The Presencing Institute was founded to develop the theory and practice of deep systems transformation and to support individuals, organizations and multi-sector groups to bring about change in their own contexts.
The primary vehicle for this work is the u-school for Transformation, a platform and network of partners that supports capacity-building, research, action labs and movement-building for the advancement of awareness-based systems change, addressing the critical social and environmental challenges of our times.
The Presencing Institute also runs other initiatives and supports institutions, businesses and governments to make the transformations that will allow them to achieve their highest future potential. PI works with each organization to co-design processes that shift the behaviours and practices within teams and with key stakeholders in order to generate better results.
For more information on how PI can support your business or organization, please contact us
The Presencing Institute grew out of the MIT Center for Organizational Learning, which was founded by Peter Senge and colleagues together with a group of global companies in the early 1990s.
Senge was interested in the behavioral dimension of change: Why can we develop the skills that allow us to analyze the broken systems of our current society, but the practical impact on changing these systems can be almost non-existent?
Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline was based on blending (1) system dynamics, (2) organizational change, and (3) the creative processes. What emerged from this synthesis resulted in the concept for the MIT Learning Center.
Otto Scharmer began investigating why some tools worked very well in the hands of some practitioners but were ineffective in the hands of others. He conducted 150 interviews with leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators, many of which were conducted with Joseph Jaworski, as well as actively participated in change processes in companies, governments, and communities. The result of this work is Theory U - a framework for learning, leading, innovating, and profound systems change. It has been fully described in Otto’s book Theory U and in the book Presence that Otto co-authored with Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers. Over a period of 10 years, a network began to grow among change makers who were cultivating presencing and the emerging practice of ‘awareness-based systems change’ as an approach to deep systems innovation and renewal in organizations, society and self.
In 2006, the Presencing Institute (PI) was founded as a platform for advancing research and practice on awareness-based systems change, based on Theory U, and as a movement of practitioners apply these tools to bringing about change in the world.
Since its founding, PI has launched several major learning and innovation initiatives (including u-lab, GAIA, SDG Leadership Labs and u-school) and supported major leadership development programs in partnership with Ubuntu Lab (Africa), Asia-Pacific (United in Diversity) and the finance sector (Global Alliance for Banking on Values). PI's publications, journal and blogs contribute to advancing the field of awareness-based systems change.