I am rereading Peter Senge’s (1990/2006) classic work, The Fifth Discipline. Senge’s work over the last 20 years on the learning organization has been a landmark contribution to organizational behavior and leadership.
A learning organization is one whose people are continually engaged in two types on ongoing learning: generative and adaptive. Generative learning is creativity at work: continuously creating new opportunities and sources of growth for the organization. Adaptive learning is coping and responding positively to constant change, or what Ron Heifetz describes as closing the gap between the values people hold and the realities they face.
Great organizations are great learning organizations. They are communities of people who create and adapt very well. In a globalized, connected, socially networked world that grows increasingly complex, dynamic, and unpredictable, organizations that survive and thrive will be those who have mastered the disciplines of learning together.
In The Fifth Discipline, published originally in 1990, Senge offers 5 critical components vital to great learning organizations.
Personal Mastery
Great learners embody a high level of commitment to lifelong learning. There is a natural inquisitiveness and curiosity coupled with a passionate vision of what is still to be accomplished or gained. A well-known writer, speaker, theologian, and leader, in his early 80s, once remarked to a colleague, “I am glad God has allowed me to live these last 20 years because I have learned more since the age of 60 that in all the years before.”
The discipline of personal mastery consists of:
- clarifying and deepening our personal vision
- focusing our energies
- developing patience
- seeing reality objectively
Senge (2006) writes, “personal mastery starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us, of living outlives in the service of our highest aspirations” (p. 8).
Mental Models
Each of us operates out of an internal picture of how we see the world. These “mental models” are deeply embedded assumptions or images about the world around us that “influence how we understand the world and how we take action” in it. (p. 8). We may even be aware of these mental views of the world, but they play a major role in shaping our behavior. The discipline of learning organizations lies in identifying those mental models, becoming concretely aware of what they are, and then scrutinizing them carefully for where they need to grow or change. Effective learning organizations consist of people who are continually evaluating, testing, and allowing others to help shape their mental models. Leaders in the organization invest energy into helping others intentionally develop and embrace shared mental models that point to a desirable future.
Building Shared Vision
It is this shared vision of a desirable future that is the third critical component. Without the clear presence of goals, values, mission, and vision, it is very difficult for an organization to become as great as it otherwise might. Learning organizations do not engage in continual learning for its own sake, but for the sake of common identity, sense of purpose, or destiny.
Senge is careful to point out that the concern here is not for the manufacturing of “vision statements” that do little more than occupy a spot on the wall. Nor of any one leader’s personal vision. The concern is how to close that gap between personal vision and a vibrant, genuine commitment of the whole community to a common future. Senge, acknowledging that genuine vision cannot be dictated, defines building shared vision as the “unearthing of shared ‘pictures of the future’ that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance” (p. 9).
Team Learning
At the heart of the cultivation of a shared vision is dialogue, which Senge describes as the suspension of assumptions and entering into genuine thinking together. Dialogue involves learning to recognize the patterns of interactions in a team that hinders or aids in shared learning. The goal of dialogue is to discover insights, ideas, and possibilities that would not ever be discovered individually. In one sense, team learning is doing at the micro level what the organization as a whole seeks to do as the macro level: challenge, create, dream, encourage, imagine, attempt, discover, and so forth.
Systems Thinking
In the original version of the book, the disciple of systems thinking was the overarching, encompassing component that allowed all the others to work most significantly in harmony. Hence, the “fifth discipline,” that of systems thinking. Systems thinking is a conceptual framework for seeing and understanding organizations as a set of interrelated and interconnect parts in which interactions among parts of the organization have effects on other parts or the whole of the organization. It is the patterns among those broad interconnections that accounts for far more of how and why things happen in organizations. Too often, the temptation when it comes to change management or crisis intervention is to focus on isolated parts that seem to be the immediate culprits and fail to recognize the significant role those underlying, less visible patterns play in the moment. Systems thinking is the art of learning to understand the organization as a dynamic whole made up of many independent but interconnected parts whose actions all effect one another.
So, how do great organizations become great or maintain their greatness and avoid slipping into mediocrity? By mastering the 5 critical components of learning. However, Senge argues, these are not merely organizational characteristics but first and foremost personal disciplines. Effective learning organizations are precisely so because their leaders are great learners and are skilled at helping employees or members be great at learning together.
Im sum, great organizations are learning organizations where these 5 critical compenents converge out of the natural attitudes and mentality of its people
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Senge, Peter (1990/2006). The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. Currency/Doubleday.
