Three Openings

THREE OPENINGS

There is one remaining question. Over the last quarter-century, I have watched many people in many different settings work with tools and principles for fostering vision and purposefulness, deeper conversation and reflectiveness, and systemic thinking. It is clear that some attain remarkable results and some accomplish very little. Why is this? I do not think the difference lies in intelligence or even commitment. It certainly does not stem from organizational position or power. But it seems to have to do with where people are “coming from.” As Bill O’Brien observed near the end of his life, “The primary determinant of the outcome of an intervention is the inner state of the intervenor.”

My colleague and co-author of Presence, Otto Scharmer, explains a shift in orientation and intention that arises from three “thresholds,” or openings through which we must pass in leading profound change: opening the head, opening the heart, and opening the will.

Opening the Head

The first involves opening ourselves to see and hear what is in front of us but we have not yet been able to see. This is the threshold of “suspension”—suspending taken-for-granted assumptions that have shaped our perceptions in the past.

Opening the Heart

The second threshold involves seeing with the heart—opening it to see our connection to what is around us, the pain, the suffering, and the problems, as well as the joy. Here we move beyond our comfortable stories that blame outside forces or people for what is not working and see that we too are part of the problem.

Opening the Will

The third threshold involves letting go of the last remnants of what Scharmer calls “our small ‘s’ self” and letting whatever may arise come through us. Here we connect “with the future that comes into being through us and with what we are here to do.” Passing through this third threshold does not mean that all our questions about the meaning of our lives are suddenly answered, but that “we are alive in the heart of this question and it carries us forward.”

Examples in Practice

• Vivienne Cox (BP): “I know we are starting to move to a deeper and more productive level of conversation when I notice people being less inclined to treat their opinions as facts. They become less strident. They become less certain about things. They start to have a sense of humor. They lighten up. … That’s when I know a sense of real inquiry is developing.”
• Salim Al-Aydh (Gulf SoL): He opens dialogues with pictures of children and talks about his grandchildren, so that when people look at economic prospects, they imagine the lives their children will live. “We cannot start to talk together seriously about the future we truly want to create, and the changes that may be needed, without opening our hearts.”
• Marianne Knuth (Kufunda Village): “We bring together community organizers from across Zimbabwe to learn from each other, and to become more conscious of unconscious assumptions … but we can only do this by being likewise open ourselves.” She shares the story of Anna Marunda, a widow who discovered her own strength and leadership when met “in her wisdom, not in her poverty.”