The Fifth Discipline is my all-time favourite book on leadership for change and development.
The author Peter Senge is a master of systems thinking and organisational learning. The fifth discipline that he explores in this book is the commitment and capacity for an organisation to learn at every level. He is a champion of decentralizing the role of leadership to foster the contribution of all.
The Learning Organisation is one that is committed to developing all of its people as learners to share vision, adapt to increasingly complex challenges and strive to adapt and change. Thus Senge calls leaders to move beyond controlling management to a posture that invites all to learn and contribute to organisational visioning and success: “I believe that, the prevailing system of management is, at its core, dedicated to mediocrity. It forces people to work harder and harder to compensate for failing to tap the spirit and collective intelligence that characterizes working together at their best.”
Senge teaches the five disciplines of the learning organization:
- Personal mastery – clarifying our personal vision and focusing our energies.
- Mental models – identifying the assumptions and generalizations with which we see the world and our actions.
- Shared vision – unearthing shared hopes for the future that fosters collaborative enrolment rather than compliance.
- Team learning – starting with dialogue and thinking together.
- Systems thinking – the literal “fifth discipline” that integrates the other four.
Systems thinking is the most helpful paradigm for leadership and change. It is a conceptual framework and set of tools that helps us see interrelationships between parts of a whole system. Systems thinking sees patterns and interrelationships where others see only forces, events and issues to react to. In any organisation – business, school, church or Defence – systems thinking helps leaders see that current problems are not necessarily solved by dealing with current presenting issues. Someone’s criticism of one matter may be more related to unhappiness about another issue. A leader’s grand designs may be prompted by their own neurotic desire for recognition rather than commitment to team success. Systems thinking can help discern what limiting factors are hindering growth and resisting change; and what levers can help foster momentum for innovation and change. Thus Senge offers diagnostic exercises of cycles of change, symptomatic cycles and leverage points. His tools are designed to identify limiting conditions and to maximise creative tension that can foster change.
Ultimately, Senge contends that the one sustainable competitive advantage for any organization is its ability to learn faster than competitors. In Senge’s words: “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.”
The revised edition of the volume offers extra interviews with master leaders and their stories of putting these principles into practice in companies such as BP, Ford, and HP, and organizations such as Oxfam and The World Bank.
For a five minute video introduction by Senge see What are the first 4 disciplines of a learning organization? Peter Senge (5:42) or for a longer one hour presentation view Leading System Change with Peter Senge(57:17).
Senge’s frameworks and case studies offer an insightful mental model for leading and navigating team-building, vision-casting, personnel development and organisational change.
Notes:
Publisher details: Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday & Co, 1992, 2006). A mini-review of this and other business leadership and innovation books were previously published in Darren Cronshaw, ‘The Emerging Church: Pioneering Leadership and Innovation Reading Guide’, Zadok Papers S185 (2011). Other related books on change include Peter Senge et al The Dance of Change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations (London: Nicholas Brealey, 1999) and Peter Senge et al., Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society (New York: Currency Doubleday, 2005). For application to training establishments or broader educational contexts see also Schools That Learn (Updated and Revised): A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education (New York: Crown Currency, 2012).
About the Reviewers
Darren Cronshaw is a Chaplain who has served at Army School of Transport, Puckapunyal, 1st Recruit Training Battalion, Kapooka and Defence Force School of Signals. He is also Professor of Practical and Intercultural Theology with the Australian College of Ministries (Sydney College of Divinity). His hobby is pushing the boundaries of resilience in Ironman triathlons.