Theory U, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8

Downloading

Patterns of the Past • The Field Structure of Downloading • GlobalHealthCompany • Four Barriers to Organizational Learning and Change

Patterns of the Past

What we do is often based on habitual patterns of action and thought. A familiar stimulus triggers a familiar response. Moving toward a future possibility requires us to become aware of—and abandon—the dominant mode of downloading that causes us to continuously reproduce the patterns of the past.

When the Berlin Wall collapsed in the fall of 1989—followed by a ripple of collapsing socialist systems throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union shortly thereafter—Western ...