u.lab, a Course and a Multicultural Social Movement
“There is a shared sentiment today on this planet:
1. We are heading in the wrong direction. Our civilization is hitting the wall.
2. I want to be part of a different story.
3. I don’t know how.
u.lab is about the how.
Multicultural and Multinational
The Presencing Institute’s U.School for Transformation cycle begins in September of every year with u.lab1x. Anyone can take the three months course “u.lab: Leading from the Emerging Future”, which is free and self-paced, on the edX platform. It is the same course that Otto Scharmer, Senior Lecturer at MIT, teaches at the Sloan School of Management. Even though the course is taught on the edX platform in the English language, most of the work is done within local and thematic “hubs” located in more than 100 countries around the world, where new learners and veteran practitioners meet personally and virtually to apply the group practices in their local languages. In five years, u.lab has morphed from a course taught to a privileged few at MIT, to a multicultural and multinational social movement with around seventy thousand practitioners all over the world.
The Why and the How
Why do thousands of people from 135 countries undertake a virtual journey via the MIT campus to study a three-months long course? During the live session that took place on the 24th of September 2020, Otto Scharmer said:
“The intention of u.lab is to help people deal with, and respond to, the disruptive changes that at this moment we meet at all levels of scale, personally, and in our local and global communities”.
“There is a shared sentiment today on this planet:
- We are heading in the wrong direction. Our civilization is hitting the wall.
- I want to be part of a different story.
- I don’t know-how.
u.lab is about the how. It is a place where people who share those sentiments come together and focus on the how. It is an awareness-based system change methodology”.
Awareness-Based Systems Change
He explains what Awareness-Based System Change is. “ABSC can be summarized in 4 sentences:
1) You cannot understand a system unless you change it. (Kurt Lewin)
2) You cannot change a system unless you transform consciousness.
3) You cannot transform consciousness unless you can make a system see and sense itself.
4) You cannot make a system see and sense itself unless you bridge the three divides.
The Ecological Divide is the disconnect between self and nature. The Social Divide is the disconnect between self and others. The Spiritual Divide is the disconnect between self and Self.
Awareness based systems change basically says: Let’s not just react to the symptoms at the top, but let’s understand and address the deeper root issues at play”.
The Inner Place From Where We Operate
The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener. Bill O’Brien.
“It is not only the what, or the how, but it is the inner place from where we operate. What is that inner place? You access that inner place when you stop downloading, reenacting habits of judgments and thoughts, and activating these three instruments of knowing, Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Will, aka Curiosity, Compassion, and Courage. When you look around today, you see the opposite, you see Closed Mind, Heart, and Will, aka Ignorance, Hate, and Fear. Those are the dynamics of Presencing and co-creativity, and the dynamics of Absencing and self-destruction”.
Generative Social Fields
“What we try to do at u.lab is not only to strengthen the Presencing capacities at the individual and team level but also, it has to do with supporting our attention on a more collective response to the current situation. It has to do with profound societal innovation in three areas: new learning infrastructures, new governance infrastructures, and new economic infrastructures. We try to contribute to planetary healing and civilization renewal”.
“The only way to contribute to planetary healing and civilization renewal is by activating Generative Social Fields. To do that, you need new methods of awareness based collaboration and co-creation, and that is what u.lab is about”.
“To change toxic and antagonistic relationships to co-creative ones at scale, we need a supporting infrastructure, a school for transformation that focuses on “Democratizing Access to Transformation Literacy”.”
Turning the Camera Back on Planet Earth
Every year, during the first live session, Otto shares an extract from The Overview Effect film clip. The film shows interviews with five astronauts who have experienced viewing the Earth from outer space and share about the cognitive shift in awareness that happens to them during spaceflight. The clip always has a very profound effect on the viewer.
Here is what Otto comments about it: “Every year, the message of this clip becomes more relevant, not less. What touches me about it is that it not only shares the narrative of the astronauts on space, but it shares our collective narrative. We as a species are the ones who created science and technology. We created an amazing amount of progress. And we moved out into space some 50 years ago, and someone turned around the camera back on planet Earth. And we are in awe of the beauty of the planet, earthrise, and in shock about the collective impact that we are about to have”.
“This situation also applies to many of our individual stories. We have an education, we progress, we move up our pathway, but at some point in our journey, we are facing something different from more of the same, that requires us to stop, turn around and look back, not only on planet Earth but also on planet Self”.
Intention Brings It Alive
Otto also goes deeper into the nature of u.lab: “u.lab is a collection of methods and tools, and to bring it alive, people have to bring in their own intention and organize everything around that”.
Below are some of the questions and intentions expressed by some of the practitioners registered in the course.
“Who should I become in order to bring social and organizational wellbeing back to my country?”. “To create an innovation team in the beverage industry”. “To implement innovation in high school”. “I want to communicate better”. “To learn new ways of leading change”. “To create the space for others to tap into their own inner knowledge”. “To explore the idea of slow marketing and slow business”. “To stop complaining about the state of the world and to begin acting about it”. “To contribute to restoring the social fabric in my country”. “I don’t know it yet, but I am here for that”. “What am I not seeing? I think that is a huge question”. “I feel this moment is the most important moment of my life”.
Transformation in Action
Eva Pomeroy, from Concordia University at Montreal, who heads the Research department at the Presencing Institute, explains what the learners discover when they go through the u.lab journey.
“In the more interior impact of u.lab, people talk about seeing themselves more clearly, their disconnects, shadows, blind spots, integrating the different aspects of themselves in an integrated alignment with the outer world. Interpersonally or relationally, we hear people saying more than anything else that they are deepening their capacity to listen openheartedly, to really understand the other, and strengthen their relationships. When they interact with their ecosystems, like workplaces, family systems, organizations, they talk about bringing a different quality of conversation, broadening the number of stakeholders, creating spaces for dialogue, and for more collaborative decision-making”.
“Underlying all of this comes what we call Action Confidence, which is the courage and the capacity to step into the action and bring into reality something that did not exist before, opening perspectives, opening their hearts, being touched by something or someone other than themselves, and that being a source of energy for stepping into purpose”.
“Action confidence is built in part on the practice of letting go and letting come, especially around building trust in the letting come, and in part, it comes from the practice of prototyping — bringing something to the world that isn’t quite ready, in order to get feedback and move forward”.
Kelvy’s Social Resonance
Kelvy Bird, one of the core team members of the Presencing Institute, and author of the book Generative Scribing sensed the energy generated by the session's social field and drew the picture showed below. This is how she explains it.
“We are stardust, there is a bigger scheme and we are so small, and there is this need to be connected down to our sources of inspiration and let it come up to renew and to rebuild. There is something coming in through these portals, these windows of the open mind, open heart, and open will, which started to look a bit like eyes. There is something for us to see through these capacities that we develop at u.lab. Then, what we see through is rooted down and connected down to each other, and to our intent and then we come back up and influence new paradigms of thought, new structures, and behaviors. And that, hopefully, might start to turn things around”.
Otto comments on the picture also. “I also see this like a spine that allows vertical connection to form. So, you have an open mind, open heart, open will, but also a deepening capacity to listen and to develop the action confidence that Eva was talking about. If we attend to the current moment and have the courage to look into the mirror of that, sort of a vertical integration that not only is possible for us, but we can also help each other to manifest”.
No one can undertake this journey alone, and the main part is that in your hub, in your circle, virtual or rooted in place, we can turn to each other and investigate the question: What is the intention that you bring to this community? And what might help you to move forward?
You are invited to register in the life-changing program, “u.lab. Leading from the Emerging Future”, it is free and self-paced.
If you are interested in deepening and enriching the u.lab learning and growth experience for yourself or your team, please contact me at helio.borges.consulting@gmail.com to have a generative conversation.
