Book Review: „Leading from the Emerging Future“

 

Note: The following article was included in the Feb. 2014 intercultures e-newsletter. Email the intercultures e-newsletter Editor to receive our next edition in your inbox well in advance of website postings. We offer fresh, intercultural information and insights monthly.

There is a story sometimes told in intercultural trainings about an elephant and a few blind men. It begins with the men standing together around an elephant and each feeling his way about the mammoth being between them only to discover a bigger reality than they imagine. The lesson of this story about the elephant and the blind men is essentially the same message shared in Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer’s recent book, Leading from the Emerging Future: People experience the world from different perspectives (over space and time) and can only create whole, inclusive truths through collaboration.

“Leading,” as used in the book, refers to a cooperative global movement among people who collectively create results that the world needs and wants by “acting from the presence of what is wanting to emerge” (p.19). The objective? To sense and actualize a next-generation society. Scharmer and Kaufer’s primary argument is that, “responding from the emerging future requires us to shift the inner place from which we operate” (p.3). They refer to this shift as today’s single most important leadership capacity, and assert a direct relationship between the quality of awareness from which people in the system operate and the quality of their results.

Leading from the Emerging Future is a quest to answer three interrelated questions:

1. In the face of disruption, how do we lead from the emerging future?
2. What evolutionary economic framework can guide our journey forward?
3. What strategies can help us to function as vehicles for the shifting whole?

The assumptions behind these questions are clearly laid out in the book. In relation to the first question, the assumption is that if we hold our attention to a promising future and redefine the way that we perceive nature, our relationships with one another, and ourselves, energy will necessarily flow towards what we want to build. In this way, we can make good the disruptions that we experience—including economic crisis, environmental degradation, climate chaos, water shortage, mass poverty and more—by being mindful of the whole to which we belong and acting in its best, future interest. Perhaps in an effort to create urgency to act, the authors name a series of systemic, structural disconnects including those known and felt between institutional leadership and people; an infinite global growth imperative and finite environmental resources; the “Haves” and the “Have Nots,” and more.

What evolutionary economic framework can guide our journey forward? Here, the explained assumption is that economic frameworks of the past have included three distinct sectors including Society 1.0: Organizing around hierarchy (the public or governmental sector); Society 2.0: Organizing around competition (private or entrepreneurial sector); and, Society 3.0: Organizing around interest groups (the civic or NGO sector). According to the authors, “each sector is differentiated by its own set of enabling institutions.  Each sector also evolves its own forms of power (“sticks,” “carrots,” and norms) and express a different stage in the evolution of human consciousness” (p.54). These sectors—and the societal structures that they establish—are necessarily limited by unilateral, linear communication; low, exclusion-based transparency; and, an intention to serve the well-being of the few (p.33). Scharmer and Kaufer summarize their theories in a key table they developed called the “Matrix of Economic Evolution.”

Related to the third question about strategies to shift the whole, the assumption is that a series of suggested strategies by the authors for a next-generation (or Society 4.0) organization of our society and economy will enable us to cooperatively shift the whole.

Without delivering prescriptions or promises for Society 4.0, Scharmer and Kaufer characterize the pieces of the whole. They also provide guidance on how to build our individual, local and global capacities to become equipped for the journey. From there, the reader is to reflect upon, engage with and co-own the process. In Scharmer and Kaufer’s rough sketch, Society 4.0 is:

• Organized around the emerging whole, and requires people to develop the capacity to perceive problems from the perspectives of others. The result is decisions and outcomes that benefit the whole system.
• A co-creative, eco-system model, characterized by the rise of a fourth sector that creates platforms and holds the space for cross-sector innovation that engages stakeholders from all sectors.
• A renewed reality in which people transition from being recipients of products and services to becoming their co-creators, co-authors, and also co-users.
• An alternative societal structure defined by multilateral, cyclical communication; high, inclusion-based transparency; and, an intention to serve the well-being of all.

The book is well-structured, and repetitively and progressively builds its logic. The content of the book is both research and experience-based. The German authors’ nearly 20 years living and working in Boston is perhaps the reason why there seems to be a slight bias towards a U.S. readership, as reflected in their select word choices and cited examples. Personal journaling questions and prompts for shared “circle” conversations are included at the end of each chapter to aid the reader in processing the book’s content.

It’s easy to compile a future reading list when reading Leading from the Emerging Future. In addition to the 15 pages of book Notes at the end of the text, select reads mentioned in the book include, The Fifth Discipline (Peter Senge); the Limits to Growth study (MIT Systems Dynamics); The Price of Inequality (Joseph Stiglitz); Factor Five (Ernst Ulrich); the article, Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us (Bill Joy); and, The Practice of Action Inquiry (Bill Torber), among others. This list, of course, would also include Presence (Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers), and the bestseller Theory U (Otto Scharmer).

So, what’s the connection between the message of Leading from the Emerging Future and the story of the elephant and the blind men? Here’s one variation of the story:

A large elephant and a few blind men stand together. Each man experiences the truth of the situation in his own way. One feels the large, flat, round ear of the elephant and claims that the presence between them is a fan. Another rubs his hands along the tusk of the elephant and is certain that it is a sword. Still another feels the tail of the elephant and is convinced that a strong length of rope lies between them. Needless to say, none of the mens‘ claims represent the whole reality that they share between them. They experience different parts of the whole. Through dialogue, they can collectively realize a shared reality.