Universities as Innovation Ecologies for Human & Planetary Flourishing
source / credit
Published in MEDIUM by Otto Scharmer
excerpt:
I. We overrate knowledge and underrate not-knowing.
Having spent half my professional life creating knowledge, it pains me to say that knowledge is overrated. I say this because many of the things that matter most in leadership and decision-making are things we don’t know. Specifically, we don’t know the future. No one does. Yet, as changemakers and leaders, we must use our best judgment to act in the present, in anticipation of what is about to happen.
Not-knowing is the ability to embrace uncertainty — to listen, sense, and co-sense from a deeper place. Accessing our not-knowing is at the root of all great entrepreneurship and deep creativity, enabling us to bring forth something truly new. In the age of AI, developing the ability to listen, sense, co-sense, and tune in to what is not yet known emerges as a primary capacity of learning and leadership.
II. We overrate comfort and underrate discomfort.
Anyone working in leadership development knows this: as long as leaders remain in their comfort zone, they are not learning anything that will lead to meaningful change. Behavioral change requires leaning into discomfort.
It is natural to value comfort and to be reluctant to embrace discomfort. However, to be ruthlessly honest about where the current system is broken and where new challenges and opportunities are emerging, we must engage in data-gathering and sensing activities that are not biased by our own comfort or discomfort. If our sense-making is limited to data sourced only from within our comfort zone, we will almost certainly remain stuck in old patterns of behavior, preventing anything truly new from entering our field of attention.
III. We overrate action and underrate non-action (stillness).
Those of us who were educated in business and engineering schools may find it hard to accept the idea that taking action isn’t always the best course. After all, isn’t action the whole point if one wants to make progress?
But consider this: when we jump from challenge to action without pausing, what are we doing? Reacting. Usually by doing more of the same. And that is precisely what we see playing out in institutions today — leaders are stuck in the patterns of the past. A pattern can take the form of analysis paralysis (overthinking without acting) or mindless action (using a ‘chainsaw’ without attending to and learning from the impact it creates).
In today’s hyper-expensive higher education environments, where everyone is in overdrive to maximize their return-on-investment (ROI), there is little space or time for reflection, contemplation, and inner stillness. Yet the capacity to value stillness (non-action) is and remains the primary gateway to all deep creativity.
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