From Chapter 1
" From a very early age, we are taught to
break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex
tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We
can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic
sense of connection to a larger whole. When we then try to "see the big
picture," we try to reassemble the fragments in our minds, to list and
organize all the pieces. But, as physicist David Bohm says, the task is
futile-similar to trying to reassemble the fragments of a broken mirror to
see a true reflection. Thus, after a while we give up trying to see the
whole altogether.
The tools and ideas presented in this book
are for destroying the illusion that the world is created of separate,
unrelated forces. When we give up this illusion-we can then build "learning
organizations," organizations where people continually expand their capacity
to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of
thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where
people are continually learning how to learn together�. As the world becomes
more interconnected and business becomes more complex and dynamic, work must
become more "learningful." It is no longer sufficient to have one person
learning for the organization�. It's just not possible any longer to "figure
it out" from the top, and have everyone else following the orders of the
"grand strategist." The organizations that will truly excel in the future
will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and
capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.
Learning organizations are possible because,
deep down, we are all learners. No one has to teach an infant to learn. In
fact, no one has to teach infants anything. They are intrinsically
inquisitive, masterful learners who learn to walk, speak, and pretty much
run their households all on their own. Learning organizations are possible
because not only is it our nature to learn but we love to learn. Most of us
at one time or another have been part of a great "team," a group of people
who functioned together in an extraordinary way who trusted one another, who
complemented each others' strengths and compensated for each others'
limitations, who had common goals that were larger than individual goals,
and who produced extraordinary results. I have met many people who have
experienced this sort of profound teamwork-in sports, or in the performing
arts, or in business. Many say that they have spent much of their life
looking for that experience again. What they experienced was a learning
organization. The team that became great didn't start off great-it learned
how to produce extraordinary results�
There is also another, in some ways deeper, movement toward learning
organizations, part of the evolution of industrial society�"The ferment
in management will continue until we build organizations that are more
consistent with man's higher aspirations beyond food, shelter and
belonging."�.
� At the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind-from seeing
ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world, from seeing
problems as caused by someone or something "out there" to seeing how our own
actions create the problems we experience. A learning organization is a
place where people are continually discovering how they create their
reality. And how they can change it. As Archimedes has said, "Give me a
lever long enough . . . and single-handed I can move the world."..
From a Synospsis prepared by Aldo Santos
Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline is divided into five parts. Part I is
devoted to laying out the argument that we are the creators of our own
reality, i.e., that the solutions to the problems that we face are at our
reach, that we have the power to control our destinies.
Chapter 1 discusses the concept of "a Lever," or leverage points in a system
--where the smallest efforts can make the biggest differences. It also
introduces the five disciplines of the learning organization (systems
thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision and team
learning). It highlights systems thinking as the 5th discipline --the one
which fuses them into a coherent body of theory and practice.
Chapter 2 contains a description of seven learning disabilities which are
often responsible for organizational failure:
1 - I am my position
2 - the enemy is out there
3 - the illusion of taking charge
4 - the fixation on events
5 - the parable of the boiled frog
6 - the delusion of learning from experience
7 - the myth of the management team
It relates these disabilities to the core disciplines, and argues how the
disabilities can be overcome through mastering the disciplines.
Chapter 3 crowns the argument through an example: the beer game --which
shows how rational individuals that are part of a system but that act in
isolation can get trapped in problems related to their own thinking and
behaviors.
Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are essential to understand Senge's argument. Some of
the concepts which flourish out of these three chapters are:
LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS. Organizations where people continually expand their
capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive
patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free,
and where people are continually learning how to learn together.
Today and in the future, the organizations that will truly excel will be the
ones that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at
all levels in an organization. Learning organizations are fundamentally
different from traditional authoritarian "controlling organizations."
SYSTEMS THINKING. The world IS NOT created of separate unrelated forces.
However, individuals have difficulty seeing the whole pattern. Systems
thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has
been developed over the past fifty years, to make the full patterns clearer,
and to help us see how to change things effectively and with the least
amount of effort --to find the leverage points in a system.
PERSONAL MASTERY. It is the discipline of continually clarifying and
deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing
patience, and of seeing reality objectively. The discipline of personal
mastery starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us, of
living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.
MENTAL MODELS. They are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or
even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how
we take action. the discipline of working with mental models starts with
turning the mirror inward; learning to unearth our internal pictures of the
world, to bring them to the surface and hold them rigorously to scrutiny.
BUILDING SHARED VISION. The practice of shared vision involves the skills of
unearthing shared "pictures of the future" that foster genuine commitment
and enrollment, rather than compliance.
TEAM LEARNING. The discipline of team learning starts with "dialogue," the
capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a
genuine "thinking together." (Dialogue differs from the more common
"discussion," which has its roots with "percussion" and "concussion,"
literally a heaving of ideas back and forth in a winner-takes-all
competition.) Team learning is vital because teams, not individuals, are the
fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. "Unless teams can learn,
the organization cannot learn."
METANOIA --A SHIFT OF MIND. Systems thinking needs the disciplines of
building shared vision, mental models, team learning, and personal mastery
to realize its potential. Building a shared vision fosters commitment to the
long-term. Mental models focus on the openness needed to unearth
shortcomings in our present ways of seeing the world. Team learning develops
the skills of groups of people to look for the larger picture that lies
beyond individual perspectives. And personal mastery fosters the personal
motivation to continually learn how our actions affect our world.
But systems thinking makes understandable the subtlest aspect of the
learning organization --the new way individuals perceive themselves and
their world. At the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind
--from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the
world, from seeing problems as caused by someone or something "out there" to
seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience. A learning
organization is a place where people are continually discovering how they
create their reality. And how they can change it.
STRUCTURE INFLUENCES BEHAVIOR. More often than we realize, systems cause
their own crises, not external forces or individuals' mistakes. In human
systems, structure includes how people make decisions --the "operating
policies" whereby we translate perceptions, goals, rules, and norms into
actions.
The reason that structural explanations are so important is that only they
address the underlying causes of behavior at a level that patterns of
behavior can be changed. Structure produces behavior, and changing
underlying structures can produce different patterns of behavior. In this
sense, structural explanations are inherently generative. Moreover, since
structure in human systems includes the "operating policies" of the decision
makers in the system, redesigning our own decision making redesigns the
system structure.
Interestingly, in the beer game and in many other systems, in order for you
to succeed others must succeed as well. Moreover, each player must share
this systems viewpoint.
Part II is devoted to the Fifth Discipline, Systems Thinking, which Senge
calls the cornerstone of the learning organization. Here the discussion
becomes more technical, especially Chapters 5 and 6, where "positive" and
"negative" feedback loops are discussed (Chapter 5), and where system
archetypes are introduced (Chapter 6 and Appendix 2).
Chapter 4 begins with a qualitative discussion of 11 Laws of the Fifth
Discipline:
1 - today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions"
2 - the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back
3 - behavior grows better before it grows worse
4 - the easy way out usually leads back in
5 - the cure can be worse than the disease
6 - faster is slower
7 - cause and effect are not closely related in time and space
8 - small changes can produce big results --but the areas of highest
leverage are
often the least obvious
9 - you can have your cake and eat it too --but not at once
10 - dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants
11 - there is no blame
All of which become clear once we let go of our linear, unidirectional
causation way of thinking, and adopt the systemic perspective --where
relationships are not always linear, and where causality may be traced
through a feedback loops back to its original source and effect it, as well
as be effected by it.
Chapter 5 explains the concept of "feedback loops:"
[I]n systems thinking, feedback is a broader concept. It means any
reciprocal flow of influence. In systems thinking it is an axiom that every
influence is both cause and effect. Almost nothing is ever influence in just
one direction.
It teaches people to draw them, and to see distinguish "reinforcing" from
"balancing" feedback ("positive" and "negative" feedback loops,
respectively). The chapter also illustrates the differing patterns of
behavior of reinforcing and balancing phenomena. Finally, there is a
discussion about delays and how they come into play to affect the behavior
of systems which contain them.
Senge argues that systems thinking is needed more than ever because of the
complexity of the interactions of today's world. Systems thinking is a
discipline for seeing the "structures" that underlie complex situations, and
for discerning high from low leverage points.
He discerns detail from dynamic complexity --the latter are situations where
cause and effect are subtle, and where the effects over time of
interventions are not obvious. He argues that conventional forecasting,
planning, and analysis methods are not equipped to deal with dynamic
complexity.
He highlights that when the same action has dramatically different effects
in the short-run and in the long-run, there is dynamic complexity. When an
action has one set of consequences locally and a very different set of
consequences in another part of the system, there is dynamic complexity.
When obvious interventions produce non-obvious consequences, there is
dynamic complexity.
The systems viewpoint is generally oriented toward the long-term view, and
toward the expanded and non-obvious consequences of actions. The essence of
the discipline of systems thinking lies in a shift of mind:
seeing interrelationships rather than linear cause-effect chains, and
seeing processes of change (patterns) rather than snapshots (isolated
events).
Chapter 6 introduces Senge's Systems Archetypes --generic structures which
embody the key to learning to see structures in our personal and
organizational lives. Two archetypes are discussed in the chapter: (1)
limits to growth and (2) shifting the burden. The others are explained in
Appendix 2:
- balancing process with delay
- shifting the burden to the intervenor
- eroding goals
- escalation
- success to the successful
- tragedy of the commons
- fixes that fail
- growth and under-investment
When discussing each archetype, Senge illustrates the guiding structure, and
the resulting behavior (or pattern) generated. He also highlights where in
the system resides the leverage point(s). The discussion is enriched with
practical examples.
Chapter 7 underscores the principle of leverage, and discusses why the
actions of nonsystemic thinkers often result in failure to achieve the
desired objectives.
Chapter 8 illustrates the ideas behind Part II with an example: the rise and
decline of People Express --an illustration of the workings of the limits to
growth archetype.
Part II contains the technical aspects and the tools needed for systems
thinking. It goes beyond the concepts laid out in Part I to demonstrate the
value and importance of systems thinking in practice, and to prepare the
reader to use systemic analysis.
Part III devotes one chapter to each of the other four disciplines, and
relates them with systems thinking and each other. These chapters are
complementary, and ARE NOT essential to understand the core of Senge's
argument.
Part IV contains six prototypes which are useful, but which also ARE NOT
essential.
Part V introduces a 6th Discipline: CODA --where the author discusses what
lies ahead, after the foundation established by the five disciplines is laid
out.
"...The
irony is that to do things faster, you often have to go slower. You have
to be more reflective. You have to develop real trust. You have to
develop the abilities of people to think together. Why? Because it
requires you to go through basic redesigns. You need to build a shared
understanding of how the present system works.... People must trust one
another through difficult systemic changes..."