from where another person is trying to articulate something from. So that’s kind of the empathic listening, you attuning,  it’s basically you tuning into someone else’s perspective. And whenever we follow someone else’s story, we naturally do that as human beings, right? Whenever you have a deep conversation with a friend, kind of your net, we naturally do that. And the gateway, obviously, for activating that level of listening is here. It’s the heart. So you need a, we love another person, right? In order to open the heart as an organ of perception, not as a place of emotions. That’s kind of re replaying the past but really is an organ of perception to tune into someone else’s experience. So that’s it. How would you know that you forget your own agenda, you forget your own worrying? What do you want to say next, and all of these things, and you just take a deep dive in someone else’s perspective. So that’s number three. Forgetting about yourself if you want and really beginning to see the situation through someone else’s eyes. And number four would be if something new is being born, right. So where you draw up to a deeper level of perception. That is not just about the current experience, but where you attend to. That what is, you know, wanting to happen to a sense of possibility of something maybe wanting to happen wanting to manifest but staying in need of you in order to manifest right so it’s kind of that’s where you want to, something that that’s possible but not necessary. And the moment you attend to that and you help that to begin to manifest. That’s kind of where you drop into this deeper level that we call generic listening, and that almost always funny enough is when you move into that. It has to do with going through a moment of stillness right, a stillness and of letting go including letting go of your own expectation, and often also letting go of your own what you thought needs to happen next, right and really, totally connecting to what’s wanting to emerge in the current moment.

Idit

Beautiful. Yes, thank you. So I would really invite all of us to just pay attention and just sort of play and just pay attention to those four levels of listening, just as information for oneself and later in the conversation later in the triad. We can have some space to share about that. 

And Pascal, would you share with us some examples from your practice? Pascal works both with Sociocracy and Theory U, so maybe you can share something around your practice that can highlight the way that the two technologies may support or complement each other.

Pascal 

Yes, thank you. Thank you Idit. Hello, everyone. I’m feeling very much joy here. I first need to share with that. I’m feeling joy not only because I’m with two of the people who have taught me so much in the recent years, but also because I love holding space for communities of practice to meet up and connect. So we want more of that and less of silos. I’m very happy that we are here. I want to offer a perspective on our topic that’s nourished by my practice. And by my research. I’m an avid action researcher and I love going from theory to practice and practice to theory. So to scaffold our reflection I’ll share examples until stories that I have experienced either as a member and facilitator of collectors. But also as someone who works with big institutions. And I want to share with you three stories and after that, I’ll ask a question for Otto and Ted that derive from the stories. And the first story I’m going to tell is when I think that we have all heard of it’s a group of people they meet and they see that they have common values and they dream together. They feel really aligned. And they start for this reason, a collective because they’ve seen something emerge between them and they see a future together. But then, as they start collaborating, some people make decisions that others don’t like and things go bad, the members end up hating each other and splitting the thing is over. I’ve unfortunately seen this happen three times in my life and three different collectives. Now I’m starting a new and I really want to do things differently and noticing the quality of our listening, as Otto was saying, accessing deeper sources of knowing, really depending on trust and love, empathic and generative listening, these are really a necessary ingredients for people to engage in meaningful collective action. But it doesn’t guarantee that equivalence and establishing a democratic ethos will be achieved in the group. So the people who are most used to having power for example, will tend to exercise their power more than those who are perhaps less fluent in using power. And this tells me actually that when a group bypasses the importance of power and power with then it’s the power over in the systemic oppressions that passes invites itself to the party. So in order to avoid reproducing patriarchal, colonial and other power over structures and systemic oppression, we need both lovem trust, connection, for access to deeper sources of knowing and power regulation, which is a true achieved through governance. And I think this is an essential political dimension that needs to be added to the relational dimension of changemaking. I’m going to tell a second story. I have three stories and this one is very short. Um, I educate myself in lots of approaches because I’m really into awareness based practice and I like enriching my practice all the time with action research. I was at our training on dragging dreaming and it was a three day residential. The first day it was exactly what the TU is. We’re going down and presencing to each other going through meeting our dragon and dreaming together. So there was a deep connection, and a great process of emergence there that I really enjoyed. And the next day, it was time to go into planning prototyping from that experience. And here we were just sent to groups of six and told to make decisions together, but we were not really given any tools to make these decisions. And well in our group, I immediately brought sociocratic  ways of doing it and we really enjoyed and managed to do it but I was observing other groups and I was seeing how a few are taking too much space. And certainly, these things happen, because we have not yet unlearned the very competitive reflexes that we’ve been taught over the years so I think this appears for me to be a blind spot of many awareness based frameworks. But the opposite blind spot also exists in governance frameworks. And this is where my third story comes in. In Sociocracy, as Ted was explaining, we do rounds for giving voice to everyone in equivalence. And members are speaking in turns and there’s a conversation going on in rounds. You get feedback and you access others point of view, which is great. It helps to open the mind which is something that is very relative to factual knowledge on the second level that Otto is describing, especially when the people are bringing feedback from a deeper source than from their ego. So that’s a very important thing that we might want to discuss a bit later. But in sociocracy we tend to assume that because people are meeting in rounds, they’re always listening to each other with a fresh mind and open heart. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. And sometimes in the rounds, it can happen that a member of the circle is being marginalized, for example, or some members can get into downloading patterns, judgments about other members of the circle, especially when decisions are important and it gets tense. For example, Joe can think oh, I really know what Shirley is going to say because she’s so predictable. Or I have a feeling that I’ve made up my mind about Eric and I really think that Eric, mostly, I don’t understand what he says I don’t get it, what he’s about. So I’m stuck. I’m stuck in this kind of pattern, here where Shirley and Eric are seen in a certain way. And I’m completely absent, saying this has a very big impact on the way I will then pay attention to and the way I’m able to show up and engage in a collaboration and in dialogue. And in some what I wanted to say with all these stories is that no method does it all. And each framework, the two frameworks we’re looking at here, which is Sociocracy. And Theory U , you give very different answers that go very well together to support agency and action. There’s the head, the heart, the hands, and there’s governance. There’s both. That’s why creating composite approaches, I think, and practices is good and we have a project that we might get to talk about it too. And my question, I guess I want to give back to you, Otto and Ted. Why do such core skills and technologies exist separately if they are needed together and could Sociocracy include systematic awareness practice? Could Theory U incorporate the governance dimension especially on the right side of the U? These are my questions to you. Thank you. 

Yeah, thank you, Pascal. Anyone would like to go first? All right, Otto,why don’t you start?

Otto 

Sure. Happy too. So, I think the first two examples I mean, the short answer is yes. Right. So should they be composite? Yes. The answer is yes. And I am like, I’m not just kind of and I think the same is true for all of you and particularly for you Ted.  I’m not just you know, a guy who puts out frameworks and tools and throws them onto people. I’m like a practitioner myself. Right. And so I do pretty much what everyone else is doing who is a practitioner, which is you need to integrate all this stuff right into, in order to be useful to a situation so I’m… and I think kind of one of the benefits of Theory U is that it’s a meta framework, which allows you to hang in different things. Particularly kind of different, which then allows you to integrate that in a framework,  a meta framework of awareness base social change. So that’s so that’s, that’s quite familiar. I mean, it’s, we all do that right. And I think we need better tools for that. That helps us also on the integration part, not just spinning out the differences. So I really sympathize and support this intention you are putting forth with your question. Just maybe two or three quick reactions to what you said. I would say kind of the first case or first two cases kind of the dreaming and then the decision,  the split, right, the collapse. So personally, I don’t really think that’s really not my experience. So I can’t really talk that much from my experience to that type of story that you went through three times. But what I would say is, and it also is applicable to the second one, the dreaming and then the prototyping. That’s not what theory U is right? You don’t start with dreaming. You actually start with sensing. So basically everyone today talks about co- creativity and prototyping and so on. Now, that also is a part of the Theory U process, but it comes at the tail end almost right. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that you does, you’re doing before. And so so that’s just like a general methodological response to what you said. Often when stuff is not working in the end, it is actually the wrong place to tinker with the end. The problem is actually right there at the beginning, how you start, how you set the field, and how you jump over, maybe processes now. So I’m like, I don’t like to generalize there, because I think there can be situations where you actually can start with dreaming, right? But when you deal with real situations, almost always you have some history, you have different views, you have people who are excluded and so on. To get your arms around that situation. You need a comprehensive sensing method first. And that is basically, so if you want an analogy, it’s like kind of, if you take the analogy of the violin, right, so listen to the violin. You need more than the strings, you need the body of resonance, right in the social wall, the body of resonance is not there. Because we are all operating in these silos. You need to establish that body of resonance through an intervention. That’s what we call sensing and co sensing. So I would basically point towards the beginning, right, kind of that’s the place of intervention, and that’s where often the highest leverage in any kind of social process is at the beginning, right? It’s the kind of social field that you invoke. And well, that’s just a methodological response to the first one. Now, I want to maybe also lead into. I don’t want to go on for too long, but I want to, can they be combined? So the short answer is yes. And the longer answer is, in Theory U,  you have kind of this evolution of governance, from the old structures that we have inherited from the past, kind of the visible hand of hierarchy, the invisible hand of the market, and then kind of all the negotiated stakeholder groups. And what Theory U really suggest is that we need the birth of a fourth coordination mechanism right for the kind of governance structures that we need today that we call Collective Action From Shared Awareness, CASA,  or awareness based collective action, but what it really means is that you with a stakeholder group, create a shared container, a shared body of understanding that is going through all these different systemic perspectives that is deepening the understanding from what is to what is wanting to emerge, and which is then exploring these possibilities by doing that’s basically what it is awareness based collective action. And that’s really my interest in Sociocracy right. So because I think of course, it is all the interventions for example we have been doing with the UN interventions over the 26 countries with senior leadership over the past three or so years. And, you know, the main issue is really, kind of the transformation of governance, right? To relocalized governance, right? To bring it back, kind of to the local level. And then, of course, not only requires innovation in terms of outer governance, but also you know, awareness based technologies, kind of shared sense making methods and so that’s I believe, where we hold,  kind of, different pieces. So here’s kind of my, my, my two questions that I would also like to put forth into this conversation. And I’m sure that there are good answers to that. So the first one is,  I studied actually at a university that was governed by consent by basically everyone meeting. So all the decisions were made by everyone, faculty, students, kind of administrators meeting once a week, right for a couple of hours or something, right, the General Assembly, and that worked well when we were small. And then as this thing was growing, and also other faculty were joining at a certain point, that basically fell apart and it allowed one or two people really to block the whole system to move forward. So even though it wasn’t really consensus, it was more consent the intention can have it, oo that’s where I learned if you have a flattening of the structure, but you don’t have this capacity to operate as a community from a shared intent, or that’s only their performer but not embodied. That can be a recipe for a lot of frustration. And then, maybe more recently, what I am noticing in our current situation wherever you go, including with the organization that I am also in a leadership situation and kind of the presencing Institute. Everyone is facing disruption and needs to reimagine and reshape themselves. And when you do that with any organization, here’s the funny thing that happens. Just about everyone is over-valuing current reality relative to the future. So because people often don’t really feel a sense of how real the future is. And I think that’s a real obstacle. Right? So if you, the more you democratize decision making, the more kind of this is really, this can be a challenge that there is a bias and just about every organization a strong bias, that is over- valuing what is relative to what is wanting to emerge to the emerging future. What do you do about that?

And what’s the implication of that, for decision making, when the challenge is and what the future wants us to do? Is really reimagining and reshaping.

Ted Rau  

Think it’s my turn right. Now I have three things on my mind and I hope I can hold them all because I think it would make most sense to answer your first questions. First Otto, your first question then go to my answer to Pascal’s question and then come back to your second so I’ll try that. So your example around how does consent or consensus doesn’t really matter in this case, so much? How much does it scale if you’re too big for a general assembly to listen to each other? And that’s I think, where the distribution and the nesting and the fractal pattern comes in again, right to really have a system where we always only have small groups, because I don’t want everybody to decide on everything. I don’t want to be in a system but that is the case. That’s why it’s distributed. So it’s the combination of consent and distribution and that balance between what is decided in a fairly central circle and what is decided in decentralized circles. That balance is something we can be intentional about because Sociocracy is kind of compatible with a lot there anyway. So that’s just a short answer to that then the other one was that see, it was about why a could it could be blend bias. Yes. And yeah, hold on the bias. Yes, the bias and the and could it blend, know that I am going to Pascal’s question real quick. So here’s how I am looking at the whole blending thing for me is also yes, I think this can all blend the one thing that I think I’m a little just cautious about though I can’t really put my finger on why I’m cautious about it is, the hope to kind of grow into like a super methodology. You know that includes everything. I think I’d like to have something that is a little bit more modular. Maybe it’s just my discomfort with everything that’s kind of a total, overarching something. So I think where I’m going with this is a modular, more pluralist approach. Where there’s many different tools and we all understand when to use what and that to me is the biggest thing. When do you shift out of this and that mode and can do this and that mode? You know, when do you slow it down? When do you say whatever, we’ll just try it out now. So how can groups have more literacy with the tools, all the different methodologies and use them in the appropriate moments? And that’s exciting to me, because that’s not so much a theoretical question that’s more a question of skills and how do you get people ready for that? And it also, I mean, there’s things happening in two levels. Basically, there’s the tools themselves, you know, or whatever we call them; Sociocracy, Theory U on the others, and then there’s the people on the ground and people on the ground have been meshing and dovetailing a lot right. And I think we’re actually lagging behind the practitioners who have already been combining things and understanding things like, right, how do you do that? Like, what do you combine, explain that to me? Like I see a bunch of parallels where I would like to sit down and really understand how I could change my teaching so that it’s more compatible with people here when they’ve come to  a Theory U  training before? Like where I see the connection? How can I make that more obvious to people that some of the things we are actually talking about are very, very related things. Now on the disruption question. That’s Yes, everybody is facing disruption. We talked about that a little bit yesterday in our prep session. Because whenever I think about that, there’s a little bit of panic coming up in me because I’m so aware of how disruption is just going to increase more and more. And when people are in a full blown existential crisis, I don’t think it’s the best moment to learn and shuffle your governance system because,  governance systems are your operating system, right, this is not something that you can just do real quick. So what I do with that is that I just tell myself, okay, if we need to catch the people who are not in full emergency mode, and train them and get enough skills in place before the door closes, basically because I noticed in times when people are very overwhelmed, for example, we noticed that, or I’m telling myself at least that we noticed that in Sociocracy For All, how the demand for Sociocracy goes down as people are kind of more freaked out about whatever’s happening in the world. So how can we, given the trajectory of what I project in the future? How can we get enough skills in so that people can manage and buffer what is coming? I love the quote that you brought here are the people over- valuing reality relative to the future. And that’s something I really want to kind of take home. Although I am home, and sit with sit with because it is true that if people are not allowing themselves to tune into that, that that will affect how conservative their decision making will be right so that is something that that is like, Sociocracy is a somewhat agnostic method there because although we support experiments and so on, it still depends on people doing that experiment. There’s nothing you can do to make them do it. They have to that has to come from them and their own freedom of allowing themselves to free them to think about that. So that is clearly a case where sociocracy might fall short and where it would be good to combine with other tools.Check

Idit  

Pascal, I wonder if there’s something that you want to say to bring this to a close and we can then turn into some questions.

Pascal

Yeah, I like the perspectives that were offered after my stories and I would like to go back to something that Otto said that I find extremely important and actually Ted was referring to it too is this importance of local groups and governance, local governance, but not only that are local communities. As as we’re going to move forth with speaking about disruptions I’m not sure if we’re not already looking at elements of chaos, beyond disruptions. We’re going to be doing daily negotiations in the next years to come. Where if we talk about for example, energetic sobriety already engages us in thinking okay, so what are the choices we make? What do we have to give up? What are the principles that we’re going to use to choose what we give up, what we can do together? How are we going to create Commons? How are we going to make sure that locally there is generative land use etc. For example, in our country’s there’s a very small percentage of land that is in the commons. I think if we’re going to find these solutions to the climate issue, it’s this is going to have to change for example, so this very local aspect, and communities needing the tools so that they can come into these negotiations with awareness and with tools that allow them to move forth and do the experimentations that they need to do to learn. So that’s what I was thinking and I look into CASA,. I think that’s an interesting aspect of theory that they really don’t know very well. So I was very happy to hear about that. And I’ll check into that.

Otto

Can I,  can I make another comment on that? Because I think this is a really interesting exchange, I would say. And so the short answer is yes. On the combination, I think kind of will be also interesting to specify maybe where there is a little bit of a difference. So I would say, on the Theory U side of things, we definitely need a lot more specificity around the 4.0 governance which is kind of around really, awareness based systems change. And that really brings me to this conversation because there’s a lot to learn, because in principle, I agree on the kind of intuition that you all have and Sociocracy towards a more distributed governance and towards forms of governance that help us to really, to really come up with more intentional ways of governance. So where we clarify what the shared intention is for economic decisions and for other decision making. So I am fully on the same page there. I have two levels of questions right about the limitations. So  the first one is,  I think there is, so you said if I understand that right, kind of this circles and then the different layouts and so on. That to me sounds slow, right? So that kind of all these feedback loops, and I know that from partners, right? So yeah, I need to go so that slowness that comes with all these iterations can be an obstacle, right, when you need to act in an instant, right? So that’s, that’s a little and the other one is because you need for decision making you need kind of the rationale and so on. There is a bias for what you can have a good rationale for versus an entrepreneurial activity. All the best decisions I ever made were without rationale. So because you need the future to show up not first here(point to head), it shows up in your heart first, and you can’t even, so the best intrapreneurial decision is where you do stuff without knowing why you do it. And that’s sort of the subtitle of my book Theory U, was leading from the emerging future is not leading towards the emerging future because then you’re driven by the past, from the emerging future is really developing a sense making opening up your mind heart and will in a way that allows the future to use you as an instrument to operate through you. So that’s but the point is, if you just stay so I think if I would set up a way of where everything is rational, you know, subject to rational conversation where you need to convince others by default,  I guarantee you that the decisions will be more driven by the past than by the future because that’s what the rational mind is doing. But the trick about leading from the future is to move beyond the rational mind. And so that’s kind of instinctively when I look at these two things, the slowness with all the layers and so on. So I think what we see where we are moving into is collapse and chaos and breakdown, and how do we thrive in these situations? That’s my question. And I think what we need is a fluid way of organizing, a more illiquid way of organizing to be familiar with these situations, to be a friend of disruption, to be adaptive and moving with these situations. And for that, we need to be, I think, all these layers and all of these feedback loops, that’s not really working. So we need to, we need to move with the chaos, right? We need to have a much bigger format. So for example, bring a lot more people together. into collective bodies of sense-making out of which what we need to do is emerging by itself, not as kind of many loops of rational decision, but it’s kind of this collective way of bodies,  making sense of a situation, than acting in an instant as a systems capacity. That’s what I’m interested in. And that’s where some of the specifics even though I’m with you 100% on the philosophy, some of the specifics I have my wanderings, how practical that is in the type of real world situations that we all are going to face a lot more in the years to come. Yeah,

Idit

Thank you, Otto. Ted, do you want to say something?

Ted Rau  

So there’s under the two points one, I want to just make a comment on that, I think puts it a little bit into perspective. The layers we don’t like the feedback flows, but you don’t need to ask all the layers before you can act. You have the decisions on local, so you can also just act. So that’s just something that sometimes people you know, they see all the layers, and that’s where they go because that’s a hierarchical system that everybody has to play ‘mother may I’, but that’s not the case. So the slowness, but there’s one thing about that is I guess I didn’t see that’s a little bit of advanced sociocracy. But what I think about a lot is that people do in fact, sometimes default to kind of checking with everybody and so on. And that’s that slow and very kind of consensus vibe way of practicing sociocracy I’m also not a big fan of, so what I’m excited about this to have kind of the nested system of holding, holding a strong, I guess center, but then having very agile and empowered teams on the periphery and they prototype they go do stuff, they try things out, and they might have all these experiments, but that is a level of literacy that it takes for people to step into that game that is, that is rather advanced given how we’ve you know how far away it is from people’s typical conditioning.

And on the other piece, I’m just completely with you that just the yeah and sociocracy we  are basically just cross our fingers and say that you know that people are bold with where they’re going that people do listen, and rounds this kind of structure way of approaching it but there’s nothing I can do within sociocracy to get somebody out of, out of for example, that there’s thinking about preference about ego, you know, their thing, this there’s a little bit of an attempt in the structure and in the practice that you’re that you’re nudged to think outside of that by being exposed, but nothing more beyond that, which is crossing our fingers. So that’s um, yes. So that’s clearly a place where I’m very curious about the connection. 

Idit 

Hmm, thank you.Well, I’d like to move into question there’s a lot of there’s a lot of movement in me as I hear all these words, but I want to make space we have also just for few more minutes, so maybe I’ll bring just one question and also he will speak to that first and and then we will part. So I’ll start with a question from Mark, thank you for all the questions that are coming in. And we’ll take what we can today and there’ll be more I hope for in the future. So Mark’s  question is both to Ted and Otto and it is around,  I’ll just read the question is SoFA and Theory U process compatible with organizations where the leaders are still equipped with a strong ego mindset? If yes, how to proceed. And basically there’s another question that goes along the same line. How to bring ego driven leaders into deeper sensing. So maybe Otto you want to speak to that. So we can also say thank you and let you go  in  time.

Otto  

Well, I would say Theory U is not the solution for all the problems you face. Right. So it’s in all situations. I think Theory U  is particularly helpful, I would say when you deal with disruptions and these disruptions by definition, are situations where the future is going to be different from the past. So and where we don’t exactly know where we are that is leading us so it’s kind of in that territory where something like Theory U which helps us to organize around something that’s emerging is helpful. And I would say that, you know, not all situations qualify for that, but just about as I said at the beginning, I mean, this kind of situation is not in short supply, and it’s multiplying every other day. And so, it may not be everyone but kind as the cracks in the old system that’s beginning to collapse. But let’s also not be kidding ourselves. The collapse is not over the day after tomorrow. Right? That can be quite an extended process. So as we see these cracks opening up, that’s where the possibility is, right? Because that’s where the new awareness has a door,  where it can come in. Because a crack means the old system is no longer producing, the old way of operating is no longer producing the results that are acceptable for us. So we need to stop, we need to attend. We need to connect to the situation differently, and then come up with a different way of operating. So that’s where I would hold back on trying to convince people that for whom something else is still workable. I would go to those places where the old system is cracking and opening up because that’s where people need help and people are actually in search of what can we do now.

Idit

Thank you. I just want to do a check. Otto. An hour has passed. So I don’t want…

Otto  

I want to hear what TED is. 

Idit

Very good. Thank you.

Ted Rau  

And I was so taken by the answer that I forgot the question. Wait Oh, what about people with a strong ego mind set? Yeah, as I said, I mean in a way, in a way I mean, I’ve been for example, I’ve been asked by people with a strong mindset like that basically wanted to introduce sociocracy so that other people are more productive. And I stayed clear of that. It’s that’s not something, else needs to shift there first before it’s ready for that. So that’s where that falls into the camp of they’re not as many answers then I think that that sociocracy can bring because also there’s the problem that if then we implement because of that person somehow falling in love with sociocracy and having the idea that that’s a great idea. If we then implement top down that’s really that’s I’m skeptical of that,  again, that’s something we talked about a little bit yesterday, right? And I’m still thinking about that, because it might be interesting to study the examples of where something was implemented top down and just to see what it did with the people, who might like, how many people come around or how much does it always remain at the mercy of the person who brought it in? Because if that’s the case, then I’d be super skeptical of it because shared power can be at the mercy of somebody who implemented it that just does not make me so, and then that’s a big question. For example, that for me becomes very practical of who approves the Constitution, so to speak, right? Who puts the suit who can change the rules of the game around governance. So that’s a very practical implication. If that was for example, if for example, that person that’s very ego driven leader, we’re willing to share that power with others. I’d be more open to reconsidering that. So that would be an interesting situation. Yeah, I think I’ll stop here.

Otto 

So I found this conversation, really thought triggering and and an opening. I mean, I’m leaving with more questions that I entered with and that makes me happy. So because that’s a good path. And so I want one question I want to leave you with, since kind of you know, I think kind of you and your community kind of you probably have thought a lot more about that is the levels of governance that we really need and I think so implicitly at least in my thinking. The cases that we discussed were pretty small, right? It’s kind of a miso type of maybe organization or maybe, kind of, some of the examples more sounded like a team or something like that. But the big questions we are facing now are really kind of the whole system’s question or the societal level, also kind of the global level. So I wonder,  I would be just interested in learning how your thinking has been evolving in regard to that. So for example, you could say that the problem today we have in society is that we have different kinds of sectors that each actually need, kind of, a different type of governance system. So for example, you have the world of business, kind of that’s kind of one set of problems, you have kind of the more political space of decision making and sense making. And then you have the more cultural spaces with a lot of diverse, diverse kinds of initiatives and so on. So is that all the same or so what are they, so there’s like institutional governance, but what about the macro societal governance structure? So how does that play in that will be just a fascinating conversation to have because sometimes, if we don’t, often kind of the practical example, it stays on an organizational level when the real issues really are more on a systems level that needs to be addressed, to get to the root of things. So that’s just kind of my parting thought. And I really appreciate the conversational space here. And look forward to maybe continuing this and some other version going forward. Thank you.

Idit

Thank you so much, also for joining us today and speaking. There’s so much inspiration to learn and I’m just full,  my mind and my body is exploding with questions and investigations. So thank you, and we’ll let you go. And we’ll stay on for some more triads. Thank you. Bye, bye. Bye bye.

 Yes, so here we are. How are we doing? So I’m wondering if we want to take in some questions or maybe best if we just take some break, in triads, just we’ll take about 12 minutes. Three people in the breakout room. Just see you can speak to how you feel the felt your listening levels were or you may speak about what you know what’s really stayed alive with you what questions you are walking out from with from a call today. So just really what’s really alive in you. And Thomas will take us into breakout rooms. And I’m seeing all the questions that are coming in and I will gather all the questions from the chat and I really do hope that we’re going to have more opportunities to answer the questions so they’re not going to just go away. We’ll find a way to speak to them.

 So Thomas, if if that’s okay, if you can arrange for the breakout rooms

Thomas

nearly ready. Are you

Pascal  

thinking in the chat that people are asking about the project, so but we can do that maybe when we come back and plenary afternoon. Thank you for the question. Ian and Reiner

Thomas

How long is the breakout room?

Idit   

I think well 12 minutes so it’d be about about four minutes each and a moment to arrive in a moment to 

close. So maybe three minutes each person

Welcome back.

Is everybody back?

Idit

Welcome back, everybody. Well, with the remaining time we were gonna just hear from Pascal about the project. There are some questions around that. And then we’ll just take some questions, some sharing. Just raise your hand if you feel that you want to share something with us. And in the meantime, Pascal, do you want to speak about the project? 

Pascal

Just very quickly, because we’re actually planning on publishing. So there will be an article that explains the project better and in a more detailed way, but just saying like we were saying composites are composite approaches are necessary and the skill is to know when you should be going to this kind of methodology or using this approach at different moments. So that’s the whole scale. And the project is about working with other creators and parenting shifting professionals on a concept that’s called transformative social systems. And the idea behind that is catching the low hanging fruit that’s out there in the commons so that we can build powerful learning and development spaces that include the elements. For example, things that would help us work on energy when we need to, on our attention, on observation, skills on inclusion, listening, reflection, working on intention, decision making, getting feedback. So these are things that we see and many of these technologies that are out there and transformative, social system that we call the TSS project is to see how we can grab things and help people master different approaches so that they can organize and facilitate communities around them. Thank you Idit  for the possibility to explain. Thanks.

Idit 

Important.

Okay, Randy, do you want to unmute yourself? Sure.

Randy 

The common theme of the three of us in our breakout group was around power. And I brought up this amazing YouTube video I just watched by a woman named Carolyn Miss M y s s, and it’s moving from the love of power to the power of love. And I think that Otto, what I always resonate so much with in Theory U,  is his talking about the heart space and how much more we have to beginning to imagine what, what love is and I thought her,  her talk was really inspirational for me a few weeks ago, and then and than this beautiful book that I just got the other day, Humankind. Chapter 11 is on the abuses of power. I’ve never seen something more succinctly stated. And I think that it really gets at that issue of that I’ve been flummoxed by forever about how do you change organizations when when you have a bunch of non aware egotistical leaders, you know, and that’s what basically reinventing organizations was about is it only works in organizations where people have moved beyond and Otto  says that too, moving beyond the ego but we really have to begin to unpack that and power is a big part of that. So that’s kind of a ramble there. Thanks for letting me share that.

Idit

Thank you. Yeah. Ted, do you want to say anything to that or

Ted Rau  

what I took away from Humankind, actually in reading it threw me into several weeks of  depression reading the book, because one of the… and I loved it at the same time. One of the things that I took from it but again, I have a super strong governance lens, right, is that he’s saying that people are good, a lot of me now, we all wake up in the morning typically and want to be a good person to other people. Like that’s, that’s what we do. And then what and then I had this moment of like, wait, but if everybody is actually good, then all the, all the explanations, you know that some people are the other, other blame, blaming and passing of blame just falls flat. And then it’s about the systems right then it’s about the systems that people are in whether the systems are such that they can tap into that sort of true Self if we want, if we want to use that, right, or whether things are stacked against them and they can show up as that so to me, it’s it’s really pointing at systems so much so that’s why now that’s why I go back to always awareness based and systems based that needs to come together and we’re already good people. We don’t need to be reminded as much because I already believe that we’re good. So that combination, I think, is that edge that we’re on here today.

Idit 

Yeah, for me, maybe to add, Randy, as I hear you speak to that. I think that the first step is how do we look at our own relationship to our own power, and to power and I think as we unpack our own relationship to power, then other things may come up and, the future can start to come up as a new future. Rather than to try and fix something to really look at what is my relationship to power? my hurts,  my absence, my wishes, and so on. Yeah, thank you for this beautiful question.

Randy 

And I would inject one thing though, that it’s one thing that we’re all good people, but we don’t realize our degree of wounding and the second part of our conversation in our group and T was so articulate and that is all of the work that’s being done with trauma. And like It’s like we all need recovery programs and maybe workplaces are places where cohorts of people can heal together. And that should be part of the, you know, the, the new image of, of growth and possibility. So

Idit  

yeah, it’s like Pascal’s project. It sounds like you know, when do we bring what, what is needed? And we all need to heal and, and yeah, and maybe sort of to come to a close where, you know, the sentence that Otto starts with, you know, we cannot bring change to a system without changing our levels of consciousness. He didn’t say it quite like this. But I think it really speaks and also sociocracy in many ways is another level we require to grow our level of consciousness to grow level of responsibility, of self responsibility of how we respond and how we show up. So for me, they’re very connected also, they’re.

We’re coming to an end. So I just want maybe a few words from Ted and from Pascal and then we’ll also put links on the chat about SoFA and Theory U. Pascal had created a beautiful presentation already talking about theory U and sociocracy. And we’ll put that also in the chat and I really invite you all to take the time to listen to it. It’s not very long, but it’s very potent and very good. As well as if you want to prescribe to SoFA  newsletter if you’d like, to donate and support our work in SoFA, please. You’re very welcome. Did I forget anything? No.

So Pascal, maybe you want to say a few words to end with and then we’ll go to Ted. Yes.

Pascal

Thank you Idit,  I am actually leaving with an I just downloaded the chat because there are too many beautiful questions in that chat. And I want to add them to all the questions that are turning here in my mind now, I think it was a very thought provoking moment for me. So I really enjoyed it. I hope everyone in the breakout rooms was also able to exchange a bit because it was a bit the roundtable mostly and we didn’t get many questions and answers in but that space also I think is important for that. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m really, really thankful to have been included in this event. 

Ted Rau  

My closing thoughts as well. I mean, I really really take note of the kind of advice or questions from the outside. So I’m very grateful for all the questioning that has happened. Some of which were kind of in the Oh, yeah, I’ve already heard that one can but others were like Yeah, right. Are we clear about that? Or what do we have just so many, so many points that when we can explore more and understand more and say more? So. Yeah, just grateful overall, check.

Idit

Yes, and thank you everybody, for joining us. Thank you, Thomas, for taking care of our meeting today and being really our technical host here and for all the questions and so on. And, yeah, I’m leaving with a lot of optimism. I feel that these conversations need to happen more often. As we’re changing ideas and speaking and growing ourselves to include more and more of everything else that is so good already in our world and happening. And I think that this is really our way forward as we create safety, to listen to learn how we work well together and how we show up in the world. So really, thank you everybody, for joining us today. And we’ll get all the questions and hopefully we’ll do something with them. And find ways,  follow us. There’s many webinars still coming up in SoFA, keep following us. Thank you so much, everybody, and goodbye.