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The Invisible Workbench: Forming and Sculpting Mental-Emotional Fields
C.O. Scharmer: Michael, what led you to co-initiate a ‘Knowledge and Leadership’ research initiative and how does it relate to your journey? Economics increasingly has to be concerned not with scarce means, but with scarce ends… II. Invisible Architectures of Organizational Performance ... every practical problem that a management consultant encounters is nothing other than a very specific configuration of underlying [philosophical] questions… When Tom Malone says that a 40% commitment is sufficient to get by in a typical company without attracting any attention, I of course must ask myself, ‘What is wrong here? Barrier # 1: Limits of differentiation into disciplines Barrier # 2: Limits of Empiricism Barrier # 3: Limits of traditional research roles Barrier # 4: Limits of understanding the human condition Barrier # 5: Limits of language IV. Three Limits of Practical Work Boundary # 1: Pragmatic Solipsism Boundary # 2: Seeing Mental Models In-Use (Dialogue) Boundary # 3: Sensing and Discovering the New V. Creating The Invisible Workbench I think that we remain — even after all this time — victims of an industrial perspective that places action and effort in the foreground… … for if the output of our action belongs primarily to the cognitive and emotional spheres and the production processes of the company are largely concerned with mental and dialogue processes — and no longer with the edging of wood or the screwing in of screws — then we must ask ourselves whether we have put enough effort into the creation of a second workbench, that is, the collection of tools that we need to shape these processes in a rational way. Here I would answer ‘no’. …we fail to recognize the essence of economic success, which can best be described as the forming or ‘sculpting’ of mental and emotional fields… Now when we contemplate our episodes of moderating these group processes as a series of micro-interventions, a startling pattern emerges. We encounter what you might call ‘interaction pathologies’ and ‘content pathologies’... We see some highly praised corporate models where the driver of action for managers and employees is a combination of material incentives and palpable fear… VIII. Beyond Individualistic Notions of Leadership A better way to think about leadership and knowledge is to conceive of them as system functions, that is, as characteristics of a definite group structure. And this structure consists not only of the individuals themselves, but also of the mental and social contexts that they share.… Knowledge is not an attribute of a single person, but a characteristic of the interactions in which individuals participate. IX. Organizations: What are they? I experience corporations — or rather the employees of corporations — above all as participants of a thought world which is manifested in certain typical thought routines. Yet the thought world lies beyond these routines… X. The Tacit Dimension of Client Relationships This must sound odd, but I really think that my client is not only the person, but also this ideal entity — this ‘common thought world’ — to which I feel obligations on grounds of both truthfulness and aesthetics… … I think also that when these experiences really turn out well they are not my experiences alone. These are rather experiences that now and then cause an entire group to enter a certain dreamlike state. These moments are almost magical.… These are moments in which we perceive the barrier between our conscious and unconscious worlds as somewhat passable. … it is rather something that happens almost all the time. However, the way we habitually direct our attention causes it to pass us by unnoticed. While certain fields — particularly of course those of physical production — have been strongly advanced with technology, we are probably at the very beginning of the design or development of a technology which will give us comparable access to thought processes… The essence of high-performance systems and economic success is, according to Jung, deeply related to the "forming and sculpting of mental and emotional fields." The blind spot of today’s practical work on knowledge and leadership concerns the creation of reliable methods and tools that would empower people to shape this invisible dimension of high-performance systems more consciously and effectively. In order to do so Jung proposes the creation of "a second workbench" — that is, a set of methods and tools to shape this invisible process. In this perspective, knowledge is not an attribute of a single person, but a characteristic of interactions in which individuals participate. The corporation, accordingly, is a mental-emotional field in which its members participate. Says Jung: "This must sound odd, but I really think that my client is not only the person, but also this ideal entity — this ‘common thought world’ — to which I feel obligations on grounds of both truthfulness and aesthetics." He says that when we succeed in entering this deeper aspect of organizational experience we realize that these experiences are not simply individual experiences: "These are rather experiences that now and then cause an entire group to enter a certain dreamlike state. These moments are almost magical.… [They are the] moments in which we perceive the barrier between our conscious and unconscious worlds as somewhat passable."
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