Presence

Authors: Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers
A book review

The subtitle of this book is ‘Exploring profound change in people, organisations and society’. And that is just what the authors do, very successfully. But this is not just an intellectual exercise, they put themselves through the process – by open dialogue, interviews, and through taking themselves out of their normal, habitual patterns of thought and behaviour.

The premise of this remarkable piece of work is that we humans are now facing problems so complex that our normal decision making processes are insufficient. In fact in working with them, the solutions that we come up with become the next generation of problems. The underlying issue is not touched, let alone solved. They argue forcibly that we are coming up against these complexities in all areas of life. Examples they quote range through health issues, business and economic problems, and the big one: climate change. The authors interviewed many august people from diverse backgrounds such as science and cosmology, spiritual leaders and psychologists, as well as entrepreneurs and business leaders. Their conclusions were many, but included one that, for me was obvious as soon as it was mentioned. The implicit models which we habitually employ for our everyday thinking are inadequate. We need to understand these assumptive modes on an explicit level, in order to see what we are doing, and make changes. For example, it takes a long time for changes in leading edge thinking about the way our world works to seep down into everyday life. Thus, at the fundamental level, most of the thought that went into our institutions are distilled from a very Newtonian world view. Just recall that the first ‘management scientists’ worked from a mechanical model, applying it to both the organisation and the people within it. Has it radically changed? I think not, neither in the way in which we still run our corporations, or especially in our educational establishments. Actually, don’t we live in a richer world, where we value relationships? This might be true, especially outside of the work place, but what makes that inevitable?

The authors draw upon thinking and interviews with cosmologists who work beyond the Newtonian model. Those who believe that relationships between people and things are inherently more important than the things themselves. But this comes much further in the book, which unfolds the thought and discovery process as we read through it. As we would hope and expect, this work offers us a model to work with. Some of the skills needed in order to make this model work are more akin to those found in spiritual practices and psychology than in business. It talks about ‘letting go’ rather than ‘control’. It speaks consistently about ‘seeing the whole’ rather than dividing down and analysing. We hear of vulnerability and trust as ways of opening paths to new solutions, and indeed to new knowledge. But we are never far away from the pragmatic, from being able to apply this deeper approach to the complexities mentioned above.

I think that the outputs from this book could be seen as an invitation to us as coaches, leaders and spiritual practitioners, those who deal in profound change. Here we can look at what is needed to do the work with our clients, business leaders and in our communities, in going deeper, searching for those radical solutions which do not become tomorrow’s problems. It is also a licence - no, an obligation - for us as catalysts to bring all of ourselves to the services which we provide. For, following David Bohm, often quoted in ‘Presence’, the attitude and intent of the scientist or practitioner has a qualitative impact on the outcome of the activity, service or experiment.

DES GOULD, summer solstice, 2006.

For more on Leadership and Coaching, contact Des Gould, at The Success Group.
07703 547 570
des@desgould.com