method · all tools
Sensing Journey
Leaving the office to see the system from its edges: small groups visit places and people that matter in the system they work on — users, front lines, forgotten corners — with the discipline of observing and listening through others' eyes rather than confirming what they already know. Structured preparation, immersion with deep-listening interviews, and debrief harvesting what was actually seen and felt.
- The visited are people, not exhibits — brief participants on respect, consent and reciprocity before entering anyone's world
- Without the debrief the journey becomes tourism; harvesting is where sensing becomes seeing
Practical
- Time
- 120-480 min + 60 landing
- Group
- 2–30 · pairs, small-group
- Settings
- in-person
- Materials
- Field sites and host agreements; notebooks; interview guidelines
- Mechanisms
- systems-sensing, perspective-taking, dialogic-encounter
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- u-school.org/learningjourneys — u-school for Transformation — Theory U tools, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- CC BY (Presencing Institute)
Source link checked 31 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Otto Scharmer / Presencing Institute — Theory U (co-sensing phase)
In this directory via u-school for Transformation — Theory U tools · IDG Phase 2 Research Report & Toolkit (2022) · HostingTransformation Methods ToolBox
Part of the Theory U family the Phase 2 Toolkit lists as freely accessible and adaptable (Sensing Journeys, Dialogue Interview, Stakeholder Interview, Guided Journaling, Case Clinic, Prototyping). Dialogue and Stakeholder Interviews remain to be extracted as their own records.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25