Peter M. Senge

In this seminal book, Senge lays out the five disciplines of a learning organization. The title pays homage to the most important aspect of a learning organizations, the fifth discipline, or Systems Thinking. In simple terms, Learning organizations are those that are able to achieve what they set out to do. This is a remarkable book that all managers should read. We like to think of ourselves as a learning organization that helps others create learning organizations. We get this idea from Senge's wonderful book. The quote below is a remarkable testimonial from one of the greats in management thinking.

Read this book. You and your organization will be better off for it. Author Peter Senge presents a system of thinking and acting that, if followed correctly, can be the basis for reducing the 'learning disabilities' in any organization. Senge illustrates his ideas, based on both research and practical experience, with compelling examples. With the help of stories, diagrams, and self-administered exercises, readers not only learn, they learn how to learn

Chris Argyris,
James Bryant Conant Professor
Havard Gradutate School of Business

In this seminal book, Senge lays out the five disciplines of a learning organization. The title pays homage to the most important aspect of a Learning Organizations, the fifth discipline, or Systems Thinking. This abstract is mainly from the first chapter, but it includes insights from the other chapters in the book to elucidate certain concepts.

Summary

From an early age, we are taught to break apart problems in order to make complex tasks and subjects more manageable. However, as a result, we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole. Only when we give up the illusion that the world is created of separate, unrelated forces, can we 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.

The Five Disciplines of the Learning Organization

1) Systems Thinking: Business and other human endeavors are all systems. They are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead, we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems do not get solved. The essence of the discipline of systems thinking lies in a shift on mind: a) seeing interrelationships rather than linear cause-effect chains, and b) seeing processes of change rather than snapshots. Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past fifty years, to help us see full patterns and interrelationships. The practice of systems thinking starts with understanding a simple concept called "feedback" that shows how actions can reinforce or counteract each other. It builds to learning to recognize types of "structures" that recur again and again and helps us see the deeper patterns lying behind the events and the details.

2) Personal Mastery: This is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. Three important elements of personal mastery are: a) Personal vision: Most people have goals and objectives, but little sense of a real vision. The 'means' are often confused for the 'end', for e.g., a senior executive may choose "high market share" as a part of his vision. But, on further probing he may respond that he wants a bigger market share so that the company would be profitable so that it remains independent and is not taken over so that he can be true to his purpose in starting it. While all the goals mentioned are legitimate, the last goal-being true to his purpose--has the most intrinsic significance to him, while the others are means to an end-means that might change over time. The ability to focus on ultimate intrinsic desires, not only on secondary goals, is a cornerstone of personal mastery. b) Creative tension: When we hold a vision that differs from current reality, a gap exists, which the author calls, "creative tension". This tension can be resolved in two ways. One option is to take action to bring reality into line with the vision, while the other way is to lower the vision downward. Individuals and companies often choose the latter, because it's easy to "declare victory" and walk away from a problem. That releases the tension. But these are the dynamics of compromise and mediocrity. Truly creative people use the gap between what they want and what is, to generate energy for change & remain true to their vision. c) Commitment to truth: This does not mean seeking the "truth", it means a relentless willingness to uncover the ways we limit and deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge the ways things are. It means broadening our awareness and understanding the structures that underlie and generate events.

3) Mental Models: Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. An example is the generalization "people are untrustworthy." Such a sentiment shapes how we act and how we perceive the acts of others. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior. New ideas often fail to be put into practice even if they are good, because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That's why managing mental models-discovering them, testing their validity, and improving them-can be a breakthrough concept for Learning Organizations. The discipline of working with mental models starts with turning the mirror inward; learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world and scrutinize them. It also means carrying on "learningful" conversations that balance inquiry and advocacy, where people expose their own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others.

4) Building Shared Vision: At its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question "What do we want to create?" Many leaders have personal visions, which never get translated into shared visions that galvanize an organization. However, such visions, at best, command compliance, not commitment. When there is a genuine shared vision (as opposed to the all-too-familiar "vision statement"), people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to. Thus, shared vision is vital for Learning Organizations because it provides the focus and energy for learning.

5) Team Learning: Team learning is vital, because teams, not individuals are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. However, in most teams, the energies of individual members work at cross purposes, leading to wasted energy. In contrast, when a group of people function as a whole, the team becomes aligned, a commonality of direction emerges and individuals' energies harmonize. Team learning is the process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its members desire. While team learning builds on personal mastery and shared vision, they are not enough; the individuals need to know how to act together. The discipline of team learning involves mastering the two primary types of discourse: dialogue and discussion. Both are important to team learning, but their power lies in their synergy. In discussion (a word with the same roots as percussion and concussion) individual views are presented and defended and participants often want to see their view prevail. In contrast, the word dialogue, according to physicist David Bohm, suggests a free flow of meaning between people. Bohm contends that in dialogue a group accesses a "larger pool of common meaning" that can't be accessed by individuals alone. Dialogue is possible only when participants treat one other as colleagues in mutual quest for deeper insight and "suspend" their assumptions. This does not mean throwing out personal assumptions, suppressing them, or avoiding their expression; it means being aware of one's assumptions and holding them up for examination without getting defensive. Once an individual "digs in his or her heels", the flow of dialogue is blocked. The purpose of dialogue, then, is to go beyond the understanding held by each team member, and to explore complex issues creatively from many points of view. However, once the issue has been explored and decisions need to be made, discussion is needed. Thus, in team learning, discussion is the necessary counterpart of dialogue. A learning team masters movement back and forth between dialogue and discussion as needed.

The Fifth Discipline:
It is vital that the five disciplines develop as an ensemble. This is challenging, as integrating new tools is much harder than applying them separately, but the payoffs are immense. This is why systems thinking is the fifth discipline. It is the discipline that integrates the disciplines, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice. For example, vision without systems thinking ends up painting lovely pictures of the future with little understanding of the forces that must be mastered to accomplish the vision. But systems thinking also needs the disciplines of shared vision, mental models, team learning and personal mastery to realize its potential. Systems thinking makes understandable the subtlest aspect of the Learning Organizations-the new way individuals perceive themselves and the 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.

Conclusion

A word that describes accurately what happens in a Learning Organization is 'metanoia', which means a shift of mind. To understanding the meaning of 'metanoia' is to grasp the deeper meaning of 'learning'. In everyday use, learning has come to be synonymous with "taking in information". Yet, taking in information is only distantly related to real learning. It would be nonsensical to say, "I just read a book about bicycle riding-I've now learned that." Real learning means that we become able to do something we were not able to do earlier; we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it; we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. This, then, is the basic meaning of a "learning Organization"-an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future. For such an organization, it is not enough merely to survive. "Survival learning" or what is more often called "adaptive learning" is important-indeed it is necessary. But for a Learning Organization, "adaptive learning" must be joined by "generative learning," learning that enhances our capacity to create.

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