Theory U

This process of letting-go (of our old ego and self) and letting-come (our highest future possibility: our Self) establishes a subtle connection to a deeper source of knowing.

[1] According to Scharmer,[6] a value created by journeying through the "U" is to develop seven essential leadership capacities: The sources of Theory U include interviews with 150 innovators and thought leaders on management and change.

Particularly the work of Brian Arthur, Francisco Varela, Peter Senge, Ed Schein, Joseph Jaworski, Arawana Hayashi, Eleanor Rosch, Friedrich Glasl, Martin Buber, Rudolf Steiner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe have been critical.

https://web.archive.org/web/20050404033150/http://www.dialogonleadership.org/indexPaintings.html Today, Theory U constitutes a body of leadership and management praxis drawing from a variety of sources and more than 20 years of elaboration by Scharmer and colleagues.

The method draws on the Goethean techniques described by Rudolf Steiner,[8] transforming observations into intuitions and judgements about the present state of the organisation and decisions about the future.

The three stages represent explicitly recursive reappraisals at progressively advanced levels of reflective, creative and intuitive insight and (epistemologies), thereby enabling more radically systemic intervention and redesign.

In contrast to that earlier work on the U procedure, which assumes a set of three subsystems in the organization that need to be analyzed in a specific sequence, Theory U starts from a different epistemological view that is grounded in Varela's approach to neurophenomenology.

On the left-hand side of the U the process is going through the three main "gestures" of becoming aware that Francisco Varela spelled out in his work (suspension, redirection, letting-go).