Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges Review

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Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges ReviewI received the book a few days ago. I have ben reading for hours and hours, with just a few necessary breaks for digesting, reflecting, accepting and bringing my own thoughts together. This is one of the few books that is not just interesting when it comes to theory and methods. What makes it special is the mixture of theories and the authors own thoughts, experiences and break through thinking.
It has ben hard to lay the book aside, because it is so intense. And I know this is a book that I will read over and over again - with longer breaks under way - in order to have time for my own thinking. Soon it is time for summer vacation - then I will have lots of time to read the book again - at a lower pace - with the time to let my thougts wander. This is the kind of book that easily trap ones mind up to its own thinking.
To be more precise, what I found so interesting about this book:
- The Blind Spot - our unability to see our own weaknesses, what we do not understand and what we hide from.
- And, what is even more interesting: How to illuminate thr Blind Spot and make it clear to us how it stands in our way of dealing with life in a constructive way. We all have these Blind Spots - and we are unaware about them. Otto Scharmers openness in reveling his own Blind Spots through true life anecdotes made me see some of my own Blind Spots and gave me the will, the commitment and the power to face them. Facing them and seeing how they stand in the way of my True Self gave me the Willpower and Leverage to Confront them without hesitation or fear.
- Behind the Blind Spot lies possibilites to understand what we may be - what kind of a future we can create - in our Full Potential. Otto Scharmer calls this Presencing, which is a good descrption for the process the book led me into.
If you are working with development of organsizations, employees or leaders this book gives you the understanding of the limited outcomes of "Downloading" - which is the most common way of teaching - and what you get out of bringing people through experiences of opening, mind, heart and start to presence the possible future.
This book will probably be a milestone for understanding more of how teaching, laerning happens and that there is more to working with of people, organizations and social systems than we have understood so far.Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges Overview

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The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization Review

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The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization Review
With Jonathan Littman, Kelley provides in this volume a wealth of information and counsel which can help any decision-maker to "drive creativity" through her or his organization but only if initiatives are (a) a collaboration which receives the support and encouragement of senior management (especially of the CEO) and (b) sufficient time is allowed for those initiatives to have a measurable impact. There is a distressing tendency throughout most organizations to rip out "seedlings" to see how well they are "growing." Six Sigma programs offer a compelling example. Most are abandoned within a month or two. Why? Unrealistic expectations, cultural barriers (what Jim O'Toole characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom"), internal politics, and especially impatience are among the usual suspects. That said, I agree with countless others (notably Amabile, Christensen, Claxton, de Bono, Drucker, Kelley, Kim and Mauborgne, Michalko, Ray, and von Oech) that innovation is now the single most decisive competitive advantage. How to establish and then sustain that advantage?
In an earlier work, The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm, Kelley shares IDEO's five-step methodology: Understand the market, the client, the technology, and the perceived constraints on the given problem; observe real people in real-life situations; literally visualize new-to-the-world concepts AND the customers who will use them; evaluate and refine the prototypes in a series of quick iterations; and finally, implement the new concept for commercialization. With regard to the last "step", as Bennis explains in Organizing Genius, Apple executives immediately recognized the commercial opportunities for PARC's technology. Larry Tesler (who later left PARC for Apple) noted that Jobs and colleagues (especially Wozniak) "wanted to get it out to the world." But first, obviously, the challenge was to create that "it" which they then did.
In this volume, as Kelley explains, his book is "about innovation with a human face. [Actually, at least ten...hence its title.] It's about the individuals and teams that fuel innovation inside great organizations. Because all great movements are human-powered." He goes on to suggest that all good working definitions of innovation pair ideas with action, "the spark with fire. Innovators don't just have their heads in the clouds. They also have their feet on the ground." Kelley cites and then examines several exemplary ("great") organizations which include Google, W.L. Gore & Associates, the Gillette Company, and German retailer Tchibo. I especially appreciate the fact that Kelley focuses on the almost unlimited potential for creativity of individuals and the roles which they can play, "the hats they can put on, the personas they can adopt...[albeit] unsung heroes who work on the front lines of entrepreneurship in action, the countless people and teams who make innovation happen day in and day out."
Because organizations need individuals who are savvy about the counterintuitive process of how to move ideas forward, Kelley recommends three "Organizing Personas": The Hurdler, The Collaborator, and The Director.
Because organizations also need individuals and teams who apply insights from the learning roles and channel the empowerment from the organizing roles to make innovation happen, Kelley recommends four "Building personas": The Experience Architect, The Set Designer, The Caregiver, and The Storyteller. Note both the sequence, interrelatedness and, indeed, the interdependence of these ten "personas."
I am reminded of comparable material in A Kick in the Seat of the Pants. Specifically, Roger von Oech's discussion of what he calls "The Four Roles of the Creative Process" (i.e. Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior). Also Six Thinking Hats in which Edward de Bono explains the need for a creativity "wardrobe" comprised of several hats. Specifically, white (rational, logical, and objective), red (emotional), black (negative), yellow (positive, hopeful, optimistic), green (creative and innovative), and blue (ordered, controlled, structured).
What Kelley achieves in this volume is to develop in much greater depth than do von Oech and de Bono what are essentially ten different perspectives. He does so, brilliantly, by focussing the bulk of his attention of those who, for example, seek and explore new opportunities to reveal breakthrough insights...and while doing so wear (at least metaphorically) one of de Bono's hats (probably the green one). Kelley devotes a separate chapter to each of the ten "personas," including real-world examples of various "unsung heroes who work on the front lines of entrepreneurship in action, the countless people and teams who make innovation happen day in and day out."
Two final points. First, most of those who read this book can more easily identify with "unsung heroes" such as those whom Kelley discusses than with luminaries of innovation such as Thomas Edison or with celebrity CEOs such as Andrew Grove, Jeffrey Immelt, Steve Jobs, and Jack Welch, all of whom were staunch advocates of constant innovation in their respective organizations. Also, presumably Kelley agrees with me that those who read and then (hopefully) re-read his book should do so guided by a process which begins with the curiosity of an anthropologist and concludes with the empathy of a caregiver. This is emphatically not an anthology of innovation recipes. Rather, it offers a rigorous intellectual journey whose ultimate value will be determined, entirely, by the nature and extent of innovative thinking which each reader achieves...and who then uses the breakthrough insights to drive creativity throughout her or his own organization.The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization Overview

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