The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge
Senge's bio: Senge (pronounced SEN-GEE) got his PhD at MIT and is currently a senior lecturer at
MIT. He is also the founder of the Society for Organizational
Learning (SoL).
Key point: The fifth discipline is systems thinking. And it ties together the other four disciplines.
The book starts off, “From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world.” Breaking things apart can be called differentiation while putting things back together I'll call integration. To learn it is often necessary to differentiate because life is so vast and complex. But to build things, such an organization/business, we need to integrate separate pieces to form a whole.
What's more, we are in the information age. It was back in the 1960's when Peter Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker." Being that our economic life is built upon knowledge it makes a lot of sense to build learning organizations. Which is exactly what Senge is advocating.
The five disciplines are:
1. Personal Mastery
2. Mental Models
3. Building Shared Vision
4. Team Learning
5. Systems Thinking
Senge write, “Anyone can develop proficiency through practice. To practice a discipline is to be a lifelong learner. Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human.”
Senge talks about the “beer game,” which was created at MIT and is often played in management classes. It's too long to explain but the purpose of the game is to show the importance of thinking about the whole system that is your company. By only taking responsibility for your job, that is the tasks you execute, and ignoring how your job fits in a larger context, we blind ourselves to the big picture, the system. And being focused on events is another common way we disable our ability to see how all the pieces fit together.
“When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results,” he says. “In the beer game and in many other systems, in order for you to succeed others must succeed as well.”
Systems thinking and learning organizations are high leverage activities. “Buckminster Fuller had a wonderful illustration of leverage that also served as a metaphor for the principle of leverage – the 'trim tab.' A trim tab is a small 'rudder on the rudder' of a ship. It is only a fraction the size of the rudder. Its function is to make it easier to turn the rudder, which, then, makes it easier to turn the ship. The larger the ship, the more important is the trim tab because a large volume of water flowing around the rudder can make it difficult to turn,” writes Senge. Another definition of leverage is, the ability to do more with less. This goes all the way back to the words of Archimedes who said, “Give me a lever long enough....and single-handed I can move the world.”
For many years manufacturers thought that you could either have low cost or high quality, but they were mutually exclusive. Senge says, “What they didn't consider was how basic improvements in work processes could eliminate rework, eliminate quality inspectors, reduce customer complaints, lower warranty costs, increase customer loyalty, and reduce advertising and sales promotion costs.” The fact is you can have both higher quality and lower costs. An overly simplified example would be robotics. By making machines do repetitive work instead of humans you can both lower your costs and improve your quality. Senge states, “Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change.”
Senge gives the example of terrorism and the problems that are created by linear thinking. From America's perspective the logical process is:
Terrorist attacks → Threat to Americans → Need to respond militarily
But from the terrorists' view it's:
U.S. military activity → Perceived aggressiveness of U.S. → Terrorist recruits
What systems thinking reveals is that the two lines of thinking are not independent or separate but rather are joined in a circle of causality. So that terrorist attacks pose a threat to Americans leading to a need to respond militarily. But that U.S. military activity causes a perceived aggressiveness of the U.S. leading to additional terrorist recruits which end up causing more terrorist attacks and the cycle repeats itself over and over. Senge writes, “Here, as in many systems, doing the obvious thing does not produce the obvious, desired outcome.”
The goal of system analysis is to see patterns and major interrelationships.
“The practice of systems thinking starts with understanding a simple concept called 'feedback' that shows how actions can reinforce or counteract (balance) each other. Learning to recognize types of 'structures' that recur again and again.”
Senge says, “One of the most important, and potentially most empowering, insights to come from the young field of systems thinking is that certain patterns of structure recur again and again. These 'systems archetypes' or 'generic structures' embody the key to learning to see structures in our personal and organizational lives.” Senge explains that researchers have identified about a dozen system archetypes, but remember, this book was written in 1990.
One archetype is called, “Limits to growth.” The definition is, “A reinforcing (amplifying) process set in motion to produce a desired result. It creates a spiral of success but also creates inadvertent secondary effects (manifested in a balancing process) which eventually slow down the success.” From this comes the following management principle, “Don't push growth; remove the factors limiting growth.” This idea applies to the management of people. We don't yet know how to motivate people very well. But we know all kinds of ways to de-motivate them. A manager's job is to eliminate the de-motivators and stay out of the way.
Another archetype is called, “Shifting the burden.” The definition is, “An underlying problem generates symptoms that demand attention. But the underlying problem is difficult for people to address, either because it is obscure or costly to confront. So people 'shift the burden' of their problem to other solutions – well-intentioned, easy fixes which seem extremely efficient. Unfortunately, the easier 'solutions' only ameliorate the symptoms; they leave the underlying problem unaltered. The underlying problem grows worse, unnoticed because the symptoms apparently clear up, and the system loses whatever abilities it had to solve the underlying problem.” And here's the management principle, “Beware the symptomatic solution. Solutions that address only the symptoms of a problem, not fundamental causes, tend to have short-term benefits at best. In the long term, the problem resurfaces and there is increased pressure for symptomatic response. Meanwhile, the capability for fundamental solutions can atrophy.”
Senge writes, “In effect, the art of systems thinking lies in seeing through the detail complexity to the underlying structures generating changes.” The goal, as mentioned previously, is to see patterns and major interrelationships. With that being the case, Senge advocates for a learning organization. The way to build organizational learning is through the five disciplines listed above.
Personal Mastery
Senge starts off, “Organizations learn only through individuals who learn.” And continues, “Personal Mastery is the phrase we use for the discipline of personal growth and learning. It means approaching one's life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.”
A part of personal mastery is personal vision. It is important that the vision be positive not negative. Meaning, it is not about the negatives we wish to eliminate but rather the positive things we wish to achieve. Senge puts it this way, “Real vision cannot be understood in isolation from the idea of purpose. By purpose, I mean an individual's sense of why he or she is alive.”
Senge talks about how our personal vision can be a great source of energy. He calls the gap between vision and current reality, “creative tension,” saying, “the gap is the source of creative energy.”
Senge counsels us to, “Focus on the desired result itself, not the 'process.' We must work at learning how to separate what we truly want, from what we think we need to do in order to achieve it.” It's a reintegration of reason and intuition.
Mental Models
Mental models are the images, assumptions and stories we carry in our heads that helps us make sense of the world. Senges writes, “Mental models can be simple generalizations such as 'people are untrustworthy,' or they can be complex theories, such as my assumptions about why members of my family interact as they do.” He goes on to say, “Two people with different mental models can observe the same event and describe it differently.” Senge quotes Einstein as saying, “Our theories determine what we measure.”
Senge warns, “The problems with mental models lie not in whether they are right or wrong – by definition, all models are simplifications. The problems with mental models arise when they become implicit – when they exist below the level of our awareness.” This harkens back to the Delphic Oracle's advice to, "Know thyself."
Reflective practice is the essence of the discipline of mental models, and reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one's thinking while acting. Senge states, “Failing to distinguish direct observation from generalizations inferred from observation leads us never to think to test the generalization.” He expounds, “What is needed is blending advocacy and inquiry to promote collaborative learning.”
Senge says, “If managers 'believe' their world views are facts rather than sets of assumptions, they will not be open to challenging those world views.” Knowing that we operate from mental models is a big part of making effective decisions.
Shared Vision
In the words of Mr. Senge, “Shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning. While adaptive learning is possible without vision, generative learning occurs only when people are striving to accomplish something that matters deeply to them.” He goes on, “You cannot have a learning organization without shared vision. In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails.”
“Shared visions emerge from personal visions. Building shared vision must be seen as a central element of the daily work of leaders. Leaders intent on building shared visions must be willing to continually share their personal visions. They must also be prepared to ask, 'Will you follow me?'"
Senge points out the difference between commitment and compliance, “The command and control hierarchy requires only compliance. The committed person doesn't play by the rules of the game. He is responsible for the game.” But ultimately, “There is really nothing you can do to get another person to enroll or commit. Enrollment and commitment require freedom of choice.”
Team Learning
Within organizations, team learning has three critical dimensions:
1. There is the need to think insightfully about complex issues.
2. There is the need for innovative, coordinated action.
3. There is the role of team members on other teams.
Senge gives a word of warning, “Systems thinking is especially prone to evoking defensiveness because of its central message, that our actions create our reality.”
To facilitate collective learning it is necessary to have collective dialogue. Senge quotes physicist David Bohm saying, “Bohm identifies three basic conditions necessary for dialogue: 1. all participants must 'suspend' their assumptions, literally to hold them 'as if suspended before us'; 2. all participants must regard one another as colleagues; 3. there must be a 'facilitator' who 'holds the context' of dialogue.”
“Contrary to popular myth, great teams are not characterized by an absence of conflict. On the contrary, in my experience, one of the most reliable indicators of a team that is continually learning is the visible conflict of ideas. The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking.”
Key point: The fifth discipline is systems thinking. And it ties together the other four disciplines.
The book starts off, “From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world.” Breaking things apart can be called differentiation while putting things back together I'll call integration. To learn it is often necessary to differentiate because life is so vast and complex. But to build things, such an organization/business, we need to integrate separate pieces to form a whole.
What's more, we are in the information age. It was back in the 1960's when Peter Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker." Being that our economic life is built upon knowledge it makes a lot of sense to build learning organizations. Which is exactly what Senge is advocating.
The five disciplines are:
1. Personal Mastery
2. Mental Models
3. Building Shared Vision
4. Team Learning
5. Systems Thinking
Senge write, “Anyone can develop proficiency through practice. To practice a discipline is to be a lifelong learner. Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human.”
Senge talks about the “beer game,” which was created at MIT and is often played in management classes. It's too long to explain but the purpose of the game is to show the importance of thinking about the whole system that is your company. By only taking responsibility for your job, that is the tasks you execute, and ignoring how your job fits in a larger context, we blind ourselves to the big picture, the system. And being focused on events is another common way we disable our ability to see how all the pieces fit together.
“When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results,” he says. “In the beer game and in many other systems, in order for you to succeed others must succeed as well.”
Systems thinking and learning organizations are high leverage activities. “Buckminster Fuller had a wonderful illustration of leverage that also served as a metaphor for the principle of leverage – the 'trim tab.' A trim tab is a small 'rudder on the rudder' of a ship. It is only a fraction the size of the rudder. Its function is to make it easier to turn the rudder, which, then, makes it easier to turn the ship. The larger the ship, the more important is the trim tab because a large volume of water flowing around the rudder can make it difficult to turn,” writes Senge. Another definition of leverage is, the ability to do more with less. This goes all the way back to the words of Archimedes who said, “Give me a lever long enough....and single-handed I can move the world.”
For many years manufacturers thought that you could either have low cost or high quality, but they were mutually exclusive. Senge says, “What they didn't consider was how basic improvements in work processes could eliminate rework, eliminate quality inspectors, reduce customer complaints, lower warranty costs, increase customer loyalty, and reduce advertising and sales promotion costs.” The fact is you can have both higher quality and lower costs. An overly simplified example would be robotics. By making machines do repetitive work instead of humans you can both lower your costs and improve your quality. Senge states, “Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change.”
Senge gives the example of terrorism and the problems that are created by linear thinking. From America's perspective the logical process is:
Terrorist attacks → Threat to Americans → Need to respond militarily
But from the terrorists' view it's:
U.S. military activity → Perceived aggressiveness of U.S. → Terrorist recruits
What systems thinking reveals is that the two lines of thinking are not independent or separate but rather are joined in a circle of causality. So that terrorist attacks pose a threat to Americans leading to a need to respond militarily. But that U.S. military activity causes a perceived aggressiveness of the U.S. leading to additional terrorist recruits which end up causing more terrorist attacks and the cycle repeats itself over and over. Senge writes, “Here, as in many systems, doing the obvious thing does not produce the obvious, desired outcome.”
The goal of system analysis is to see patterns and major interrelationships.
“The practice of systems thinking starts with understanding a simple concept called 'feedback' that shows how actions can reinforce or counteract (balance) each other. Learning to recognize types of 'structures' that recur again and again.”
Senge says, “One of the most important, and potentially most empowering, insights to come from the young field of systems thinking is that certain patterns of structure recur again and again. These 'systems archetypes' or 'generic structures' embody the key to learning to see structures in our personal and organizational lives.” Senge explains that researchers have identified about a dozen system archetypes, but remember, this book was written in 1990.
One archetype is called, “Limits to growth.” The definition is, “A reinforcing (amplifying) process set in motion to produce a desired result. It creates a spiral of success but also creates inadvertent secondary effects (manifested in a balancing process) which eventually slow down the success.” From this comes the following management principle, “Don't push growth; remove the factors limiting growth.” This idea applies to the management of people. We don't yet know how to motivate people very well. But we know all kinds of ways to de-motivate them. A manager's job is to eliminate the de-motivators and stay out of the way.
Another archetype is called, “Shifting the burden.” The definition is, “An underlying problem generates symptoms that demand attention. But the underlying problem is difficult for people to address, either because it is obscure or costly to confront. So people 'shift the burden' of their problem to other solutions – well-intentioned, easy fixes which seem extremely efficient. Unfortunately, the easier 'solutions' only ameliorate the symptoms; they leave the underlying problem unaltered. The underlying problem grows worse, unnoticed because the symptoms apparently clear up, and the system loses whatever abilities it had to solve the underlying problem.” And here's the management principle, “Beware the symptomatic solution. Solutions that address only the symptoms of a problem, not fundamental causes, tend to have short-term benefits at best. In the long term, the problem resurfaces and there is increased pressure for symptomatic response. Meanwhile, the capability for fundamental solutions can atrophy.”
Senge writes, “In effect, the art of systems thinking lies in seeing through the detail complexity to the underlying structures generating changes.” The goal, as mentioned previously, is to see patterns and major interrelationships. With that being the case, Senge advocates for a learning organization. The way to build organizational learning is through the five disciplines listed above.
Personal Mastery
Senge starts off, “Organizations learn only through individuals who learn.” And continues, “Personal Mastery is the phrase we use for the discipline of personal growth and learning. It means approaching one's life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.”
A part of personal mastery is personal vision. It is important that the vision be positive not negative. Meaning, it is not about the negatives we wish to eliminate but rather the positive things we wish to achieve. Senge puts it this way, “Real vision cannot be understood in isolation from the idea of purpose. By purpose, I mean an individual's sense of why he or she is alive.”
Senge talks about how our personal vision can be a great source of energy. He calls the gap between vision and current reality, “creative tension,” saying, “the gap is the source of creative energy.”
Senge counsels us to, “Focus on the desired result itself, not the 'process.' We must work at learning how to separate what we truly want, from what we think we need to do in order to achieve it.” It's a reintegration of reason and intuition.
Mental Models
Mental models are the images, assumptions and stories we carry in our heads that helps us make sense of the world. Senges writes, “Mental models can be simple generalizations such as 'people are untrustworthy,' or they can be complex theories, such as my assumptions about why members of my family interact as they do.” He goes on to say, “Two people with different mental models can observe the same event and describe it differently.” Senge quotes Einstein as saying, “Our theories determine what we measure.”
Senge warns, “The problems with mental models lie not in whether they are right or wrong – by definition, all models are simplifications. The problems with mental models arise when they become implicit – when they exist below the level of our awareness.” This harkens back to the Delphic Oracle's advice to, "Know thyself."
Reflective practice is the essence of the discipline of mental models, and reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one's thinking while acting. Senge states, “Failing to distinguish direct observation from generalizations inferred from observation leads us never to think to test the generalization.” He expounds, “What is needed is blending advocacy and inquiry to promote collaborative learning.”
Senge says, “If managers 'believe' their world views are facts rather than sets of assumptions, they will not be open to challenging those world views.” Knowing that we operate from mental models is a big part of making effective decisions.
Shared Vision
In the words of Mr. Senge, “Shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning. While adaptive learning is possible without vision, generative learning occurs only when people are striving to accomplish something that matters deeply to them.” He goes on, “You cannot have a learning organization without shared vision. In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails.”
“Shared visions emerge from personal visions. Building shared vision must be seen as a central element of the daily work of leaders. Leaders intent on building shared visions must be willing to continually share their personal visions. They must also be prepared to ask, 'Will you follow me?'"
Senge points out the difference between commitment and compliance, “The command and control hierarchy requires only compliance. The committed person doesn't play by the rules of the game. He is responsible for the game.” But ultimately, “There is really nothing you can do to get another person to enroll or commit. Enrollment and commitment require freedom of choice.”
Team Learning
Within organizations, team learning has three critical dimensions:
1. There is the need to think insightfully about complex issues.
2. There is the need for innovative, coordinated action.
3. There is the role of team members on other teams.
Senge gives a word of warning, “Systems thinking is especially prone to evoking defensiveness because of its central message, that our actions create our reality.”
To facilitate collective learning it is necessary to have collective dialogue. Senge quotes physicist David Bohm saying, “Bohm identifies three basic conditions necessary for dialogue: 1. all participants must 'suspend' their assumptions, literally to hold them 'as if suspended before us'; 2. all participants must regard one another as colleagues; 3. there must be a 'facilitator' who 'holds the context' of dialogue.”
“Contrary to popular myth, great teams are not characterized by an absence of conflict. On the contrary, in my experience, one of the most reliable indicators of a team that is continually learning is the visible conflict of ideas. The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking.”
