Full transcript
0:00Peter Senge's 1990 book The Fifth
0:02Discipline remains one of the most
0:04influential management books on
0:05organizational learning and systems
0:07thinking. Rather than a set of management
0:09practices Senge offers a way to view
0:12understand and manage the influences and
0:14interactions in organizations. This
0:16makes his message widely applicable and
0:18still very relevant. The Fifth Discipline
0:21describes how organizations that are
0:22competitive, sustainably competitive, are
0:25those that know how to learn, and a
0:27learning organization, he says,
0:28understands how everything is
0:30interconnected: people, the ideas, the
0:32context, history, goals, and so on. A change
0:36in one area will cause ripples of change
0:38and reactions elsewhere, often in
0:39unexpected ways. The book's title
0:42points to 5 practices or disciplines that,
0:45when practiced together, create the
0:47conditions needed to be an effective
0:48learning organization. One is personal
0:51mastery. This is our own practice of
0:53honest reflection and evaluation that
0:56identifies both personal and
0:57organizational needs that contribute to
1:00achievement of organizational goals as
1:01well as their own personal and
1:03professional development. Awareness of
1:06our own biases and assumptions is a
1:07second discipline. Understanding our own
1:10mental models helps us be more honest
1:12about what we are experiencing and
1:14accurate in identifying underlying
1:16issues. Having a common understanding of
1:19a desired future, or a shared vision, is
1:21another discipline and a powerful
1:24motivator for individuals in an
1:25organization particularly when the
1:27personal and organizational visions
1:29align. Team learning is the fourth
1:32discipline. This is the practice of
1:34collaboration and support and developing
1:36capacity in everyone in the organization.
1:39Individuals learn more quickly and
1:41effectively as a focused group than they
1:43would on their own. The fifth of the
1:46disciplines is systems thinking. This is
1:48the discipline of appreciating that
1:50individuals, policies, organizations,
1:52decisions, relationships, etc are all
1:54interconnected elements in a larger
1:56context. The book also describes how to
2:00shift our own thinking toward systems
2:02thinking. Senge uses familiar
2:04organizational experiences and settings
2:06or "systems archetypes" to illustrate how
2:09decision-making is improved with a
2:11perceptive recognition and understanding
2:13of feedback signals. He
2:15describes how feedback loops are not
2:17really loops. We have to consider the
2:19many balancing and reinforcing
2:21influences that continually affect the
2:23system. Focusing on relationships and
2:26interconnectedness the book was an early
2:28voice in prompting collaborative
2:29approaches to learning as well as the
2:31growth of learning communities. Senge's
2:34work promotes a vision of organization
2:36as dynamic systems that can grow and
2:38respond and lead change. It is the
2:40individuals in the organizations that
2:42learn and contribute to a body of
2:43knowledge and wisdom and collectively
2:45function as a learning organization