Theory U: Learning from the Future as It Emerges

The first movement, co-initiating, focuses on beginning from nothing and uncovering some common ground. We start by creating a field or container from which the remaining four movements can come into being. How? By listening. By listening to other core players in the field (listening to others), by listening to what life calls you to do (listening

“listen to what life calls you to do.”

Learning from the future is vital to innovation. Learning from the future involves intuition. It involves embracing high levels of ambiguity, uncertainty, and willingness to fail. It involves opening ourselves to the unthinkable and sometimes attempting to do the impossible. But the fears and risks are balanced by feeling ourselves part of somethin

Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle, arguably the greatest pioneer and innovator of Western inquiry and thought, wrote in Book VI of his Nicomachean Ethics that there are five different ways, faculties, or capacities in the human soul to grasp the truth. Only one of them is science (episteme).12 Science (episteme), according to Aristotle, is l

Practice: Take four minutes each evening and review the day as if you are looking at yourself from outside. Pay attention to how you interacted with others and what other people wanted you to do or suggested that you do. Do this nonjudgmentally. Just observe. Over time, you will develop an internal observer that allows you to look at yourself from

The social field of most families, teams, organizations, and societies remains largely unchanged because our level of attention renders it invisible. We do not attend to the subtle forces shaping what happens because we are too busy reacting to these forces. We see problems, then “download” our established mental models to both define the problems