Mind & Life Podcast

Otto Scharmer – Changing Systems

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March 13, 2025

View or download a transcript of this episode

In this episode, Wendy speaks with action researcher, changemaker, and thought leader Otto Scharmer. Otto is a world leader in systems change, and his work across disciplines highlights how awareness and the quality of our relationships are critical for the change we need today. This conversation covers many topics, including:

Otto Scharmer, PhD
  • regenerative farming, social change movements, and the “social soil”;
  • inspiration from Francisco Varela;
  • presencing and the role of awareness in systems change;
  • three divides that contribute to our current crises;
  • the untold story of regeneration and renewal;
  • action learning and action research;
  • trends towards goodwill and lack of agency;
  • institutions vs. individuals;
  • the blind spot of the mindfulness movement;
  • speaking and listening across ideologies;
  • non-doing, action vs. reaction;
  • the need for holding spaces and building trust;
  • leading by letting go and letting come;
  • releasing old ways of thinking (ego) and shifting to more integrated mindsets (eco);
  • sensing and engaging with future possibilities;
  • fourth-person awareness;
  • the influence of Mind & Life on his career trajectory;
  • and resources for learning consciousness-based transformation.

Otto Scharmer, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at MIT and Founding Chair of the Presencing Institute. He has dedicated the past 20 years to helping leaders embrace cross-sector systems transformation. Otto is an action researcher who co-creates innovations in learning and leadership that he delivers through classes and programs at MIT, the Presencing Institute, the u-school for Transformation, and through interventions with institutions in business, government and civil society around the world. Through his bestselling books Theory U and Presence (the latter co-authored with Peter Senge and others), Otto introduced the groundbreaking concept of “presencing” — learning from the emerging future. He emphasizes that shifting our economic operating systems from extractive to regenerative requires innovations in leadership support structures for shifting mindsets from ego to eco. Building that infrastructure is the purpose of the u-school for Transformation. Otto is a member of the UN Learning Advisory Council for the 2030 Agenda, the Club of Rome, and the World Future Council.

Resources

Personal website
MIT faculty page