Reflections

Volume 13, Number 2

The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

B ook E x ce r pt

Humble Inquiry
Edgar H. Schein

On Communication:
Process Consultation,
Helping, and Humble
Inquiry
Edgar H. Schein

B ook E x ce r pt

Leading the Relational
Inversion: From Ego to Eco

C. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer

Disaster as a Springboard
for Thriving, Resilient
Communities
Bob Stilger

Healthcare at Its Best:Southcentral Foundation’sCore Concepts Training
Katherine Gottlieb andMichelle Tierney

Commentary
Robert Hanig

Photo courtesy of Michael Goodman

Published by The Society for Organizational Learning
www.solonline.org
ISSN 1524-1734

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r e f lections | vol u me 1 3 , N u mbe r 2

p u blishe r ’ s N ote 1 3 . 2In our efforts to solve chronic
problems or effect sustainable change, we frequently
rely on the hero model of leadership, in which success or failure depends on a single person
or a select group of people. We
know this model rarely works.
Frank Schneider
This issue of Reflections focuseson those who have rejected this approach and who instead understand that supporting and being supported
by others is what achieves desired results.
How often has poor communication interfered with orundermined your intentions and actions? In this excerpt
from his book Humble Inquiry, founding publisher ofReflections Ed Schein describes a key element of building positive relationships: what he calls “humble inquiry,”a mode of communication that focuses on asking rather
than telling. By inquiring instead of offering opinion
or advice, we demonstrate curiosity and interest in theother person. In turn, these conditions create a psychologically safe place to build mutual trust and improve
communication – and, ultimately, action.
In a companion piece, ”On Communication: Process
Consultation, Helping, and Humble Inquiry,” Schein reflects on his own evolution as a consultant. He describes
how he discovered that there are many different ways
to intervene and that one of the least effective is to tell.
He learned that what his clients really wanted from him
was to help their organizations be more effective inwhat they were trying to do. Over time, Schein cameto understand that open communication was thecornerstone to helping his clients improve essential
organizational processes.
In their book Leading from the Emerging Future: From
Ego-System to Eco-System Economies, Otto Scharmer andKatrin Kaufer explain that if we are to meet the demandsof today’s challenges, we need to shift from an obsolete“ego-system” that focuses on individual well-being to an“eco-system” that emphasizes the well-being of the whole.

In this excerpt, they share three inspirational stories that
illustrate the main leverage points for shifting a system
as a whole to a more effective way of operating.
Bob Stilger knows first-hand what happens when acatastrophe brings a country to its knees. In “Disasteras a Springboard for Thriving, Resilient Communities,”
he describes his experiences in Japan in the aftermath of March 11, 2011, when the triple disasters ofearthquake, tsunami, and radiation leak devastatedthe northeastern part of the country. Despite theunimaginable conditions they endured, many people
sought each other out to reflect on how they cancreate a new future together. Since then, a numberof initiatives for encouraging creativity and collective
action have been launched. At a time when the world
is vulnerable to collapsing systems, the people ofJapan are showing us how to build resilient
communities.
“Healthcare at Its Best: Southcentral Foundation’s Core
Concepts Training” is the story of one community’s transformative journey from dependence and control to selfdetermination and authenticity. In this article, Katherine
Gottlieb and Michelle Tierney, two leaders of this effort,
describe what can be achieved when tradition and culture
guide the design of a training program. By integrating
foundational concepts and processes learned at SoL’s
Core Competencies Course, Southcentral Foundation,an Alaska Native-owned, nonprofit healthcare organization, developed its own Core Concepts Training. Today,
SCF’s healthcare system stands as an exemplary modelof change and a testament to what can be accomplishedwhen people work collectively to control their own destiny.
The articles in this issue highlight the importance ofworking to resolve stubborn challenges collectively,
as one. In reading this issue, we hope that you will be
encouraged and inspired as you continue to strive
toward that end in your own work. n		Frank Schneider, PublisherE x ec u tive D igeste x ec u tive digest 1 3 . 2

Humble Inquiry
Edgar H. ScheinCommunication is essential to healthy relationships,
but too often when we interact with people, we end
up telling them what we think they need to know. In
the process, we miss the opportunity to build relationships based on curiosity and interest in the other person. In today’s increasingly complex, interdependent,
and culturally diverse world, this inability to practicewhat Professor Edgar Schein refers to as “Humble Inquiry” can interfere with our ability to generate bold
new ideas, avoid disastrous mistakes, and develop
agility and flexibility as a team. In this excerpt from
Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of
Telling, Schein contrasts Humble Inquiry with otherkinds of inquiry and shows the benefits of Humble
Inquiry in an organizational setting.

Leading the Relational Inversion:
From Ego to Eco
C. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer
In their recent book Leading from the Emerging Future:
From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies, Otto
Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer contend that meeting 		the challenges of this century requires updating our
economic logic and operating system. We need to shift
from an obsolete “ego-system” that focuses entirely 		
on individual well-being to an “eco-system” that emphasizes the well-being of the whole. In this excerpt,
the authors focus on a key element of this change:learning how to see ourselves through the eyes ofothers and of the whole. Three stories offer inspiration
for creating the rich new forms of communicationneeded to build a more resilient, intentional,
inclusive, and aware economy.

On Communication: Process Consultation,
Helping, and Humble Inquiry

Disaster as a Springboard for Thriving,
Resilient Communities

Edgar H. Schein

Bob Stilger

Throughout his career, Reflection’s Founding Editor
Edgar Schein has sought to find the most effective ways
to intervene in organizational challenges. He learned
early on that clients don’t want advice – they want
help in improving their interpersonal, group, and organizational processes. Schein came to understand theimportance of asking the client what kind of help might
be useful before rushing in with advice or action. Thisemphasis on asking instead of telling has implications
for communication within an organization as well. As
the world becomes more complex and tasks become
more interdependent, coordination is crucial. Through“Humble Inquiry,” team members build the trustnecessary for engaging in mutual learning.

What happens when catastrophe fundamentallyshifts the world we know? In March 11, 2011, the triple
disasters of earthquake, tsunami, and radiation leakdevastated northeastern Japan. In the aftermath of thetragedy, people from throughout the country began togather not just to share their grief but to consider how
they might create a new future together. Numerous
initiatives have been launched to experiment with 		the structures, processes, and practices that create
conditions for creativity and collective action. As weenter a time when the world as a whole may experienceeven more collapsing systems and disasters, the peopleof Japan – and especially of the Tohoku region – areshowing us the way to build healthy and resilient
communities.

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3r e f lections | vol u me 1 3

reflections.solonline.org

e x ec u tive digest 1 3 . 2

Healthcare at Its Best: Southcentral
Foundation’s Core Concepts Training
Katherine Gottlieb and Michelle Tierney
True transformation, particularly in an organization, isa rare occurrence. It requires unswerving commitment
to vision, leadership that is willing to learn, and an organization determined to change in a way that is beneficial
to all, not to just a select few. To guide it toward achieving its vision of creating a community that enjoys

physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness,
Southcentral Foundation (SCF), an Alaska Native-owned,
nonprofit healthcare organization, worked with SoL
to design and implement a foundational program, theCore Concepts Training. SCF’s story not only presents
an exemplary model of change but perhaps more 		
importantly illustrates what can be accomplishedwhen people choose to control their own destiny.

t r ib u te | C h r is A r g y r isv

t r ib u te 1 3 . 2

Chris Argyris
1923–2013

On November 16, Chris Argyris diedpeacefully, surrounded by his family
after living a full and meaningful life.
During his 90 years, Chris served in
World War II, produced over 30 books
and 150 articles, taught at Yale’s Schoolof Management and at Harvard’s
Business School and Graduate Schoolof Education, served on the boardsof the Monitor Group and Greenwich
Research Associates, and earned 14
honorary doctorates. He leaves behinda body of work and a community ofinquiry that will forever shape how
we think about leaders, organizations,
theory-building, research, and practice.
As the father of organizational learning, Chris exemplified what he taught:
the curiosity and courage it takes tosustain learning, even in the face of
threat; the hope and humility it takes
to create a better world; and the unbounded generativity and generosity
it takes not just to create new ideas,
but to forge collaborations across 		
disciplines and to mentor a wide
range of scholars and practitioners.
But it was Chris’s unique ability to 		
empathize with people’s experiences
and circumstances – while still holding
them accountable for changing them– that affected me most. This was 		
his ticket into the hearts and mindsof thousands of people around theworld – government and corporate

the 1960s, he had the highest standards when it came to rigor, thought,
and excellence.
Curious, I asked, “So who are theother two?”“Jay Forrester and Herb Simon.”Over the next three decades, I cameto fully appreciate why my Dad reacted
the way he did, and in what finecompany he had placed Chris.
leaders, students, professors, and 		colleagues alike.
It certainly was for me. Thirty-fiveyears ago, while looking at a catalogue
for the Harvard Graduate School of
Education, where Chris was teachingat the time, my father noticed Chris’s
name.
“Chris Argyris? Chris Argyris?” he asked
excitedly. “He teaches there?”“It looks that way,” I said, unaware of
the name and surprised by the reaction.
“Well, you have to take his course. He
was one of only three consultants whocame through IBM that I had the greatest respect for. He’s absolutely brilliant.”
That coming from my father was exceptionally high praise. As a memberof IBM’s Management Committee in

I like to think of Chris now in thatkind of company, along with his mostgenerative collaborator, Don Schön,with whom he wrote the seminal
books Theory in Practice (1974) and 		
Organizational Learning (1978). I canjust see him – a broad smile lighting
his face, eyes full of curiosity – asking
the unexpected question, listening
for a toehold to advance learning, 		
and not stopping until something 		
new comes of it.
Chris leaves behind his beloved wifeof 63 years, Renee, and his talented
and devoted children, Dianne and Phil,
two apples who did not fall far fromthe tree.
				— Diana McLain Smithbook e x ce r pt | scheinbook e x ce r pt 1 3 . 2

Humble Inquiry
Excerpted from Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling
Edgar H. Schein
Berrett-Koehler, 2013
Copyright © by Edgar H. Schein. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
All rights reserved. www.bkconnection.com

Communication is essential to healthy relationships, but too often when we interact with people,
we end up telling them what we think they need to know. In the process, we miss the opportunity
to build relationships based on curiosity and interest in the other person. In today’s increasingly
complex, interdependent, and culturally diverse world, this inability to practice what Professor
Edgar Schein refers to as “Humble Inquiry” can interfere with our ability to generate bold new
ideas, avoid disastrous mistakes, and develop agility and flexibility as a team. In this excerpt
from Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, Schein contrasts Humble Inquiry
with other kinds of inquiry and shows the benefits of Humble Inquiry in an organizational setting.

When conversations go wrong, when our best advice is ignored, when we get
upset with the advice that others give us, when our subordinates fail to tell us
things that would improve matters or avoid pitfalls, when discussions turn into
arguments that end in stalemates and hurt feelings – what went wrong andwhat could have been done to get better outcomes?
A vivid example came from one of my executive students in the MIT Sloan Program
who was studying for his important finance exam in his basement study. He had
Edgar H. Schein
explicitly instructed his six-year-old daughter not to interrupt him. He was deep
into his work when a knock on the door announced the arrival of his daughter. He said sharply, “I thought
I told you not to interrupt me.” The little girl burst into tears and ran off. The next morning his wife berated
him for upsetting the daughter. He defended himself vigorously until his wife interrupted and said,“I sent her down to you to say goodnight and ask you if you wanted a cup of coffee to help with yourstudying. Why did you yell at her instead of asking her why she was there?”
How can we do better? The answer is simple, but its implementation is not. We would have to do three
things: (1) do less telling; (2) learn to do more asking in the particular form of Humble Inquiry; and (3)do a better job of listening and acknowledging. Talking and listening have received enormous attention
via hundreds of books on communication. But the social art of asking a question has been strangely
neglected.
Yet what we ask and the particular form in which we ask it – what I describe as Humble Inquiry –is ultimately the basis for building trusting relationships, which facilitates better communication and,
thereby, ensures collaboration where it is needed to get the job done.

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something that I did not ask about, I find that I
already know that and wonder why the person
assumes that I don’t. When I am told things that I
already know or have thought of, at the minimum I
get impatient, and at the maximum I get offended.
The fact that the other person says, “But I was only
trying to help – you might not have thought ofit,” does not end up being helpful or reassuring.

© Photodisc

Some tasks can be accomplished by each person
doing his or her own thing. If that is the case,building relationships and improving communication may not matter. In the team sports ofbasketball, soccer, and hockey, teamwork is

If part of the goal of the conversation is to improve communication
and build a relationship, thentelling is more risky than asking.
desirable but not essential. But when all the parties
have to do the right thing – when there is complete,simultaneous interdependence, as in a seesaw or
a relay race – then good relationships and open
communication become essential.

How Does Asking Build Relationships?
We all live in a culture of Tell and find it difficult
to ask, especially to ask in a humble way. Whatis so wrong with telling? The short answer is asociological one. Telling puts the other person
down. It implies that the other person does notalready know what I am telling and that the otherperson ought to know it. Often when I am told

On the other hand, asking temporarily empowers
the other person in the conversation and temporarily makes me vulnerable. It implies that theother person knows something that I need to or
want to know. It draws the other person into thesituation and into the driver’s seat; it enables theother person to help or hurt me and, thereby,
opens the door to building a relationship. If I don’tcare about communicating or building a relationship with the other person, then telling is fine.
But if part of the goal of the conversation is toimprove communication and build a relationship,then telling is more risky than asking.
A conversation that leads to a relationship has tobe sociologically equitable and balanced. If I wantto build a relationship, I have to begin by investingsomething in it. Humble Inquiry is investing byspending some of my attention up front. My question is conveying to the other person, “I am preparedto listen to you and am making myself vulnerable
to you.” I will get a return on my investment if
what the other person tells me is something that
I did not know before and needed to know. I willthen appreciate being told something new, anda relationship can begin to develop throughsuccessive cycles of being told something
in response to asking.
Trust builds on my end because I have mademyself vulnerable, and the other person has nottaken advantage of me nor ignored me. Trustbuilds on the other person’s end because I haveshown an interest in and paid attention to what
I have been told. A conversation that builds atrusting relationship is, therefore, an interactive
process in which each party invests and gets
something of value in return.

book e x ce r pt | schein

All of this occurs within the cultural boundaries
of what is considered appropriate good manners
and civility. The participants exchange information
and attention in successive cycles guided by eachof their perceptions of the cultural boundaries ofwhat is appropriate to ask and tell about in thegiven situation.
Why does this not occur routinely? Don’t we allknow how to ask questions? Of course we think
we know how to ask, but we fail to notice howoften even our questions are just another form of
telling – rhetorical or just testing whether what we
think is right. We are biased toward telling insteadof asking because we live in a pragmatic, problemsolving culture in which knowing things and telling others what we know is valued. We also live
in a structured society in which building relationships is not as important as task accomplishment,
in which it is appropriate and expected that thesubordinate does more asking than telling, while
the boss does more telling that asking. Having
to ask is a sign of weakness or ignorance, so weavoid it as much as possible.
Yet there is growing evidence that many tasks
get accomplished better and more safely if teammembers and especially bosses learn to build relationships through the art of Humble Inquiry. This
form of asking shows interest in the other person,
signals a willingness to listen, and, thereby, temporarily empowers the other person. It implies
a temporary state of dependence on another
and, therefore, implies a kind of Here-and-now
Humility, which must be distinguished fromtwo other forms of humility.

Three Kinds of Humility
Humility, in the most general sense, refers to
granting someone else a higher status than one
claims for oneself. To be humiliated means to be
publicly deprived of one’s claimed status, to lose
face. It is unacceptable in all cultures to humiliate
another person, but the rules for what constitutes
humiliation vary among cultures due to differencesin how status is granted. Therefore, to understandHumble Inquiry, we need to distinguish threekinds of humility based on three kinds of status:

1. Basic humility
In traditional societies where status is ascribed bybirth or social position, humility is not a choice but
a condition. One can accept it or resent it, but one
cannot arbitrarily change it. In most cultures the

We are biased toward tellinginstead of asking because we live
in a pragmatic, problem-solving
culture in which knowing things
and telling others what we know
is valued.
“upper class” is granted an intrinsic respect basedon the status one is born into. In Western democracies such as the United States, we are in conflict
about how humble to be in front of someone who
has been born into it rather than having achieved
it. But all cultures dictate the minimum amount ofrespect required, or the expected politeness andacknowledgment that adults owe each other. We
all acknowledge that as human beings we owe
each other some basic respect and should act
with some measure of civility.

2. Optional humility
In societies where status is achieved through one’s
accomplishments, we tend to feel humble in thepresence of people who have clearly achieved
more than we have, and we either admire or envy
them. This is optional because we have the choice
whether or not to put ourselves in the presence ofothers who would humble us with their achievements. We can avoid such feelings of humility by
the company we choose and who we choose tocompare ourselves to, our reference groups. Whenin the presence of someone whose achievements
we respect, we generally know what the expected
rules of deference and demeanor are, but thesecan vary by occupational culture. How to properly3

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show respect for the Nobel Prize–winning physicist
or the Olympic Gold Medal–winner may require
some coaching by occupational insiders.

There is a third kind of humility that is crucial forthe understanding of Humble Inquiry. Here-andnow Humility is how I feel when I am dependent
on you. My status is inferior to yours at this moment
because you know something or can do something that I need in order to accomplish some task
or goal that I have chosen. You have the power
to help or hinder me in the achievement of goals
that I have chosen and have committed to. I haveto be humble because I am temporarily dependent on you. Here I also have a choice. I can either
not commit to tasks that make me dependent onothers, or I can deny the dependency, avoid feeling humble, fail to get what I need, and, thereby,
fail to accomplish the task or unwittingly sabotage
it. Unfortunately people often would rather failthan to admit their dependency on someone else.

perceive his or her dependency on the subordinate,
either because of incorrect assumptions about
the nature of the task that is being performed or
because of incorrect assumptions about a subordinate’s level of commitment to the particular job.
The boss may assume that if something is in thesubordinate’s job description, it will be done, andnot notice the many ways in which subordinates
will withhold information or drift off what they
have been trained for. But, if I am a boss on a seesaw or in a relay race in which everyone’s performance matters to getting the job done at all, I am
de facto dependent on the subordinate whether
I recognize it or not. Getting the seesaw to moveand passing the baton will work only if all theparticipants, regardless of formal status, recognize
their dependence on each other. It is in that situation
where Humble Inquiry by all the parties becomesmost relevant, where the humility is not basedon a priori status gaps or differences in priorachievement, but on recognized here-and-now
interdependence.

This kind of humility is easy to see and feel 		when you are the subordinate, the student, or
the patient/client because the situation you are
in defines relative status. It is less visible in a teamamong peers, and it is often totally invisible tothe boss who may assume that the formal power
granted by the position itself will guarantee theperformance of the subordinate. The boss may not

When you are dependent on someone to get atask accomplished, it is essential that you build
a relationship with that person that will lead toopen task-related communication. Consider two
possibilities. You are the boss in the relay race.
Telling the person to put out her or his left handso that you, who are right-handed, can easily
pass the baton, may or may not lead to effective

3. Here-and-now Humility

book e x ce r pt | scheinpassing. However, if you decide to engage in
Humble Inquiry prior to the race, you might ask
your teammate’s preference for which hand to use.
You might then discover that the person has an
injured left hand that does not work as well, andit would be better for you to pass with your left.
Shouldn’t the subordinate have mentioned that
before the race anyway? Not if in that culture
for one person to speak up directly to a personof higher status is taboo. If the baton pass is an
instrument a nurse passes to the surgeon, isn’t itenough for the surgeon to tell the nurse what sheneeds and expect a correct response? Ordinarily
yes, but what if the nurse is temporarily distracted
by a beep from monitoring equipment or confused
because of a possible language problem or thinks
it is the wrong instrument? Should he not speak
up and admit that he does not understand, or are
the cultural forces in the situation such that hewill guess and maybe make a costly mistake? If,
in the culture of that operating room, the doctors
are gods and one simply does not question orconfront them, that nurse will not speak up, even
if there is potential harm to the patient. My pointis that in both of those examples, the boss andthe doctor are de facto dependent on their subordinates and must, therefore, recognize their
Here-and-now Humility. Failure to do so andfailure to engage in Humble Inquiry to build a
relationship prior to the race or the operation itself
then leads to poor performance, potential harm,and feelings of frustration all around.
When such situations occur within a given culture
where the rules of deference and demeanor are
clear, there is a chance that the parties will understand each other. But when the team members
in an interdependent task are more multicultural,both the language and the set of behavioral rules
about how to deal with authority and trust mayvary. To make this clear, let’s look at a hypotheticalmulticultural example from medicine, keeping in
mind that the same cultural forces would operate
in a comparable example of a task force in a business or in a curriculum committee in a school.

Three Kinds of Humility:
A Surgical Team Example
Consider these three types of humility in the context of a hypothetical British hospital operating
room where a complex operation is being performed. The surgeon is Dr. Roderick Brown, theson of Lord Brown, who is a respected senior
surgeon and works with the Royal Family; the anesthesiologist is Dr. Yoshi Tanaka, recently arrived
from Japan on a residency fellowship; the surgicalnurse is Amy Grant, an American working in the
United Kingdom because her husband has a job
there; and the surgical tech is Jack Swift, who isfrom a lower-class section of London and hasgone as high as he is likely to go at the hospital.1

When you are dependent 		
on someone to get a task
accomplished, it is essential thatyou build a relationship withthat person that will lead to open
task-related communication.
All the members of the team would feel somebasic humility with respect to the surgeon, Dr.
Brown, except possibly Amy, who does not particularly respect the British class structure. BothAmy and Dr. Tanaka would feel optional humility
with respect to Dr. Brown because they can see
how talented Brown is with surgical tools. Jack islikely to feel such optional humility with respect
to all the others in the room. What none of them
may be sufficiently aware of is that they are interdependent and will, therefore, have to experience
Here-and-now Humility from time to time withrespect to each other.
Dr. Brown, the senior surgeon, may know implicitly,
but would not necessarily acknowledge openly,that he is also dependent on the other three. A
situation might well arise where he needs information or something to be done by the others in
the room who have lower status than he. In the5

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context of the task to be done, situations will arise
where an occupationally higher-status person
temporarily has lower status by virtue of being
dependent and, therefore, should display Hereand-now humility to ensure a better performanceand a safer outcome for the patient.
The higher-status person often denies or glosses
over this kind of dependency by rationalizing that
“I am, after all, working with professionals.” That
implies that they are all competent, are committed
to the superordinate goals of healing the patient,and accept their roles and relative status in the room.
It implies that they don’t feel humiliated by having
orders barked at them or having help demandedof them. Their “professionalism” also typically assumes that they will not humiliate the person withhigher status by offering criticism or help unlessasked. The burden then falls on the higher-status
person to ask for help and to create the climatethat gives permission for the help to be given.

Situational Trouble or Surprise
If things work smoothly, there may be no issues
around status and open communication. But what
if something goes wrong or something unexpectedoccurs? For example, if Dr. Tanaka is about to makea major mistake on the anesthetics, and the nurse,
Amy, notices it, what should she do? Should she
speak up? And what are the consequences of her
speaking up about it? Being American, she mightjust blurt it out and risk that Dr. Tanaka would,in fact, be humiliated by being corrected by alower-status nurse, a woman, and an American.
If the corrective comment was made by Dr. Brown,
it might be embarrassing, but would have been
accepted because the senior person can legitimately correct the junior person. Dr. Tanaka might
actually appreciate it. Jack might have seen thepotential error but would not be licensed to speak
up at all. If Amy or the tech made the mistake,they might get yelled at and thrown off the team

© XiXinXing

book e x ce r pt | scheinbecause from the point of view of the seniordoctor, they could easily be replaced by someone
more competent.
What if Dr. Brown was about to make a mistake?
Would anyone tell him? Dr. Tanaka has learnedin his culture that one never corrects a superior.
This might go so far as to cover up for a surgeon’s
mistake in order to protect the face of the superior
and the profession. Amy would experience conflict and might or might not speak up depending
on how psychologically safe she felt in the situation. That might be based on what kind of historyof communication and relationship she had with
Dr. Brown and other male surgeons in her past
career. She might not know whether Dr. Brown
would be humiliated by having a nurse offer acorrective comment or question. And humiliationmust be avoided in most cultures, so it would be
difficult for her to speak up unless she and Dr.
Brown had built a relationship in which she felt
safe to do so.
Jack would certainly not speak up but might latertell terrible stories about Dr. Brown to his techcolleagues if the operation went badly and thepatient was harmed or died unnecessarily. If thisincident later led to an official inquiry, Jack and Dr.
Tanaka might be called as witnesses. They might
be asked what they had observed and would
either have to lie or, if they admitted that they
saw the mistake, might be criticized for nothaving done anything at the time.
All this would result from Dr. Brown (the leader)being insensitive to the cultural rules aroundspeaking up across status boundaries and notdoing anything to change those rules within his
surgical team. What is missing in this scenario,
and it is often missing in all kinds of complex
interdependent tasks, is a social mechanism that
overrides the barriers to communication acrossstatus lines where humiliation is a cultural possibility. To build this social mechanism – a relationship that facilitates relevant, task-oriented, open
communication across status boundaries – 		requires that leaders learn the art of Humble
Inquiry. The most difficult part of this learning isfor persons in the higher-status position to become
Here-and-now Humble, to realize that in many
situations they are de facto dependent on subordinates and other lower-status team members.

In achievement-oriented cultures
where knowledge and the displayof it are admired, being Here-andnow Humble implies loss of status.
This kind of humility is difficult to learn because inachievement-oriented cultures where knowledge
and the display of it are admired, being Here-andnow Humble implies loss of status. Yet this is precisely the kind of humility that will increasingly beneeded by leaders, managers, and professionals of
all sorts because they will find themselves more
and more in tasks where mutual interdependency
is the basic condition. That might at times requireleaders to ask their team, “Am I doing this correctly? Tell me if I am doing something wrong.”
This is even harder to learn when some of themembers of the team come from traditional
cultures in which arbitrary status lines must not
be overridden and where task failure is preferable
to humiliation and loss of face.
What would it take to get Dr. Tanaka, Amy, andeven Jack to confront Dr. Brown when he is about
to make a mistake? Efforts to define common
goals, require procedures such as checklists, andstandardize training are necessary but not sufficient because, in a new and ambiguous situation,team members will fall back on their own cultural
rules and do unpredictable things. A leader of any
multicultural team who really wanted to ensure
open task-related communication would use
Humble Inquiry to first build a relationship withthe others that would make them feel psychologically safe and able to overcome the conflict they
may experience between their duties and their7

8

r e f lections | vol u me 1 3 , N u mbe r 2				Questions for the Reader• Think about various people whom you admire andrespect. What is the type of humility that you feel ineach case?
• Think about tasks that require collaboration. In what way
are you dependent on another person? Try to reflect on
and recognize the temporary Here-and-now Humility thatis required of each of you as you help each other. Do you
think you can talk about this kind of humility with eachother when you next discuss your joint task? If not, whynot?
• Now think about yourself in your daily life with friends andfamily. Reflect on the kinds of questions you tend to ask
in ordinary conversation and in task situations. Are theydifferent? Why?
• What is the one most important thing you have learned
about how to ask questions?
• Now take a few minutes just to reflect quietly on what
you have learned in general so far.

culturally and professionally defined sense ofdeference.

What Is Inquiry?
Having defined what humility means in this analysis of Humble Inquiry, we need next to ask what
inquiry means. Inquiry is also a complex concept.

Most of us have not considered
how questions should be asked in
the context of daily life, ordinary
conversations, and, mostimportantly, task performance.
Questioning is both a science and an art. Professional question askers such as pollsters have done
decades of research on how to ask a question to
get the kind of information they want. Effective
therapists, counselors, and consultants haverefined the art of questioning to a high degree.

But most of us have not considered how questions
should be asked in the context of daily life, ordinary conversations, and, most importantly, task
performance. When we add the issue of asking
questions across cultural and status boundaries,
things become very muddy indeed.
What we ask, how we ask it, where we ask it,
and when we ask it all matter. But the essence of
Humble Inquiry goes beyond just overt questioning. The kind of inquiry I am talking about derives
from an attitude of interest and curiosity. It implies
a desire to build a relationship that will lead tomore open communication. It also implies that
one makes oneself vulnerable and, thereby,
arouses positive helping behavior in the otherperson. Such an attitude is reflected in a variety
of behaviors other than just the specific questions
we ask. Sometimes we display through bodylanguage and silence a curiosity and level ofinterest that gets the other person talking evenwhen we have said nothing.
Feelings of Here-and-now Humility are, for themost part, the basis of curiosity and interest. If
I feel I have something to learn from you or want
to hear from you some of your experiences or feelings because I care for you, or need somethingfrom you to accomplish a task, this makes me
temporarily dependent and vulnerable. It is precisely my temporary subordination that creates
psychological safety for you and, therefore,
increases the chances that you will tell me what
I need to know and help me get the job done.
If you exploit the situation and lie to me or takeadvantage of me by selling me something I don’t
need or giving me bad advice, I will learn to avoid
you in the future or punish you if I am your boss.
If you tell me what I need to know and help me,
we have begun to build a positive relationship.
Inquiry, in this context, does imply that you ask
questions. But not any old question. The dilemmain U.S. culture is that we don’t really distinguishwhat I am defining as Humble Inquiry carefully
enough from leading questions, rhetorical questions, embarrassing questions, or statements inbook e x ce r pt | schein© iStock/Marcin Balcerzak

the form of questions – such as journalists seemto love – which are deliberately provocative andintended to put you down. If leaders, managers,
and all kinds of professionals are to learn Humble
Inquiry, they will have to learn to differentiate
carefully among the possible questions to ask
and make choices that build the relationship.
How this is done will vary with the setting, thetask, and the local circumstances. n

If I feel I have something to learn
from you or want to hear fromyou some of your experiences or
feelings because I care for you,or need something from you
to accomplish a task, this makes
me temporarily dependent 		
and vulnerable.

e n d n ote
1	For this example, the gender of the characters reflects the current situation in medicine and is thus intended
to reflect current reality rather than what might be desirable.

abo u t the a u tho r
Edgar H. Schein is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and a Professor
Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is the author of numerous books and articles in
the fields of organizational culture, process consultation, research process, career dynamics, andorganization learning and change. Professor Schein is the founding editor of Reflections.

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f eat u r e 1 3 . 2

On Communication

Process Consultation, Helping, andHumble Inquiry
edga r H . S chein
Throughout his career, Reflection’s Founding Editor Edgar Schein has sought to find the most effective ways
to intervene in organizational challenges. He learned early on that clients don’t want advice – they want
help in improving their interpersonal, group, and organizational processes. Schein came to understand theimportance of asking the client what kind of help might be useful before rushing in with advice or action.
This emphasis on asking instead of telling has implications for communication within an organization as
well. As the world becomes more complex and tasks become more interdependent, coordination is crucial.
Through “Humble Inquiry,” team members build the trust necessary for engaging in mutual learning.

As one ages, one begins to see what my friend Jay Keyser so accurately called the“arc of one’s work.” My complex title is intended to represent that arc, which I now
see more clearly than ever. The issue is: In any given situation, do we ask or tell?
And if we are wise enough to ask before telling, in what way do we ask? Does
asking serve a special function in the communication process? The answer tothese questions is, I realize, the key to my last 60 years of work.
Edgar H. Schein

The Work of the Scholar/Practitioner

The ideas that constitute the answers to these questions were not invented by
me. They were empirically forced onto me by the various kinds of good and bad experiences I had as ateacher, consultant, human relations trainer, coach, and helper. Observing experience closely, analyzingit, categorizing it, clarifying it, and eventually developing concepts to explain it has been my forte andpreferred method of studying interpersonal, group, and organizational dynamics. Though I started as anexperimental social psychologist, I realized early that the traditional scientific methods inherited fromthe physical sciences did not lend themselves to studying human behavior. At the same time, I was
always intrigued by Kurt Lewin’s assertion that you do not really understand an organization until you
try to change it. Becoming a T-group trainer and designer of workshops showed me how applicablethat observation is at the personal and group level. In turn, I comfortably took on a new identity,that of scholar/practitioner.
I came to call the scholarship side of this identity clinical inquiry, and I published a small book and several
articles on that method of research.1 The practitioner side of it involved continuing to do various kindsof consulting and to introduce experiential methods into the classroom. I found that becoming an interventionist was consistent with being on the faculty at a school of management, in the sense that if
management is anything, it is the craft of “intervention.”

f eat u r e | schein

My arc of learning was created by the discovery
that there are many different ways to intervene
and that one of the least effective is to tell – to give
advice, to make recommendations, even to step inas surrogate leader or manager. My clients taught
me early on that they did not want my advice,
they wanted help, and that advice was generally
not helpful for two important reasons: (1) they had
already thought of it, and (2) they had rejected it
because it would not fit into their culture, i.e., it
could not be implemented. It was my good fortune that these clients, such as Digital Equipment
Corporation (DEC), taught me what is really helpful, which is to aid the organization in doing more
effectively what it is trying to do – to improve its
interpersonal, group and organizational processes.2

Clinical Inquiry
The essence of the idea was not so complicated –help the client with what he or she or they are trying to do. But figuring out what they were trying
to do required inquiry of various sorts, because
clients often were not themselves aware of just what
they were trying to do, or they focused the consultant on the wrong issues. Whether I liked it or not,my clinical inquiry had to deal with the cultures andsubcultures of the client systems, something that
I noticed the advocacy consultants consistently
failing to do. This did not generally mean longhours of interrogation or therapeutic interviewing,
but rather the right question based on genuine
curiosity about what the client system was trying
to do and especially asking about things that werepuzzling. For me, that was the essence of how
you clinically discover an organization’s cultural
assumptions. This method is, of course, one of
the mainstays of ethnographic research.
It was important to distinguish the psychologicalcontract that ethnographers have with their subjects from the one that process consultants havewith their clients. Ethnographers come in with
their own research agendas and need the cooperation of the members of the culture. They are,therefore, somewhat limited in what they can ask.
If I was invited in to help an organization and it
was costing the client some fees, this legitimatedmy asking all kinds of personal questions about
what was going on. If ethnographers asked similar
questions, they might be viewed as offensive.
From that point of view, a clinical type of inquiry
provides potentially deeper insight into the culture, which helps the client and provides data forIf management is anything,
it is the craft of “intervention.”
the scholar/practitioner. I also observed that thetwo models converge in many situations. As
ethnographers become helpful to their subjects,
their subjects grant them greater access. Likewise,
process consultants often discover that they canlegitimately broaden their base of investigation
beyond what the client initially wanted.
When I later wrote books about organizationaland occupational culture, I drew heavily on myown observed experience rather than on what“the literature” had to say. To be fair to the literature, much of the research that I knew about could
only become useful as I could connect it to events
I experienced. For example, Douglas McGregor
pretty convincingly articulated the power ofTheory Y – the assumption that people want towork and can monitor themselves. I was able toobserve Ken Olsen, the founder and CEO of DEC,
give someone a job and tell them to do the budget,
get it approved, and then not to come back unlesssomething needed to be changed. This observation provided good raw data on the positive
impact that such a management philosophy has
on empowering employees and getting maximum
creativity and commitment from them. I also
observed the unanticipated consequences thatcan occur when this style is used for several successful decades. The employees become powerful, set in their ways, protective of their people andturf, and, in the end, detrimental to the economic
health of the organization as they start to fightwith each other and waste resources. Ken’s style
produced the successful DEC – and that samestyle caused DEC’s failure in the end.3

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Mutual Help
In my various consulting projects, I became quite
aware of how much the management process is
one of mutual help. A good manager creates conditions that enable the subordinate to succeed;
a good team is in a constant state of mutual helping; a good subordinate helps his or her boss as
the need arises. Watching these dynamics in thereal world revealed that this kind of mutual helping has more to do with social and cultural forces

We know a lot about team building among peers but relatively
little about how to improvecoordination across hierarchicalboundaries.
than with personality characteristics. I becameless interested in competency research and much
more interested in the work of Erving Goffman.4
Goffman showed how delicate relationships reallyare, and how difficult it is to be in the position ofneeding help. So I decided to do a sociologicalanalysis of the helping process and, in that regard,
also began to focus more on the culture we live
in and have to adhere to.
This work resulted in the book Helping: How toOffer, Give and Receive Help (Berrett-Koehler, 2009),© Hemera/Karin Lau

which pointed out the importance of asking theclient what kind of help might be helpful before
rushing in with advice, recommendations, or evenaction. My most vivid lesson came one day when
I wanted to help a blind person cross the street.
I grabbed his arm, only to be sternly rebuffed withthe statement that he had to be the one to grab
my arm. Who was I to treat him as a dependent,
needy person? Helping opened up the whole issueof asking and drew attention to the delicate status
dance that goes on between people all the time.
We spend a lot of time analyzing other culturesand ignore the powerful forces that control our
lives in the culture in which we are embedded. In
particular, we often fail to notice that the patternsof deference and demeanor that govern relations
within a hierarchy function coercively, to the point
that, if we violate them, we are chided and subjected to coaching. Most of what I have observed
as going on under the label of “coaching” is reallytraining the client how to get along in the organizational culture that he or she belongs to andwants to get ahead in.
As the world becomes more complex and tasks
become more interdependent, it becomes apparent that coordination is more crucial. We know
a lot about team building among peers but relatively little about how to improve coordination
across hierarchical boundaries. For example, how
do surgeons doing complex operations build effective coordination with nurses and technicians
when everyone understands that the surgeon is
the god in the operating room.5 The myth that itis enough for everyone to be “professional” does
not enable a nurse who has been yelled at bysurgeons to speak up in the operating room. It issignificant that Jody Gittell’s work on “relational
coordination” is receiving a lot of attention, particularly in medicine. She proposes that good coordination requires (1) shared goals, (2) knowledgeof each others’ work, and (3) mutual respect. Hermodel draws attention to the problem of how thehigher-status person can learn and communicate
respect to the lower-status person.6 I reached theconclusion that the key to solving this problem
is for the higher-status person to learn different
behavior, particularly learning to ask.

f eat u r e | schein

Humble Inquiry
To my amazement, books on communication
spend a lot of time on listening and on communicating clearly, but contain hardly a word on asking.
Yet if you don’t ask good questions, there is nothing
to listen to. I devoted a chapter in Helping to different forms of asking and decided that this chapter
really required expansion into a book. I came to thisconclusion based on the frequency of being told
things gratuitously and my discovery that I did not
really like being told things. Yet we live in a culture
in which telling things is valued, while asking is asign of weakness. I also discovered in my work on
safety that many accidents result from a failure of
upward communication. Not only is it inappropriate
in our culture to tell the boss he or she has a problem, but bosses typically create a climate in which
it is not safe or prudent for subordinates to speak
up. Many messengers get shot, more messengers
get ignored, and often the boss says, “Don’t bringme a problem unless you have a solution.”
My book Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking
Instead of Telling (Berrett/Koehler, 2013) takesthese issues into the medical arena and focuseson whether, as operations become more complex,
surgeons are actually becoming more dependent
on their teams. This raises the question of what
the boss, the senior person, the surgeon must do
to create a psychologically safe climate so thata nurse or technician might feel respected andactually point out an error that is about to be
made. Such behavior on the part of higher-status
people goes against the cultural grain, yet may
become more and more necessary. As we lookahead, it will not be good enough to just encourage people to “speak up.” The people in power will
have to change their own behavior first toward
some approximation of humble inquiry and thenengage in mutual learning with their team.7
The logic is simple: If the goal is the communication upward of task-relevant information, then arelationship of trust must exist between superiorand subordinate. The way to build that relationshipis through humble inquiry that reflects people’s
genuine interest in each other as total persons,not just as professional roles. Humble inquiry is,therefore, the basic building block for helping,coaching, and consulting. n

e n d n ote
1 See Schein, E.H. (1987). The Clinical Perspective in Field Work. Sage; Schein, E.H. (1993). “Legitimating ClinicalResearch in the Study of Organizational Culture.” Journal of Counseling and Development, 71, 703-708; and Schein,
E. H. (2008) “Clinical Inquiry/Research, Revised” in P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.) Handbook of Action Research,
Second Edition. Sage.
2 See Schein, E. H. (1969). Process Consultation. Addison-Wesley; and Schein, E. H. (1999). Process Consultation
Revisited. Addison-Wesley.
3 See Schein, E. H. (2003). DEC is Dead; Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation.
Berrett-Koehler.
4 See Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual. Pantheon.
5 See Edmondson, A. C. (2012). Teaming. Jossey-Bass; Kellogg, K. C. (2011). Challenging Operations. Universityof Chicago Press.
6 See Gittell, J. H. (2009). High Performance Health Care. McGraw-Hill.
7 See Edmondson, A. C. (2012). Teaming. Jossey-Bass.
abo u t the a u tho r
Edgar H. Schein is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and a Professor
Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is the author of numerous books and articles in
the fields of organizational culture, process consultation, research process, career dynamics, andorganization learning and change. Professor Schein is the founding editor of Reflections.

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book e x ce r pt 1 3 . 2

Leading the Relational Inversion:
From Ego to Eco
Adapted from Leading from the Emerging Future:
From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies
C. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer
Berrett-Koehler, 2013
Copyright © by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer. Reprinted withpermission of the publisher. All rights reserved. www.bkconnection.com

In their recent book Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to
Eco-System Economies, Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer contend that meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic andoperating system. We need to shift from an obsolete “ego-system” that
focuses entirely on individual well-being to an “eco-system” that emphasizes
the well-being of the whole. In this excerpt, the authors focus on a key element of this change: learning how
to see ourselves through the eyes of others and of the whole. Three stories offer inspiration for creating therich new forms of communication needed to build a more resilient, intentional, inclusive, and aware economy.

C. Otto Scharmer

One of the biggest challenges we face in moving toward an eco-system economy is to act collectively in ways that are intentional, effective, and co-creative.
Over the past several years, I (Otto) have watched executives participate in a
climate change simulation game at MIT, designed and led by MIT Professor John
Sterman. He splits the group into small teams, with each team representing a
key country group in the ongoing United Nations–sponsored negotiations overcarbon emissions. The negotiators’ agreements are fed into a simulation modelusing actual climate data. After the model calculates the likely climate change
outcomes, the negotiators go back to the table for a second round. After threeor four rounds, they are presented with what is inevitably the devastating anddestabilizing impact of their collective decisions on the climate worldwide.1
Then the group reflects on what they have learned.

Three Obstacles: Denial, Cynicism, and Depression
During their postnegotiation reflection session, I noted that the participants
had three habitual reactions of avoidance that prevented the consequences of
their actions from sinking in deeply: (1) denial, (2) cynicism, and (3) depression.
The most common strategy for reality avoidance is denial. We keep ourselves
Katrin Kauferso busy with “urgent” issues that we don’t have time to focus on the one that
may in fact be the most pressing. We are simply too busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. …
The second response is cynicism. Once the outcomes of an agreement become obvious, cynicism is aneasy way out. A cynical person creates distance between himself and the consequences of his actions

book e x ce r pt | S cha r me r and K a u f e r

by saying, “Hey, the world is going to hell anyway;
it doesn’t really matter what I do.”But even if these first two strategies of reality
avoidance are dealt with, there still is a third one
waiting: depression. Depression denies us thepower to collectively shift reality to a different
way of operating. Depression creates a disconnect between self and Self on the level of the will
– just as cynicism creates a disconnect on thelevel of the heart and denial creates a disconnect
on the level of the mind. And into that void slips
doubt, anger, and fear. Fear inhibits us fromletting go of what is familiar, even when weknow it doesn’t work and is holding us back.

Conversations Create the World
Learning how to deal with these three types ofreality avoidance requires self-reflection and aconversation that bends the beam of attention
back onto ourselves. We call this Conversation 4.0– a conversation that allows for embracing the
Fig u r e 1

Four Levels of Stakeholder
Communication in Economic
Systems

collective shadow . . . and for unleashing our
untapped reserves of creativity, as we will discusslater in this chapter.
The main problem today is that we try to solve
complex problems like climate change with traditional types of conversation, which results in predictable outcomes. The collapse of the climate talks
in Copenhagen in 2011 and of the MIT climate simulation game are just two of many, many examples.
All complex modern systems – health, education,energy, sustainability – deal with both individualand collective entities, the latter often throughgovernment. Accordingly, the figure “Four levels of
stakeholder communication in economic systems,”
which shows how stakeholders communicate within
our society’s systems, differentiates between
individual and collective entities on the one hand,and suppliers and consumers on the other hand.
The four levels of conversation are represented
by four rings.

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The most common types of conversation,
represented by the outermost ring, are:1. unilateral and linear;
2. low on inclusion and transparency; and3. organized by an intention to serve thewell-being of the few.
At the center are the rarest and most precious
types of conversation, which offer a major
acupuncture point for future change. They are:1. multilateral and cyclical;
2. high on inclusion and transparency; and3. organized by an intention to serve thewell-being of all.

operate the same way. Their influence often isbased on privileged access and excluding otherrelevant parties from the conversation.

Level 2: Bilateral, Two-Way Discussions,and Exchange of Viewpoints
Level 2 stakeholder communication is a bilateral,
two-way discussion with the intent to provide andreceive information, and includes a response or
feedback mechanism. In markets, the buyer talks
back with her money. In democratic elections,the voter talks back by casting her vote. Both areexcellent examples of two-way communication.

Level 3: Multilateral Stakeholder Dialogue:
Seeing Oneself Through the Eyes of Another

Level 1: Unilateral, One-Way Downloading,and Manipulating

Level 3 stakeholder communication is a multilateral conversation characterized by reflection,
learning, and dialogue.2 Dialogue is a conversation in which you see yourself through the eyesof another – and in the context of the whole. The
examples are manifold, from roundtables and“world cafés” to interactive social media. The conversations need a form, a process, and a holding
space to operate well. Some companies, like
Natura, Nike, and Unilever, have internalized
level 3 communication to their benefit.

Level 1 stakeholder communication is unilateral,
one-way downloading with the intent to manipulate, rather than to serve the well-being of, theother side. Most of what we call corporate or professional communication strategy in business andelection campaigns is organized this way. Market
research segments citizen and consumer communities into specific target groups that are bombarded with customized messaging and communication strategies. The flood of commercials thathits consumers and citizens every day is mindboggling. According to a survey in 1993, the average child in the United States sees 20,000 commercials per year. The average 65-year-old in the
United States has seen two million commercials.

For example, Eosta, an international distributorof organic fresh fruit and vegetables in the Netherlands, and also one of the first companies to be
climate-neutral and use compostable packaging,wants its customers to see the “invisible” processes
behind its products. A three-digit code on eachof its products leads the consumer through the
Eosta website to the producer. For example, thecode 565 on a mango leads to Mr. Zongo in Burkina
Faso, who then responds to the consumer comments online on his wall. This mechanism is an
excellent example of level 3 communication
because it allows consumers to see themselvesin the context of the whole value chain.

One-way communication focuses on “selling,” onmaking the target buy something or vote in a particular way. But the target has no opportunity totalk back. Lobbyists and special-interest groups

Examples of multilateral stakeholder communication also include town hall meetings in New
England, where citizens discuss local issues, andUN efforts such as the Framework Conventions

One-way communication focuses
on “selling,” on making the target
buy something or vote in aparticular way. But the target has
no opportunity to talk back.

book e x ce r pt | S cha r me r and K a u f e r

17

Images: © EOSTA

The sustainability flower was developed in 2009 by an internationalgroup of prominent pioneers and innovators of the organic movement.
They were looking to unite ecological and social values in a single elegant
model. This protocol was developed as a fast, quantitative, and practical
tool to evaluate sustainable achievements along nine separate ecologicaland social dimensions.

on Climate Change. To work well, these stakeholder
communications require enabling technologies
and facilitation.
In the end, all of these approaches deliver thesame result: They help stakeholders in a system
to see themselves in the context of the otherstakeholders and the larger whole. They bend
the beam of attention in ways that help these
distributed communities to see themselves aspart of a bigger picture.

Level 4: Co-Creative Eco-System Innovation:
Blurring the Boundary of Ego and Eco
Level 4 stakeholder communication is a multilateral, collectively creative eco-system conversation that helps diverse groups of players toco-sense and co-create the future by transforming
awareness from ego to eco. Examples include
transformative multistakeholder processes like theWorld Commission on Dams and the Sustainable
Food Lab.3 The outcomes of these processes deliver not only astonishing breakthrough results,
but also a shift in mindset and consciousness fromego-system awareness to eco-system awareness –from a mindset that values one’s own well-being

All Nature & More products are labeled with a stampthat shows the face of the grower and a simple threedigit code. By entering the code on the Nature &More website, you can “meet” the grower and learn allabout his sustainable efforts. Code 183, for example,
corresponds to grower Rob van Paassen.

Dialogue is a conversation in which
you see yourself through the eyesof another – and in the context
of the whole.
to a mindset that also values the well-being of
one’s partners and of the whole.

Leverage Points
Although there are some inspiring examples oflevel 4 innovations, it is quite clear where the mainleverage points are today for shifting the system
to a better way of operating:
1. We need to get rid of the toxic layer of level 1
communication (bribery, soft money, commercials, and other forms of propaganda andmanipulation that keep intoxicating the communication channels of our society today).
2. And we need to develop new spheres of level 4
co-creative stakeholder relationships, in which
partners in an eco-system can come together
to co-sense, prototype, and co-create thefuture of their eco-system.

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The question is how to do it. How can we build
the deep capacities that will allow us to build andscale these level 4 arenas of co-creation? Hereare three stories that offer some inspiration.

Girl Scouts – Arizona Cactus Pine
Council (ACPC)The CEO of the ACPC, Tamara Woodbury, sees
the Girl Scouts as a part of the larger global movement that recognizes the importance of womenleaders in the transformation of intractable societal issues. Since 2005, she and Presencing Institute facilitator Beth Jandernoa and her colleague
Glennifer Gillespie have been experimenting witha process called Circle of Wholeness, designed todive deeply into the qualitative practice of wholeness and well-being in the council and in thelarger Arizona community. The circle, a groupof eighteen, is composed of Girl Scout staff andvolunteers, as well as business, nonprofit, andcivic leaders, men and women, young and old(late teens to early eighties), from a range ofsocial and ethnic backgrounds.

The quality of the conversationthat followed this silence was alive
and fresh with ideas that the group
had previously never considered.
In October 2012, after a day spent immersing
themselves in experience and research around wellbeing and wholeness, the group began a round ofcheck-in, touching base with where people werein their own learning process. Beth and Glennifer
felt a tension between the group’s urge to takeaction and the need to slow down and listen internally to what was wanting to emerge. A breakthrough moment came when John, the former
CEO of an international heavy construction equipment company, shifted the action-driven momentum. He spoke slowly of his difficulties in the earlyphase of becoming a philanthropist. John’s qualityof speech opened the group’s listening and evokeda sense of curiosity and palpable spaciousness.

Moments later, ACPC executive Carol Ackerson
began to speak. Carol is known for her capacity
to conceptualize and articulate complex issues sothat others can easily understand them. This time,
instead of taking a rational approach, she paused
and said: “I know I usually speak from my head,but this time, even though it’s not comfortable, I
feel it is important for me and for all of us to slow
down and listen and speak from our hearts. I feel a
new sensation in my body, and the meaning I makeof it is, if we can be patient and keep from jumping into action, there’s a new possibility present.”
A deep silence descended on the group. As people sat quietly together, someone said, “This isamazing. What is going on?” Glennifer answeredcalmly: “At the beginning of a group’s gathering,
silence is often awkward. As we drop into a deeper
space together, we can have that rare experience
as a collective that ‘silence is golden.’ Let’s keep
sitting with this and let it do its work.” Beth describes her experience, in those moments, as one
in which “both I and the collective were being
rearranged internally – somehow transformed.”
Later Carol said, “I felt as though the presenceof Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl
Scouts, was in the room.”
The quality of the conversation that followed thissilence was alive and fresh with ideas that thegroup had previously never considered. They began to explore how they might define the ACPC’s“signature” conversation (the atmosphere andprocess) and “signature” narrative (the content
of its unique principles and practices). During thatmeeting they identified “creating conversations
that generate the experience of love” as one of
the unique future competencies of ACPC.

Shifting the Conversation on
Climate Change
Martin Kalungu-Banda, co-founder of Presencing
Institute Africa, shares the following story:
After the Copenhagen Climate Change Conferencein December 2009, there seemed to be a feelingand perception that the world had let itself down

book e x ce r pt | S cha r me r and K a u f e r

by failing to reach the kind of international agreement and commitment that would significantly andurgently begin to tackle issues of climate change.
For many people and organizations, Copenhagen
also exposed a disconnect between climate change
discourse and development thinking and practice.
In mid-2010, the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) began to think about how tostrengthen the nexus between climate change anddevelopment. A consortium of organizations wasconvened to create an event that could bring newlife into the climate-development nexus. This thinking culminated in the CDKN Action Lab Event,which took place in Oxford in April 2011.
Preparation for the event was led by a cross-sector
group of process designers and facilitators. The
intention was to create an event wherein 200 participants from over 70 countries, covering public,
private, and civil society sectors, could think and19

interact together in ways that could generate actionable ideas at the nexus of climate change and development. Participants’ experience and expertise weregathered using online tools. Guest speakers wereidentified to illuminate key aspects of the challenge.
Weekly meetings were held between facilitators online over a period of four months to design and test
the process for hosting and conducting the event.
The hosting environment, Oxford University, wascarefully chosen for its capacity to provide the space
and atmosphere required for breakthrough thinking.
The best practices in human interaction and systems
thinking were tapped into and brought into the design. The entire process was a mix of plenary conversations, small-group discussions, and individual
moments of reflection. To maximize the creativityof the participants, various tools and techniques increative processes, such as sculpting, drawing, painting, systems games, and journaling, among others,
were used.

© Leila Mead/IISD

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman Rejenra Pahauri speaks to negotiators at the 15th Conference of the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2009 in Copenhagen.

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The conference began with three days of “sensing
the field,” seeking to understand and share as muchas they could about the brutal facts of climatechange. Next, participants went for an hour ofdeep reflection in the Oxford Botanic Gardens. The
two questions that guided the reflection were “If I
suspended all that is not essential, who would be
my best future Self?” and “What is life asking me/us
to do to create a different future for the world?” At
the end of the reflection period, the two hundred
participants returned to the plenary room. The groupof two hundred somehow felt like a small group that
had been seeking solutions to a common challenge
together for a long time.

“What is life asking me/us to do
to create a different future forthe world?”
With unusual ease, they listened to each other’s
insights arising from the hour of silence. Much of the
sharing sounded like people singing from the same
page of a hymnal. We had become one in seeing
what was at stake, and, even if we did not say soto one another, we seemed to have glimpsed a common future through the one-hour reflection period.
The experience brought a new feeling of hope after
the disappointments of Copenhagen. One participantfrom Ghana, Winfred, said, “Copenhagen had
dampened my spirit. Now I know I do not need to
be a politician to make a difference. It is our turnto provide leadership to the politicians.”Working in small groups created on the basis ofinterest and work/organizational focus, participants
collaborated to come up with twenty-six prototypes
as a way of creating the landing strips for the common
future we envisioned together. Equally profoundwere the different collaborative relationships andnetworks that emerged during the four-day event.4
What is so interesting about Martin’s story isthat the voices of denial, cynicism, and depression seem to have been somewhat transformed.
These networks have gone on to implement

some initiatives that are proving to be cuttingedge in responding to issues of climate change, as
may be seen on the CDKN website, http://cdkn.org.
One promising development that emerged fromthe Oxford meeting was a similar engagement in2012 with top national leaders in Ghana, including
the vice-president, cabinet ministers, members ofparliament, and many others. These leaders wereinvited to reflect on what climate change meant
to them personally. They watched a theater performance put on by local students that demonstrated the impacts of climate change, along witha documentary that showed Ghanaian citizens
asking their leaders to take action. The secretary
to the cabinet reflected, “All along, we have looked
at climate change as an issue far from our day-today work. We must use the instruments of government to create a different future for our children.
How could we have let this go on for so long?”
To date, over 400 additional government officials
were invited to participate in a similar process,and have committed to change in their regions.5

ELIAS: Emerging Leaders Innovate
across Sectors
A third story brings us to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Around 2004 we started to get frustrated.
Reflecting on the bigger picture, we realized thatin spite of our modest progress on this project orthat one, we were not having any real impact on
the three big divides. We also realized that mostof our work had been focused on what went on
inside individual organizations, while the biggest
societal problems tended to reside in the space
between institutions and individuals, among
sectors, systems, and their citizens.
One day, during a conversation about this with
our friends Peter Senge and Dayna Cunningham,
we finally decided to do something about it. Otto
would go out and talk to some of the key organizations that we had been working with over theyears. Starting in 2005, Otto met with some key
stakeholders in these organizations and presented
the issue as follows in order to recruit them asfounding partners into our idea for ELIAS:

book e x ce r pt | S cha r me r and K a u f e r

21© Stephen Bures/iStockphoto

Okay, we don’t know what the future will bring, but
we all pretty much know one thing: We are entering
an age in which the leaders of the future will face aseries of disruptions, breakdowns, and turbulence
that will be unparalleled by anything that has happened in the past. So what matters now is how we
prepare the people who will end up in key leadership
positions over the next decade or two, how well they
are networked across systems and sectors, how wellthey listen, how creative they are in turning problems
into opportunities. And given that no single organization can build these critical capacities alone, areyou willing to experiment? Are you willing to ask
some of your best high-potential leaders for four orfive weeks’ time, over twelve months, to join a global
group of young leaders from government, business,and the nonprofit sector in exploring the edges ofboth their systems and their selves?
Very much to our surprise, with only one exception,
all of them said yes.

In March 2006, 27 high-potential young leadersfrom ELIAS partner organizations, including Oxfam,
WWF, Unilever, BASF, Nissan, UNICEF, InWEnt(Brazil), and the Ministry of Finance in Indonesia,
began an innovation and learning journey that
followed the U process of co-sensing, co-inspiring,and co-creating. While continuing in their day
jobs, they joined us in developing and learning
how to use a new set of innovation tools, including deep sensing journeys, stakeholder dialogues,
strategy retreats, design studios, and rapid-cycle
prototyping of their ideas in order to explore
the future by doing.
By the end of the journey, we saw the following
results:
1. profound personal change
2. deep relational change within and beyond
the group
3. prototypes that showed a variety of new
approaches. Some of them were really inspiring.

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Others simply seemed, at the time, like valuable
learning experiences for everyone.
But what no one expected is that this minieco-system of small seedlings, or mini-prototypes,
would continue to grow over the following years
into a global ecology of innovation that is nothing
short of amazing. Without anyone making muchnoise around this, these initiatives have organically replicated themselves multiple times andnow involve dozens of institutions and thousandsof people who continue to co-initiate newplatforms of collaboration.

What’s so interesting about the
ELIAS network is that it continues
to generate an ongoing flow ofideas and initiatives.

•

•

•

Here are some examples.

ELIAS Prototypes:
A Global Innovation Ecology• Participants from South Africa, the “Sunbelt
team,” wanted to explore methods for bringing
solar- and wind-generated power to marginalized communities using a decentralized, democratic model of energy generation to reduce
CO2 emissions and for fostering economic
growth and well-being in rural communities.
Today the project has changed the strategic
priorities of a global NGO and resulted in theformation of a mission-based company called
Just Energy that operates in South Africa andhelps local communities to participate in the
rapidly growing market for renewable energy.6• In Indonesia, an ELIAS fellow from the Indonesian Ministry of Trade applied the U process toestablishing new government policies for sustainable sugar production. His idea was to involve all key stakeholders in the policymaking
process. The results were stunning: For the firsttime ever, the ministry’s policy decisions did
not result in violent protests or riots by farmers•

or others in the value chain. Now the same
approach is being applied across ministries
to other commodities and to standards forsustainable production.
Also in Indonesia, a trisector U-based leadership program was launched on the model of
ELIAS (now called IDEAS), involving 30 leadersfrom all sectors. They are working on several
prototype initiatives, one of them being the
Bojonegoro case. IDEAS Indonesia now has
about one hundred graduates and started
its fourth program in spring 2013.
An ELIAS fellow from GIZ (the German Ministryof Development Cooperation) developed andlaunched a lab for combating climate changewith emerging leaders in South Africa andIndonesia.
Using ELIAS and IDEAS as a model, in 2012 thefirst China-based IDEAS program was launched,
involving senior government officials and executives from Chinese SOEs (state-owned enterprises). The second IDEAS China program,working with some of the biggest SOEs on
this planet, will be launched in 2013.
At MIT, two ELIAS fellows teamed up to createa collaborative research venture that resulted in
the founding of the MIT CoLab (Community Innovators Lab). The CoLab has since emerged as a
hotspot for innovation around field-based action
learning for students at the MIT Department for
Urban Studies and Planning, putting Theory U
and related methodologies into practice.

We have also become aware of initiatives thatwere inspired by ELIAS, among them the Maternal
Health Initiative in Namibia and the Coral Triangle
Initiative (CTI), which has produced a six-country
treaty linking sustainable fishing practices withrevenue-sharing and economic opportunities.7
What’s so interesting about the ELIAS network isthat it continues to generate an ongoing flow ofideas and initiatives.8
So what did we learn from the ELIAS project aboutbuilding presencing platforms for co-creative
entrepreneurial initiatives?

book e x ce r pt | S cha r me r and K a u f e r

Five Learning Experiences
ELIAS has challenged many of our deeply held
assumptions. First, we now realize that although
it might well have been our most powerful andinfluential initiative to date, ELIAS was not bornout of a client-driven relationship. No one asked
us to do it. It was born out of our deep frustration
and aspiration.
Second, we learned that the framing around“problem solving” that surrounds most multistakeholder work may be limiting. The deep principle
should be “Energy follows attention.” A mindset
that is only about fixing a problem or closing a
gap puts limits on creativity. In our case, it worked
well to simply bring together young high-potentialchange-makers from diverse systems, sectors, andcultures, throw them into a broad set of unfiltered,raw experiences at the edges of their systems,
equip them with good contemplation and reflection practices, and then let them make sense ofwhat they saw and experienced together. Outof that, interesting new ideas were sure to emerge.
With a supporting infrastructure, the result ofsuch a process will be powerful – if the leaders
have the opportunity to prototype what they
believe in.
Third, we learned that individual skills and tools
are usually overrated. While methods and tools
have been a very important part of the ELIAS
journey and the projects would not have beensuccessful without them, it is also clear that the
deep journey we were on made all the difference.
Disconnected individuals became part of a cocreative network of change-makers. That journey
seems to have switched on a field of inspired
connections that helps people to operate froma different place, a place that is more relaxed,
calm, inspired, and focused. Igniting this flameof inspired connections is the heart and essenceof all education and leadership today. Everythingelse is secondary. In the case of ELIAS, the flame
was sustained long after the program ended, and
we also see it sparking outward and being reignited
in many other areas. Overall it feels as if we toucheda source of collectively creative power – and of“Energy follows attention.”
A mindset that is only about fixing
a problem or closing a gap puts
limits on creativity.
karmic connections – that even today we do
not fully understand.
Fourth, we learned that cross-sector platforms
of innovation, leadership, and learning require ahigh-quality holding space. Part of that holding
space is process, part of it is people, part of itis place, and part of it is purpose. But the mostimportant ingredient is always the same: a few
fully committed people who would give everything to make it work. Sometimes it’s just one
or two people. But if you have four of five, you
may be able to make mountains move.
Fifth, we learned to attend to the crack – anopening to a future possibility that everyone can
support. All cross-sector platforms suffer the sameproblem: The people you need are already overcommitted in their existing institutions, which
explains why in most multistakeholder platforms
there is a lot of talk and little action. So the only
chance of building a successful platform for crosssector, cross-institutional innovation is to pick a
topic that all of the participating individuals
and their institutions value very highly.

Growing the Co-Creative Economy
ELIAS, the CDKN Action Lab Event, and the Girl
Scouts – ACPC Leadership Circle have otherlessons to teach as well.
First: Redraw the boundaries between cooperationand competition. Capitalism 2.0 is constructed on
the logic of competition. The 3.0 economy adds
government action on top of that (an example is
the welfare state). Today we face challenges thatare characterized by simultaneous market andgovernment failure. These problems invite us
to redraw the boundaries of competition and

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Third: The platforms and arenas of eco-systeminnovation need new social technologies that
help stakeholders shift their collaboration fromego-system to eco-system logic and awareness.
One of these social technologies is Theory U.
From a Theory U point of view, it would be key
to build the following five types of innovation
infrastructures:

1. Infrastructures to co-initiate.

© martinplkang/iStockphotocooperation by introducing arenas of premarket
cooperation among all sectors.
Second: The most efficient way to redraw theboundaries between competition and cooperation is to build arenas or platforms of co-creation
within existing eco-systems in business and society. Eco-systems are societal systems plus theirenabling social, ecological, and cultural context.
Examples include education systems, healthsystems, food systems, energy systems, andspecific business systems. The stakeholders in an
eco-system share some scarce resources (the commons) that all partners have a material interest inpreserving and sustaining instead of overusing.

The most effective mechanism
for changing our mindset fromego-system to eco-systemawareness is to take people onsensing journeys to the edges ofthe system, where they can see 		it from other perspectives.

Successful multistakeholder projects are built
on the same currency: the unconditional commitment from one or a few local leaders who arecredible in their own communities. If the ecosystem is highly fragmented, the core group thatco-initiates the project must reflect the diversityof the overall eco-system.

2. Infrastructures for co-sensing.
The simplest and most effective mechanism forchanging our mindset from ego-system to ecosystem awareness is to take people on sensing
journeys to the edges of the system, where they
can see it from other perspectives, particularly thatof the most marginalized members. Shadowing
practices and stakeholder interviews are other activities that help participants learn to see the systemfrom the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders andfrom the perspective of the whole.9 Effective cosensing infrastructures are the ones we lack most.

3. Infrastructures to co-inspire.
Another increasingly powerful leverage point in
the area of distributed leadership concerns the useof mindfulness and presencing practices that help
decision-makers to connect to their deep sourcesof knowing, both individually and collectively.

4. Infrastructures for prototyping, or exploring
the future by doing.
Prototyping is a process. You stop worrying about
what you don’t know and start acting on what
you do know. A successful prototyping process
requires a dedicated core group that is aligned
around the same intention; a network of supportive stakeholders and users; a concrete “0.8 prototype” (one that is incomplete but elicits feedback

book e x ce r pt | S cha r me r and K a u f e r

from partners throughout the system); a firm
resolve by the core group to push forward while
integrating feedback from stakeholders; andreview sessions that look at all the prototypes,
conclude what has been learned, take out what
isn’t working, and strengthen what is working.

5. Infrastructures for co-evolving.
Micro- and frontline prototype initiatives are seeds
that leaders can plant and support in selectedparts of the system. Growing, sustaining, scaling,and evolving these initiatives in the context of thelarger system require cross-functional, cross-level,
and cross-institutional leadership learning andhands-on innovation initiatives. In order to provide this support, the team at the top also requires
a helping infrastructure to progress on their own
leadership journey from ego- to eco-systemawareness. n

e n d n otes
1 See http://climateinteractive.org.
2 Isaacs, W. (1999). Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together. Doubleday.
3 See http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/water/dams_initia tive/dams/wcd.
4 Personal conversations with authors.
5 Quoted in ibid.
6 See http://just-energy.org.
7 See www.worldwildlife.org/what/wherewework/coraltriangle.
8	Recently, for example, we received three new inquiries about developing country-level tri-sector innovationand leadership platforms using the IDEAS/ ELIAS model in Brazil, Zambia, and the Philippines.
9 Methods and tools for collective sensing sessions include voices from the field, personal storytelling, systems
thinking, scenario thinking, modeling, constellation practices, world café, and social presencing theater.
See, for example, www.theworldcafe.com and www.presencing.com/embodiment.
abo u t the a u tho r s
C. Otto Scharmer, PhD, author of Theory U and co-author of Presence, is a senior lecturer at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology and the founding chair of the Presencing Institute. He
also is faculty chair of MIT’s IDEAS program.
Katrin Kaufer, PhD, is co-founder and research director at the Presencing Institute and research fellow
at the Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her
research focuses on leadership, social transformation, and socially responsible banking.

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f eat u r e 1 3 . 2

Disaster as a Springboard for
Thriving, Resilient Communities
B ob S tilge r
What happens when catastrophe fundamentally shifts the world we know? In March 11, 2011, the triple
disasters of earthquake, tsunami, and radiation leak devastated northeastern Japan. In the aftermath of thetragedy, people from throughout the country began to gather not just to share their grief but to consider
how they might create a new future together. Numerous initiatives have been launched to experimentwith the structures, processes, and practices that create conditions for creativity and collective action.
As we enter a time when the world as a whole may experience even more collapsing systems and disasters,
the people of Japan – and especially of the Tohoku region – are showing us the way to build healthy
and resilient communities.

Bob Stilger

It was pitch black outside in the early-morning hours of March 11, 2011, when
the phone rang. Startled, I answered and heard my daughter Annie’s frantic voiceasking, “Are they okay? Have you heard from obaachan and ojiichan? Are they
okay?” I asked her what she was talking about, and she told me that Japan had
been struck by an earthquake and tsunami. The next day, the disaster triology
would be complete when the nuclear power plants started to explode. Newswas sketchy. Annie was worried about our adopted Japanese family, who lives
500 miles away from the Tohoku region where the disasters struck.

My Japan story begins in 1970. When the US invaded Cambodia and the National Guard murdered
students demonstrating against the Vietnam War at Kent State University. That year, as a young peace
activist, I just wanted to be away from the US. A door opened to Japan. Shortly after arriving, I began todevelop a deep relationship with the “grandfather of my heart,” Nakatsugawa Naokazu. We met when
he was 71 and I was 21, and he helped me discover my own spirit and opened the door into the restof my life. I also met my spouse, Susan Virnig, that year in Japan. Our daughter, too, has grown up
embraced by the Nakatsugawa family and Japanese culture.
I arrived in Japan about three weeks after my daughter’s frantic phone call. For the last two and a halfyears, I have spent about half my time in Japan. I stay there for five or six weeks, return to the US for fiveor six weeks, and then travel once again to Japan. It’s been a rich, challenging, exhilarating, and grieffilled time.
Shortly after arriving in Japan in early April of 2011, I facilitated a workshop of business leaders in
downtown Tokyo. All of Japan was in a state of shock in those early days. People arrived quietly, inwardly
focused, unsure that they would be able to speak with others. The air was thick, and people’s hearts wereheavy. Three hours later, the air in the room was filled with excitement. The change from the beginningFeat u r e | stilge r

was so extreme that I went to a quiet corner andtried to sense what was happening. I heard thesewords in my mind: We have been released from afuture we did not want. Disasters had cracked open
the old normal. A new normal was waiting to
be born.

Very Different Disasters:
Kobe (1995) and Tohoku (2011)
On March 11, 2011, the earthquake hit first, withthe epicenter 70 kilometers off of Japan’s northeastern coast. Buildings as far away as Tokyo swayed.
Others collapsed. In some places, the land literally
dropped away, creating huge holes more than ameter deep. Then the two tsunamis hit. The larger
one had waves 20 meters high that moved at
almost 100 kilometers/hour. In the aftermath ofearthquake and tsunami, the nuclear reactors at
Fukushima exploded and began to release significant radiation. In total, nearly 20,000 people died.
Another half million were left without homes orjobs or both. Many hundreds of fishing boats weredestroyed, fish processing plants swept away, andforests and fields made unusable because of salt
water, radiation exposure, or both. The world
was forever changed.

27

to hand their lives over to the economic machine.
People in the middle – in their 40s and 50s – wereleft with little support from those older or younger.
The 3/11 disasters created a psychic shift of huge
proportions. Something else was possible. But
what might it be?

I heard these words in my mind:
We have been released from afuture we did not want. Disasters
had cracked open the old normal.
A new normal was waiting to
be born.

People comment on the difference between themood after the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake
in Kobe and the 2011 disasters in Tohoku. Yes,of course, the scope was different, but there wassomething else as well. In the mid-1990s, mostpeople in Japan felt that the country was on
the right course: build a strong economy, create
access to economic prosperity, achieve upward
mobility. The job after the Great Hanshin earthquake was to get back to the old normal: Japanwas on the right track.

Japanese fire trucks
line a road in this aerialview of Sukuiso, Japan.

© Stocktrek Images

By the end of the first decade of this new century,
the mood was different. The political party that
ruled Japan since World War II was tossed out of
power. More and more people complained about
their lives. The older generation had retired andgone hiking in the mountains. The younger
generation, having coming of age after Japan’s
economic bubble broke, was not stepping forward

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Seasons of Grief
For most of 2011, my work was still outside of the
Tohoku region. Others were doing the emergency
work; my focus was thinking with individuals
and small groups about how to support people
in creating a new Tohoku. I traveled to many partsof the country to host community dialogues inwhich people talked about their hopes and fears.
Among other things, my partners in Japan and I
convened a series of five Community Youth Leader
Dialogues. These events brought together young
people from across Japan to talk about their lives
and the future they wanted. Many dialogues wereabout how to support people in Tohoku. There
was a shared sense that the government could
re-create the past, but only people could create
a new future together.

There was a shared sense that the
government could re-create thepast, but only people could create 		a new future together.
Because of my travel back and forth between the
US and Japan, I was able to experience the changing seasons of disaster:• In April and May of 2011, the sense of grief
was almost overwhelming. Whenever peoplecame together, there were tears. I remember
an older television executive looking at me withmoist eyes saying, “I thought Japan had ended.”Everywhere there was confusion, grief,
uncertainty.
• By autumn, a sense of determination was
emerging. Miraculously, temporary housing
had been constructed for everyone who had
lost their homes. People were lifting their heads
and beginning to find the next step. Grief wasstill present everywhere, but things werestarting to move.
• In the cold of winter, people began to standup for what they wanted. In January 2012,
we invited people to a gathering in Tokyo tolaunch the Future Center approach as a vehicle

for forming new collaborative partnerships.
Having expected 30 or so people to come,we were amazed when more than 100 filled
the room. Young and old. Men and women.
Activists and businesspeople. Academics
and priests. A new energy was present.
• By the spring of 2012, there was a sense ofurgency, an energy of get on with it, althoughpeople were still unclear about what it was.
People wanted to talk with each other. They
wanted action. They wanted to work withthe energy they felt.
• By the fall, there was a sense that the time isnow. We need to move. I remember a gatheringof about 300 called Fukushima Kaigi, where
people from all walks of life came together totalk about everything: protecting themselvesfrom radiation hazards, making safe playspaces for children, supporting young womenin Fukushima, creating new industry, dealing
with nuclear waste, finding opportunities foryouth. People with many different points ofview gathered, but they didn’t waste their timearguing about their differences. They simply
supported each other in finding their next
step forward.
• By the winter of 2013, there was a new stuckness. People were exhausted. Some who had
been giving everything they had for two years
were hospitalized with sickness and stress. The
emergency was over, but now the real work ofbuilding a future had to begin. The clarity of
purpose of responding to the disaster was gone,
and the funds that supported the response
were spent. But 20 or 30 years of work remained
to build a new Tohoku.
What a confusing time! Through it all, my colleagues
and I are learning many lessons as we work withand host dialogue among many people in many
communities inside the disaster area and allover Japan.

It Is About Community – Always
After the earthquake and tsunamis, the distribution of temporary housing was complicated. The
government’s highest priorities were speed andFeat u r e | stilge r

29

Photo courtesy of Bob Stilger

fairness. A lottery system was used to ensure
fairness. Unfortunately, that process meant thatpeople already isolated from their former neighbors in emergency housing were separated
further, as they were assigned randomly to different temporary housing groups. I encounteredsome notable exceptions:

Building Community in Temporary Housing
The entire village of Oosawa in Minami-sanriku
was destroyed. When the temporary housing
allocations came, a man named Chiba-san noticed
that he and several other residents from the village
were assigned to the same temporary housingsite. An idea formed. They went to the local officials
and asked, “Can we exchange certificates withothers?” A miracle happened: The local officials
agreed, and the work began. Chiba-san and his
friends were able to gather almost all of the villagers together in the same temporary housing site.
They had community. Even if some didn’t particularly like each other before, they had community.

The emergency was over, but
now the real work of building afuture had to begin.
One of their first projects was to build awnings
above the doors of their temporary housing units.
These awnings provided a place for people to sit,
to take off their shoes out of the rain, to see eachother. Then the villagers organized nighttime
patrols for their own safety. Next, they started
gardens so they could grow part of their own
food. They were still alive, so they organized a fall
festival to celebrate life. By the time winter came,they thanked the nonprofit organization that
had been helping them and invited it to go help
someone else. They could take care of themselves.

Rebuilding in Jusanhama
In the small fishing village of Jusanhama near

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Ogatsu, 10 fishermen had been able to take theirboats out to sea between the time of the earthquake and the time the tsunamis came. Theirfathers and grandfathers had told them, “Whenthe big one comes, take your boat and go as fast
as you can. Get to a depth of 60 meters or you
will die.“ They traveled together, keeping sight ofeach other. They got out far enough and felt thetsunami pass beneath their boats. When they
left, they did not know if they would live or if
their families would survive. As darkness came,Businesses across the region were
decimated. The questions became,what are the businesses we believe
in now?

the fishermen had no contact with their loved
ones. They stayed together and turned on all theirlights so that people on shore, if they were alive,
would know the fishermen were alive, too. They
returned to the stark devastation of the tsunami
the next morning, but they had their boats, andthey had each other. The fishermen and theirfamilies began to rebuild. One of the first things
they did was to clear a piece of land. They went
to the local officials and said, “Please build our
temporary housing here so we can stay together.”
The officials agreed.

Forming communities of interest
Most temporary housing was built in small clusters of 50 to 200 dwellings. There were so many
evacuees from areas of Fukushima radiated by
the nuclear power plants that an exception was
made, and a site for nearly 1,000 people wascreated in Koriyama. This larger project had an
unexpected benefit: there was enough diversity
for communities of interest to form around weaving, baseball, aikido, cooking, children, and more.
Some feared this temporary housing community
might become a “ghetto,” but the arrangement
actually helped people find others they wanted
to be in community with.

Business – It Is About Community, Too
Businesses across the region were decimated.
Products, facilities, and workers were destroyed,
damaged, and displaced. The questions became,what are the businesses we believe in now?
How should we rebuild them?

Restoration through new forms of energy
In Kesennuma, a large fishing town in Miyagi,
a local energy company decided to abandon its
pre-3/11 plans to develop solar as a new energy
alternative. It decided to do biomass-based energy generation instead. Why? Biomass is lessprofitable and takes longer. It’s more complicated.
The reason the company made this decision isthat biomass creates the opportunity to restore
the forests in the hills around Kesennuma. During
the Tokugawa period more than 150 years ago,
Japan had one of the best-managed forest 		Photo courtesy of Bob Stilger

Feat u r e | stilge r

systems in the world. People worked with nature
to insure forest health. Modern times brought
overuse to the forests, something that severelycompromised the watershed. A focus on biomass
production could restore the forest, restore thewatershed, and help restore the ecosystem of
the nearby bay.

The past as inspiration
Further north, in the Iwate town of Otsuchi, others
also thought the forest and the surrounding mountains might provide the key for new opportunities.
Of 250 boats in the port, 249 were destroyed in
the tsunami. Both fishing areas and agricultural
fields were destroyed. In response, people turned
around, looked at the forest and surrounding hills,
and asked, “How can we rebuild community withwhat we have?” Some have begun to create a
new wood products industry. Others are looking
to the past for inspiration. They noticed, for example, that 100 years ago, Otsuchi was famous for
its tofu and wasabi, made delicious by the underground springs present in the surrounding hills.
Futures Fair. Minamisoma, a community of 70,000
people about 25 kilometers from the nuclear reactors, evacuated 50,000 residents after 3/11. By early
2012, nearly 30,000 had returned. Radiation waspresent on the ground and in the buildings, but
this area was people’s home, and they would finda way to live again. Organizers created a Futures
Fair, expecting a few hundred people to participate.
More than 1,000 came. They came because theyneeded each other and because they wanted to
discover what businesses they could create tosupport themselves and the country as a whole.
Participants shared plans for everything from solarpowered communities to development of hydroponic and aquaponic systems for food production
free from radiation. They recognized that new businesses need to work with and for the community.
These are small examples, but they give a flavorof the spirit that is present in the Tohoku region.
The future is not built with master plans. It is built
when people come together, look at what they
have, and begin to create.

Two aspects of Japanese culture, the ancient andthe new, are now coming together. If we go backa couple thousand years, Japan was made up of
isolated villages separated by steep mountains.
The main food was rice, cultivated in paddies.
It takes a village to cultivate a wet rice crop. The
alternatives were simple: People either worked
together or starved. Business, life, and community
were inextricably bound together. Business was
not primarily about making a profit. It was about
serving community needs. This spirit, somewhat
tattered under the onslaught of consumerism,is still alive and is being rekindled in Japan.
If we come forward to the present day, Japan isstill a collective culture. Numerous strengths exist
in the collective. One weakness is that the collective deters individual initiative. The expression in
Japan is, The nail that sticks up gets pounded down.
People regularly push down their own ideas andaspirations out of fear of disrupting the collective.
3/11 has created a new attitude. Government is
not going to fix the problems created by the disasters. Individual initiative is required. But here’s
what’s happening – people are standing up andtaking initiative AND they are staying with andin the collective.

The future is not built withmaster plans. It is built whenpeople come together, lookat what they have, andbegin to create.
This energy of individuation in a collective fieldis the energy needed in Japan today, as well as in
the rest of the world. Those who live in Tohoku
have key character traits many of us would do wellto emulate. Although some describe the people
in this region as being shy and conservative, myexperience is that they are thoughtful and deliberate. Deeply grounded in nature, they are more
likely than most to find their way forward in thisuncertain time.

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Fig u r e 1

Stabilizing the Old System, Creating New Systems, and Building Bridges(Bridge Builders for Transition)

X

O O O
X

(Stabilizers of Old Systems)

X

X X

Old Paradigm

X
New Paradigm(Creators of New Systems)

An Opening
Disasters create a crack in our habitual ways ofthinking. Alongside the tragedy, an opportunity
arises for new possibilities. As we enter a time
when we may experience even more collapsingsystems and disasters, perhaps we can learn to
use these experiences to create a new future. The
people of Japan – and especially of the Tohoku
region – are showing us the way.

The triple disasters created amoment of “punctuatedequilibrium” – a break with thecontinuity of the past in which
the possibility of new future
action is born.
The triple disasters created what systems scientists call a moment of “punctuated equilibrium.”
Put simply, this means a break with the continuityof the past in which the possibility of new future
action is born. How does one work with the energyof a time of punctuated equilibrium? What are thestructures, processes, and practices that create
conditions for creativity and collective action?

During my time at The Berkana Institute, we saw
three different kinds of work needed in times suchas these:• Stabilizing the old system. We need tokeep alive those things that will continue tobe important in a new age and let die those
things that no longer serve us well. Sometimes
we speak of this work as “hospicing the old,”
because things do need to die – and they needto die well. There are many examples in Japan,
ranging from nuclear reactors to the increasingly problematic medical and education
systems.
• Creating new systems. As people turn awayfrom trying to make old systems work, they
start to construct alternatives. Most often, theirearly prototypes do not work. If they have thevision, courage, and support to continue working, they learn, and new systems emerge. In
Japan, examples of this work include the closedhydroponics and aquaponics systems that are
being conceived of for production of food in
Fukushima.
• Building bridges. This work of making it
possible for more and more people to embrace
new alternatives is essential if systems transformation is going to take root.

Feat u r e | stilge r				Future Centers in Japan
Future Centers were initially developed inEurope at the end of the last century as acreative space where diverse people could
engage with each other to define new collaborative actions. In 2009, Japan’s Knowledge
Dynamics Initiative at Fuji/Xerox began looking closely at how to develop Future Centers
in Japanese businesses. Two months after
the 3/11 triple disasters, Future Center Week
was launched, becoming an annual event 		
in 2012 and 2013.
In its most basic form, a Future Center is simply
a place where people gather with the intent
to discover and prototype new collaborative
projects. Using dialogue methodologies likecircle, World Café, Open Space technology,
and Appreciative Inquiry, participants build
trusting relationships and find new possibilities for collaboration.
We are working with five types of Future
Centers in Tohoku:• Grief and Possibility. People, especially inFukushima, gather to share their collective
grief and explore new possibilities. Thereis so much to be said, and it requires quiet
spaces that cultivate a deep listening
presence.
• Local Action. Grief and possibility give
way to development of collaborations andprojects to make things better, including
new businesses, new ways of helping
children learn, and better ways to help
people be healthy.
• Translocal Systems. While change isalways local – it occurs in a particular place– transformative change arises when people
engaged in similar actions are connectedwith each other across distance and difference to explore deeper systemic shifts.

• Stories of the Future. Actions begin totake on a deeper focus when people sharea collective sense of the future. Stories ofthe future are a way of introducing thetransformative scenario planning that isnecessary to ground and connect action
in separate domains into a rich ecosystemof emergent possibilities.
• Deepen Learning. Finally, Future Centersengage people in learning from their own
experience, from the experience of othersin the room, and from knowledge andexperience from the larger world.
Work in these five domains is accelerated
through a series of related activities:• Imagine, always. It begins with imagination and with people who come together
to begin to imagine what might be.
• Invite the right people, either by scoping
the situation and determining who needs
to be present, or by developing crystal
clarity about a purpose that attracts theright people.
• Engage in deep dialogue using a variety
of methodologies to uncover the wisdom
and experience present in the room.
• Harvest the dialogue well, as one would
harvest a productive yield from any planted
field. What’s happened in the engagement
is precious and needs to be preserved.
• Make visible the harvest so it can informand inspire others who are engaging insimilar efforts.
• Connect with others engaged in similar
work. Reach out. Draw them together. Find
points of common interest and see whatelse is possible.
• Imagine, again and again. n

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Photo courtesy of Bob Stilger

In Tohoku, some of us are using a form adaptedfrom Europe called Future Centers (see “Future
Centers in Japan,” on p. 33). Future Centers use dialogue as a core methodology for creating newpartnerships for collaborative action. We are using
the Future Centers concept to weave people andplaces together into an ecosystem of practicethat we call the Tohoku Futures Network.

What’s important is that we
discover how to connect thesystem to itself, developing a rich
new ecosystem of possibilities as
people work together to build
healthy and resilient communities.

The work of building a future in Tohoku is justbeginning. It will take several decades. The nuclear
disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 is just now giving
way to new, grounded community. It takes timeto learn how to thrive after a disaster. What’s
important is that we discover how to connect
the system to itself, developing a rich new ecosystem of possibilities as people work together
to build healthy and resilient communities. n

abo u t the a u tho r
Bob Stilger is the co-president of New Stories. He previously co-founded and served as executive
director of a community development corporation in the Northwest. Bob followed Margaret
Wheatley as co-president of The Berkana Institute. bob@newstories.org

Feat u r e | gottlieb and tie r ne yf eat u r e 1 3 . 2

Healthcare at Its BestSouthcentral Foundation’s Core Concepts Training
K athe r ine G ottlieb and M ichelle T ie r ne yTrue transformation, particularly in an organization, is a rare occurrence. It requires unswerving commitment to vision, leadership that is willing to learn, and an organization determined to change in a way that isbeneficial to all, not to just a select few. To guide it toward achieving its vision of creating a community thatenjoys physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness, Southcentral Foundation (SCF), an Alaska Nativeowned, nonprofit healthcare organization, worked with SoL to design and implement a foundational program, the Core Concepts Training. SCF’s story not only presents an exemplary model of change but perhaps
more importantly illustrates what can be accomplished when people choose to control their own destiny.

Katherine Gottlieb

Southcentral Foundation (SCF) is a nonprofit healthcare organization serving more than 60,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people in Southcentral Alaska. It was established in 1982 by Cook Inlet Region Inc. (CIRI), oneof the Alaska Native regional corporations created by the United States Congress in 1971 under the terms of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
CIRI founded SCF to improve the health and social conditions of Alaska
Native people, enhance their culture, and empower individuals and families
to take charge of their lives.

The Transition to “Customer-Ownership”
Over the last two decades, Southcentral Foundation’s workforce has grownfrom fewer than 100 employees to more than 1,600, and its operating budget has
increased from $3 million to $227 million. This growth can be attributed in largepart to a change in ownership of the Alaska Native healthcare system – fromgovernment control to “customer-ownership.”
For 50 years, Alaska Native people in Southcentral Alaska received their healthcare as patients of the Indian Health Service’s Native hospital. It was a large,
bureaucratic system centrally controlled from Washington, D.C., 5,000 miles away. Patients had to wait
weeks to get an appointment and saw different providers each time. Treatment was inconsistent, care
was impersonal, and patients were identified by numbers not names. There was an obvious disconnect
between care of the mind and care of the body. Departments and programs acted independently.
Patients weren’t happy; employees weren’t happy. Health statistics were bleak.

Michelle Tierney

Under these grim circumstances, many patients left the Alaska Native system to find better care.
Along with American Indian people, they began advocating for a voice in program planning and service

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delivery of their healthcare system. In responseto this demand, in 1994 Congress passed legislation in favor of self-determination. The new law
opened the door for tribes to choose between
ownership of their healthcare service or dependence on other entities to deliver the services. For
SCF’s Alaska Native leadership team, self-determination was an opportunity to redesign the tribal
healthcare system based on Alaska Native values
and needs. It was an opportunity for innovation.

Photo courtesy of Southcentral Foundation

				Southcentral Foundation’s
Vision and Mission
VisionA Native Community that enjoys physical, mental, emotional,
and spiritual wellness.

MissionWorking together with the Native Community to achievewellness through health and related services.

Key Points
Shared Responsibility
We value working together with the individual, the family,
and the community. We strive to honor the dignity of every
individual. We see the journey to wellness being traveledwith shared responsibility and in partnership with those forwhom we provide services.

Commitment to Quality
We strive to provide the best services for the Native Community. We employ fully qualified staff in all positions, and wecommit ourselves to recruiting and training Native staff tomeet this need. We structure our organization to optimize
the skills and contributions of our staff.

By 1999, Alaska Native people were no longer“patients” of a government-run system, but rather
self-determined “customers” and “owners” of theirtribally managed healthcare system. Alaska Native
people were now in control of decision-making
and administration. Along with this new status ofcustomer-ownership came a set of responsibilities
requiring informed choices, not only for setting
priorities for the healthcare system but also forworking to sustain the system for future generations.
The effort that followed produced a customerdriven overhaul of Native Alaska healthcare delivery
and a culturally based redefinition of its philosophy
and values. As a result, Southcentral Foundation
now has what is known as its “Nuka System ofCare,” an integrated healthcare system created,managed, and owned by Alaska Native people
with the goal of achieving physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual wellness for all.

Shared Vision and Mission
Southcentral Foundation’s Nuka System of Carereaches beyond merely providing treatment
and health education. The system is designed to
optimize relationships with individuals, families,
and households by supporting them in reaching
their multidimensional health and wellness goals.
The mission statement emphasizes getting there
by working with (not doing to or for) the Native
community. It requires looking many years ahead
to ensure that improvements in wellness sustain
from one generation to the next. The system is as
much about prevention and maintaining healthas it is about treating symptoms and regaining
health.

Feat u r e | gottlieb and tie r ne y37

Service Delivery
In order to achieve its vision, Southcentral Foundation provides a wide range of health and social
services. These services include primary care, homebased services, dentistry, optometry, audiology,
outpatient behavioral health, residential behavioral
health, traditional healing, complementary medicine, health education, and more. Southcentral
Foundation measures its progress through a robust
data collection effort, benchmarking with other
healthcare organizations, and tracking health disparity data at the local, state, and national levels.
Most services are provided “prepaid,” based on
legislative agreements and funding requirements
to members of 229 federally recognized tribes
who live in Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna
Valley, and 55 rural villages. This service area
stretches about 2,000 miles from west to east.

Results

Customer-owner and staff satisfaction has remained
above 90% for many years. SCF’s Nuka system isrecognized by the National Committee on Quality
Assurance as a Patient Centered Medical Home™
Level Three – the highest level. SCF also received
the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge National Quality
Award in 2011 from the US Commerce Department.
Because of its success, the Nuka system has attracted
the attention of healthcare leaders around theworld. SFC has been asked to partner with groups
from New Zealand, England, China, Sweden,
Norway, Australia, and Scotland, among others.

The Seeds of Change:
The Family Wellness Warriors Initiative
In the early 1990s, Southcentral Foundation
developed the Family Wellness Warriors Initiative

Photos courtesy of Southcentral Foundation

Over the past 14 years, SCF has demonstrated
dramatic achievements, with over 70% decreasein hospital admissions and hospital days, and over
30% decrease in outpatient visits. SCF clinical outcome performance exceeds the performance ofmore than 75% of other healthcare organizations,as measured by the Healthcare Effectiveness
Data Information Set (HEDIS).

Southcentral Foundation’s
Nuka System of Care is designed
to optimize relationships withindividuals, families, and households by supporting them inreaching their multidimensional
health and wellness goals.

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Photo courtesy of Southcentral Foundation(FWWI), which became the foundation for what
is known as the Core Concepts Training. FWWI is
a prevention program designed to address theneeds of adult survivors of domestic violence,child sexual abuse, and child neglect.

The goal of the FWWI program is toend domestic violence, child sexual
abuse, and child neglect in thestate of Alaska in this generation.
The initiative brings together leaders who represent the Alaska Native community, the faithcommunity, regional corporations and agencies,
and healthcare providers in an effort to breakthe vicious cycle of abuse. Based on a culturally
centered resiliency model, the training focuseson identifying protective factors such as social
connections, stable family relationships, andcommunity support to help prevent abuse, build
resilience, and reduce risk factors. The program
gives Alaska Native people an opportunity toexperience their history, their stories, their challenges, and their pain. At the same time, it allows
them to celebrate successes, healing, and growthby providing intensive training and education

community by community in order to gain thetrust and commitment of local leaders. As a resultof the FWWI training, more than 3,300 people in
Alaska stand ready to work toward eliminating
all types of abuse within the population.
FWWI’s psycho-educational process includes tools
and skills that are critical to domestic violence
survivors. Being emotionally self-aware, making
safe choices, focusing on self-care, understanding
how to enter safe and supportive relationships,
learning and implementing protective factors,
observing and practicing effective boundaries,and embracing empowerment and choice arejust a few of the principles taught so individuals
can start healing and moving toward healthier
relationships. The power of “story” is another critical
tool that helps participants evaluate and address
the root cause of their behaviors and motivations.
A psychologically safe environment is provided
so that they may dig down to the depths of theirpain and rise up to healing and redemption.
The trainings also work toward eliminating theshame and guilt felt by people harmed by domestic violence; reestablishing the role of parents asprotectors of families; making one’s own story
coherent; and using spiritual beliefs to reestablish
moral and ethical direction. After attending FWWI

Feat u r e | gottlieb and tie r ne ytrainings, participants report a greater sense ofsatisfaction and less stress and conflict within thefamily. “Arrigah House” and “Beauty for Ashes” areinitial trainings that provide participants with theopportunity to recognize the impact of trauma,
abuse, and neglect in their communities. These
intensive programs not only address how to interact with, work with, and respond to those whose
lives have been impacted by abuse, neglect, or
domestic violence, but also teach how to build
protective factors and resiliency skills so people
can deal effectively with these chronic issues.
Positive change is evident among FWWI training
participants. Participants report a decline in depression, substance abuse, trauma symptomology,
and anxiety. They also report an increase in theability to control anger and a decrease in the risk or
threat of intentional harm (either to self or others).
Evaluation findings indicate significant positivechanges associated with key protective factors,
including enhanced family cohesion, cultural connectedness, self-esteem, and spiritual well- being.
As a result of FWWI’s instructional approach, participants indicate a high level of content understanding and skills development after completingthe training and for the year following the 		
program.

The development process included several pilots
with different populations to ensure that the
program would be applicable and well received
across the entire organization. Gathering feedback
from participants and integrating it into the curriculum of the program was a particularly effective
element of the training.

Analysis
The first step in developing the training was todetermine its purpose and goals. During the firstphase, a gap analysis of current state versus futurestate was completed. The results of that analysis
showed a need to enhance employees’ skills sothey would be able to support the integrationof the FWWI philosophy into Core Concepts andalso to create and maintain effective relationships. Healthcare employees have knowledge andexpertise in science and medicine – skills that they
continually practice throughout their training. But
the knowledge, skills, and abilities to create andmaintain effective relationships often fall outsideof the more traditional healthcare education
curriculum. We determined that in order to fully
realize our mission and vision, we would haveto provide training that included a common language to be used throughout the organization.

DesignDevelopment of the Core Concepts
ProgramBased on the success of the FWWI program, in
2006, SCF began to develop the Core Concepts
Training Program as a way to train employees andtransform the organization as a whole. For morethan 18 months, SCF worked through the development process, using the ADDIE (Analysis, Design,
Development, Implementation, and Evaluation)model.
Southcentral Foundation also developed a partnership with the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) after several of SCF’s leaders attended
SoL’s Core Competencies Course on Organizational
Learning. Many of the tools and processes introduced in that course informed the developmentof the Core Concepts Training.

The second step was to design a training consistent with our mission and goals. During thisphase, we focused on developing the objectives,
				Southcentral Foundation’s Core Concepts
The Core Concepts are:W ork together in relationship to learn and growE ncourage understanding
L isten with an open mind
L augh and enjoy humor throughout the day
N otice the dignity and value of ourselves and others
E ngage others with compassion
S hare our stories and our hearts
S trive to honor and respect ourselves and others

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r e f lections | vol u me 1 3 , N u mbe r 2techniques, tools, structure, materials, and resources
needed for successful implementation. We began
by identifying existing trainings whose philosophies
were consistent with ours, and used those asa basis for building and customizing our own
programs.
During the design stage, SoL consultants introduced us to new tools and concepts, including theeffect of creative tension, Chris Argyris’s ladder ofinference, and David Kantor’s four-player model,
which we readily incorporated into our training.
SoL also helped us think through our design,
engagement, and delivery process for the training
and provided guidance to our internal facilitatorson teaching and applying its tools and methods.

Development
The development phase consisted of producing
the training materials and facilitator guides, andrunning pilot programs. The first pilot included
senior executives who we knew would be toughcritics but who we also knew were not opposed to
the new initiative. We ran three pilots and madesignificant revisions as a result. We included across section of people in each pilot – people ofdifferent ages, gender, cultures, and professions.
These heterogeneous groups included people
who were able to share their stories easily but also
those who were more reluctant. The pilots werealso instrumental in training our group leaders.

Implementation
The next step was implementation, which included the initial roll-out and its evaluation. All
SCF leaders participated in the first official training. If the training was to be successful, our leaders would have to demonstrate their support of it
by applying what they learned to the day-to-day
management and operation of the organization.

Evaluation
The final step in the process was evaluation,using Donald Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Evaluation
Model for instructional design.
For Level 1, How well the learners like theprocess: We asked participants to complete asurvey at the end of the training. In addition, we
conducted a large-group debrief, during which
participants sat in an open circle. Each participant
was given an opportunity to comment. Typically,
participants reflected on how meaningful thetraining was for them personally.
For Level 2, Learning: We sent participants asurvey within a week of completing the training,to assess what they had learned.

Photo courtesy of Southcentral Foundation

For Level 3, Behavior: This evaluation was moreconceptual and focused less on the content thatmanagers and employees had learned and moreon how they perceived certain behaviors in theworkplace. It was done through an employee

Feat u r e | gottlieb and tie r ne ysatisfaction survey. As part of the survey, which
was administered by a third-party vendor, we
asked questions directly related to the Core Concepts. These questions focused on how important
training was for employee success, for connection
and commitment to the organization, for connection to coworkers, and for the supportive natureof the organization’s environment. More than90 percent of workshop participants completed
the survey.
For Level 4, Results: We collected customer feedback specifically related to the skills and abilities
that comprised the Core Concepts. These surveys
included feedback from customer-owners immediately after a visit to a clinician, from an annual
survey assessing the overall organization, andfrom focus groups and one-on-one interviews
that identified areas for improvement. Questions
focused on how effective people in the system wereat listening, responding, connecting, and caring.
As a result of the success of the training, SCF’s
Nuka System of Care received the highest levelof recognition from the National Committee for
Quality Assurances as a Level 3 Patient Centered
Medical Home (PCMH). Receiving this award
was one indication of how effectively the Core
Concepts program supported SCF’s mission,
vision, and operational principles.

Key Elements of the Program
Several components were essential to the successof the Core Concepts design. One was that thehighest-ranking person in the organization was
willing to lead the training. Over the past six years,
SCF President and CEO Katherine Gottlieb demonstrated a strong commitment to acting as the leadfacilitator of the training.
Another essential component of the training
was the willingness of employees to share theirpersonal stories with their learning circles. Becausesome found doing so difficult or awkward, seniorleaders started by sharing their own stories.
Katherine Gottlieb shared her personal story on
the first day of every training session. By doing

this, she served as a role model and a source of
encouragement so that employees felt more comfortable and willing to share their own, often painful, stories. This component required an especiallystrong commitment from the CEO and proved tobe essential to the success of the training. While
the story itself is an important component ofbuilding relationships and trust, the main goal
is for everybody to get a better understanding of
why they think and act as they do. This increases
each person’s capacity for generative listening,
compassion for one another, and productive
collaboration across all parts of the organization.

An essential component of the
training was the willingness of
employees to share their personal
stories with their learning circles.
The process of reinforcing the training was another key element in the program’s success. Thiswas done by incorporating standards of behavior
based on the Core Concepts in job descriptions,in interview questions, and in performance evaluations. An example of this is the expectationthat all employees are able to develop, foster, andmaintain positive relationships with coworkers
and customer-owners. In addition, managers wererequired to lead groups. They used Core Concepts
				Participant Comments“I feel fortunate to work for an organization that givesme the time and tools to understand myself.”“I know the story behind the eyes of leadership and they
are more human to me.” 		
“My life is better because of my time working for Southcentral Foundation. The things I learned at Core Concepts
and Beauty for Ashes make me a better father, son, andspouse, and I thank you.”

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tools consistently in meetings and in conversations
to help them succeed in this role.
Refresher training for staff was also essential for
reinforcing new learning and behaviors. In othertrainings that used learning circles and sharing
story as tools, Core Concepts tools were added
to support and build on the common languagethat reinforced SCF’s mission and vision.
By continuing to be open to modification, wewere also able to keep the training fresh. While we
did not make significant changes once we began
implementation, we did tweak around the edges
and make some mid-course corrections. The structure and process of the training, which is mandatory for all employees, supported who we wereas an organization. The training intentionally included the practice of working in multidisciplinary
teams. For example, rather than having a training
exclusively for doctors, each training included employees from all areas of the organization – physicians, administrative support, board members,				Core Concepts Training Objectives
The objectives of Core Concepts Training are:• Understand how we impact others by:–	Understanding your relational style–	Understanding how your experiences contributeto how you approach others• Learn how to articulate your story from the heart–	Understand the power of empathy and compassion
for yourself and others• Understand your personal and professional aspirations– Align your aspirations, intentions, and behaviors–	Understand how you can create shared vision• Learn methods for good dialogue and productive
conversations–	Understand the impact of intentions–	Understand how to listen effectively–	Understand how good dialogue and productive
conversations will affect SCF– Explore tools for having good conversations

senior leaders, and other healthcare and technicalprofessionals. This approach demonstrated andunderscored what we meant when we talked
about shared responsibility and team.

Curriculum
The training is hands-on and interactive. Over thecourse of three days, every activity and training
element prepares participants for sharing stories
with their learning circle. This approach has been
especially effective for transferring meaning andcreating alignment among SCF employees.
Learning occurs in a variety of ways: individually,in pairs, in learning circles, and in large-group
discussions. Learning circles, which consist of no
more than seven participants and a group leader,are a critical design feature because they create
an environment in which participants have timeand space to engage and respond. Because participants are able to bring their own knowledge
to each session, over time, the role of the groupleader/trainer has gradually shifted toward moreof a facilitator role. This shift gave the group evenmore ownership of the process.
A host of other activities were also designed tosupport learning. We feed the soul with inspirational readings and feed the body with hearty
breakfasts and lunches. We also include wellness
activities to bring participants back to the program refreshed and ready to reengage. For example, the game musical chairs encourage playfulness; team Pictionary reinforces positive mental
models; and energetic aerobic exercise celebrates
the experience.

More Than a Training ProgramCore Concepts is more than a training program.
It is central to the way SCF functions as an organization and therefore requires a commitment
from the most senior leaders of the organization.
CEO Katherine Gottlieb spends three days withevery employee as they share story and learn
about how to relate and communicate with eachother. She is the first one to share her story, andshe leads the training. Leaders are expected to
manage and lead in a manner consistent with

Feat u r e | gottlieb and tie r ne y

Photo courtesy of Southcentral Foundation

Core Concepts principles and practices. They arealso expected to serve as learning circle leaders
at least every 18 months and to attend quarterly
leadership sessions led by the CEO to refresh andimprove their skills. As a result, all employees
have the same language and are aligned withthe organization’s values.
The last exercise in every Core Concepts program
gives each participant the opportunity to sharea thought with the whole group. The commentsfrom the employees are inspiring and heartfelt.
Employees express feelings of belonging to a
family, an organization, and a mission; of feelingheard, valued, and appreciated by their leaders;of understanding and knowing each other and theleadership team on a personal level; and of theircommitment to the organization’s vision.
The Core Concepts training was developed tosupport employees in achieving the organization’s
mission and vision. Any organization planning toembark on implementing this kind of training program must understand that it is more than a training. It requires a significant commitment of time,
resources, and passion. Top leaders are the rolemodels and the example of what is being done tocarry out the organization’s vision. Leadership isn’t
a hand-off; it is hands-on in trying to keep systematic and sustainable change moving ahead. Leaders have to put themselves into the effort. At SCF,
we believe the effort is worth the investment. n

abo u t the a u tho r s
Katherine Gottlieb, MBA, DPS (h.c.), is president/CEO of Southcentral Foundation. She is a tribal memberof the villages of Old Harbor and Seldovia, and is an honorary member of Eklutna. In 2004, she was arecipient of the MacArthur “Genius Award.” In 2005, Katherine received an honorary doctoral degreefrom Alaska Pacific University in recognition of her extraordinary public service.
Michelle Tierney, MPA, is vice president of Organizational Development & Innovation at Southcentral
Foundation. Michelle served for many years on the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Program. She holds master’s degrees in Public Administration and Human andOrganizational Systems, and is currently a doctoral candidate.

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r e f lections | vol u me 1 3 , N u mbe r 2

C ommenta r y 1 3 . 2

Commentary
Robe r t H anigAll too often the job of building an organization’s capacity to better serve its customers, beneficiaries, and workforce is seen as something to be outsourced. The
organization’s leaders may give little sustained attention and sponsorship to these
efforts beyond formal public introductions, exhortations, and appeals for participation.
No matter how well intended these efforts, the lack of deep understanding of what thejourney will require from the people who make up the institution – and the failure bysenior executives to role model the very values and behaviors they seek to instill in others– sadly diminish or negate the positive impact these initiatives are intended to achieve.

Robert Hanig

From an organizational learning standpoint, the elements required to build sustained
capacity for performance, learning, and growth in a human system are personal and collective aspiration, theability to have productive conversations – especially when deep and legitimate differences arise – and the capacity to
account for multi-temporal systemic and cultural interdependencies in formulating strategies and taking action.
In the case of Southcentral Foundation (SCF), a simple and profound reframing of these elements based on
Confucius may be more representative of the context within which the Core Concepts Training initiative
took place:
Virtue: Having a benevolent purpose and acting ethically in all transactions
Compassion: Understanding the implications for people’s lives and focusing on benefit for all
Action: Considering multiple perspectives and timeframes and then acting decisively
To understand how these elements affected our work at SCF, we need to appreciate CEO Katherine Gottlieb’s
extraordinary commitment to the well-being of the Alaskan Native population. Her commitment stemmed froman intimate understanding of the source and nature of the suffering this population was experiencing as well as 		a profound belief in the power of the human heart to overcome challenges and realize the promise of a brighter
future. This understanding and the deep relationships she had developed over time included both the more traditional tribal culture of the SCF owners and the western cultural dimension of many of the SCF faculty and staff.
Katherine’s sense of compassion assured that any program created on her watch would recognize, respect, andaccount for individual and collective perspectives and benefit the whole. In addition, because Katherine’s personal
life story had elements that were deeply rooted in the history of the community and because she was an executive
with a strong track record of delivering sustainable results, she was able to engender a condition of trust that was
the underpinning of the staff’s willingness to engage.

The design process we embarked upon for the Core Concepts Training, led by Michelle Tierney (SCF’s VP of Organization Development and Innovation), was characterized by ongoing connection to and communication with thecommenta r y | H anig

C ommenta r y 1 3 . 1

larger SCF community, including key staff members and the executive team. This approach assured that the program we produced would be relevant and effective. We also wanted to be sure that the process we used to design
the program reflected the values and behaviors we wanted to create in the organization itself. Pilot and delivery
dates were established to generate creative tension and to keep the team focused on delivery. Key design principles, including the selection and creation of human-centered tools and methods and the active participationof senior leaders at each program, were established.
In fact, senior leaders were required to share elements of their own life stories at critical times in the program.
Their stories described what made them who they are today, the challenges they needed to face and overcome,and their reasons for choosing and continuing to choose to be members of the SCF family. The design principleof having senior leaders participate in key development programs is well known in the field. However, because 		it requires a deep commitment and a willingness to speak from the heart rather than delivering well-meaning
expressions of altruistic platitudes that do little to build relationships and alignment, it seldom succeeds tothe degree it has at SCF.
The stated goal of the Core Concepts Training is to provide employees with the knowledge and tools needed tointegrate the core concepts of the Family Wellness Warriors Initiative (FWWI) throughout Southcentral Foundation.
I think the program fully accomplishes that goal. I also see the training as a journey that articulates, in a culturally
appropriate way, the spiritual and emotional essence of what it feels like to be an honored, generative member
and leader in a human community. By participating in the development of this program, I have received infinitely
more than I have given and am honored to have been part of SCF’s extraordinary journey. n

abo u t the a u tho r
Robert Hanig is director of RLH Consulting and a founding member of the Society for Organizational
Learning. He currently designs, directs, and delivers management and leadership interventions and programsfor the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the International Monetary Fund. 		
robert@rlhconsulting.com

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Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change
Volume 13, Number 2

E d i t o r i al Tea m
Managing Editor
Janice Molloy
Contributing Editor
Deborah Wallace
PublisherFrank Schneider

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