Leadership
The problem with leadership today is that most people think of it as being made up of individuals, with one person at the top. But if we see leadership as the capacity of a system to co-sense and co-shape the future, then we realize that all leadership is distributed—it needs to include everyone.
Otto Scharmer, The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications, 2018
The Essence of Leadership
The next day my eighty-seven-year-old grandfather arrived for what would be his last visit to the farm. He had lived in that house all his life, beginning in 1890. Because of medical treatments, he had been away the week before the fire, and when he arrived at the courtyard the day after the fire, he summoned his last energy, got out of the car, and went straight to where my father was working on the cleanup. Without seeming to notice the small fires still burning around the property, he went up to my father, took his hand, and said, “Kopf hoch, mein Junge, blick nach vorn!” (“Keep your head up, my boy, look forward!”) Then, after a few more words, he turned, walked back to the waiting car, and left. A few days later he died quietly.
That my grandfather, in the last week of his life, with much of what he had been cultivating all his life gone up in flames, was able to focus on the emerging future rather than reacting to the loss, made a big impression on me. Only many years later, when I had started to work on learning from the emerging future rather than from the past, did I start doing my best work. But I realize now that it was seeded in that early experience.
Scharmer, Otto. The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications (p. 32). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Iowa Mutual Aid Network
unflinching 