Meet Liz Alperin Solms & Marie McCormick
“You know what you are?” a client said to Liz Alperin Solms and Marie McCormick, “You’re a pair of empathetic badasses! You take on the tough stuff in the world, but you do it with full hearts.” How is that for a testimonial? Liz and Marie, founders of Insyte Partners and Senior Practitioners of the Presencing Institute, consider it the highest of compliments.
Insyte Partners is a Theory U-based consulting firm out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that works across public, private, and nonprofit sectors on topics ranging from education to manufacturing to healthcare. Their work includes multi-stakeholder collaboration and collective impact, strategic planning, leadership development and culture change. Key to Insyte’s approach is engagement — convening a cross-section of the ecosystem for dialogue, exploration and experimentation. No matter who their client is, Liz and Marie seek to become trusted partners who listen deeply, guide participants to face hard truths and discover shared intent, and ultimately help crystalize a framework for action around which prototypes can emerge and leaders can take bold action.
Liz and Marie met twenty years ago, when they were both part of a community of practice focused on the “Future Search” methodology of large group interventions. The two found they had complementary skills and backgrounds: Marie has an MBA with a concentration in finance and a PhD in Organizational Development, while Liz has a BS in industrial engineering and a MPA in community/economic development from the Harvard Kennedy School. They also discovered a shared passion for “getting the whole system in the room” to solve tough problems. These synergies inspired them to launch Insyte Partners together.
About fifteen years ago they reached a moment where they felt they were really good at their work, but still wanted to have more impact. “We were also mothers of young children,” Liz explains, “and we were exhausted. So we decided to take three months off to slow down and reconnect with our purpose.”
Slowing down does not necessarily come easily to to these two, and taking time off felt like a big risk to the fledgling entrepreneurs, but this proved to be a turning point in their lives.
“We took a meditation class,” says Liz, “and we came away thinking, ‘Wow, what if we could do for groups what mindfulness does for individuals?’”
Internet research led them to Otto Scharmer’s work, and Liz and Marie joined Otto’s very first workshop. Since then, Marie says, “Theory U has been the gift that keeps on giving.”
When Marie and Liz came upon Theory U, they appreciated how it required participants to look inside themselves and to awaken all the ways of knowing that each of us carries in our head, heart, and hands. The idea that systems change also requires attention to “interior condition” gave them permission to inspire personal transformation as a condition for systems change.
Until then, they had thought of the role of the facilitator as “meeting participants where they are, and trusting they would bring everything needed to create change.” Theory U asks, “What are the sacred questions we need to ask in this moment to shift our ecosystem? The ones that expose our assumptions?” And, “What are the conversations and experiences that will expose us to hard truths and rich insights about our system and about ourselves?” Through questions like this, Theory U provides a framework for participants to listen and learn together, which fosters an environment of trust and vulnerability that allows new solutions to emerge. Liz stresses that “shifts of mind and shifts of relationship are at the core of transforming systems.”
“Nothing we know how to do is a substitute for strong or wise leadership,” she notes. “The leaders we work with are courageous, comfortable with not knowing and super-curious to learn ‘from the future’ to work on the big societal issues of our times,” she continues. They are all looking for ways to co-sense and co-create the changes necessary to make their organizations more useful in the world. The Theory U process is designed for just that.
A recent example of how this works involves three member companies from a family of industrial manufacturers. While each company came to the Presencing Institute with their own individual challenges and opportunities, what they had in common was a remarkable commitment to pursuing a Theory U process. They each took six to ten high-potential employees away from their jobs for 6–12 months to innovate and move boldly into a needed future.
The goal of one of the companies was to uncover new revenue sources to “future-proof” their enterprise. While currently financially strong, they wanted to ensure this success for the future. An added incentive was to pursue the “noble goal” of helping to solve a societal problem while hatching new business opportunities. The leader of the group challenged team members with the notion that no idea was good enough unless they would be willing to personally put their job on the line to pursue the idea’s potential.
With this in mind, this team of rising leaders went on dozens of learning journeys to explore promising and often very different sectors. They were asked to “turn the camera back on themselves” to examine what might need to shift in order to keep the company financially sustainable over the long haul. One idea that resulted was to get involved in the manufacturing of “clean meat” — lab-produced “meat” that could transform food production by eliminating the need to raise and feed cows. Even though the initial response to this idea was “yuck,” the team eventually partnered with nonprofits to pursue this game-changing technology, among others.
A second company discovered that culture change was needed to enable new future-oriented strategies to flourish. To accomplish this, Insyte Partners are working with this company’s team of emerging leaders to develop a “train the trainer” program to teach Theory U skills such as how to have powerful conversations, listen from deeper levels of awareness, and give feedback that is true and productive. The plan is to roll out this capacity-building program to all the managers in the enterprise, and then to share a shorter version with all of its production workers.
It is this ripple effect that Liz and Marie are especially excited about as they look ahead. Up until four years ago Insyte Partners was just the two of them. Their partnership has been a key to their success, they agree:
“People over the years have been fascinated by our twoness,” says Liz, “and I am an advocate for this kind of work in twos. We each have our moments where we can’t find the courage or the clarity, or we can’t remember! So to have a partner in that is really lucky.”
But recently, the two have brought on new team members including Social Presencing Theater and meditation facilitator Kate Johnson, graphic recorder and visual facilitator Emily Jane Steinberg, and Grace Shim, who joined Insyte Partners straight out of college but who has now grown into a capacity building consultant.
Marie is thrilled that Grace will be stepping up to co-facilitate a project in Los Angeles with her this year, and Liz comments that this signals a new phase for the work of the Presencing Institute, as more and more young people are exposed to Theory U. “I think of my early twenties as my most formative years — those are the experiences that shape you forever. And it moves me to know that Grace has Presencing as the thing that will shape her as a young adult. We get to see firsthand how it is helping her to understand her own life and her calling, to use her voice differently and take authority. Imagine all these young people around the world who now have Presencing as a way to understand their life and the world! That’s really cool.”
“Sometimes we have to pinch ourselves,” says Marie, “because we are the luckiest.”
To have each other as partners, to work with courageous leaders, and to teach and learn from the next generation — “I am never bored,” Marie asserts. Liz nods in agreement, “Because we are still learning, learning every day.”
Watch Liz and Marie’s video-interview here:
