Senge 5th Discipline

Source

• Edward Demings: “Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people.”
• “People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers – a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars-and on up through the university. On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.”
• David Whyte: “Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal, and conversational foundations of our identity.”
• As Argyris writes, these surveys and focus groups fail because “they do not get people to reflect on their own work and behavior. They do not encourage individual accountability.”
• M4: What if I told you that you didn’t get to go home until we solved it?
• As Senge notes, “it borders on dereliction that organizations invest so few resources in studying what has succeeded and failed in past strategies, operational changes, and leadership approaches. Instead, they more or less ‘make it up as they go along,’ with little serious theory to guide leaders at different levels. It’s no wonder that a new CEO typically sees his or her job as pushing a whole new strategy, almost as if there were no history.”
• “the absence of effective infrastructures to help people integrate learning and working.”
• Kairos and opportunity
• Matonia accompanied Kairos and sowed sorrow on those who thought htye missed their opportunity
• Metanoia is the word Senge uses to describe the key concept at the core of the promised land: a “learning organization.” Many will miss them at first. But thanks to Metanoia, they are encouraged to adopt “an active emotional state in which reflection, revelation, and transformation occur and thus expand the opportunities available in the concept of kairos.
• “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.”
• “For such an organization, it is not enough merely to survive. ‘Survival learning’ or what is more often termed ‘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.“
• Learning organizations promise what all learning professionals are after today: building capability (developing capability means developing the capacity to reliably produce a certain quality of results.) Characteristics of a learning organization:
• people continually expand their capacity to create,
• new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured,
• collective aspiration is set free,
• people are continually learning how to learn together.
• Definition: “Learning is a process of enhancing learners’ capacity, individually and collectively, to produce results they truly want to produce.” Two key implications
• the building of capacity for effective action, as opposed to intellectual understanding only; and
• the fact that this capacity builds over time.
• Confucius: To become a leader you must first become a human being
• “We will never transform the prevailing system of management without transforming our prevailing system of education. They are the same system.” – W. Edwards Deming.
• “The relationship between a boss and subordinate is the same as the relationship between a teacher and student… [employees spend their time] pleasing bosses and failing to improve the system that serves customers.”

5 Learning disciplines

1. Personal Mastery
2. Mental Models
3. Shared Vision
4. Team Learning
5. Systems Thinking

1. Personal Mastery

• “Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs.”
• Kazou Inamori
• His personal mastery traits:
• have a special sense of purpose behind their visions and goals,
• see current reality as an ally, not an enemy,
• are deeply curious,
• feel connected to others and part of a larger creative process,
• live in a continual learning mode, and
• are acutely aware of their own ignorance.
• Vision and productive tension: we continually clarify what is important to us (what we want), and we continually learn how to see current reality more clearly (where we are). The comparison of what we want and where we are generates a “creative tension.” Tension has a natural tendency to seek resolution. So the essence of personal mastery is learning how to generate and sustain creative tension in our lives while holding off the twin threats of feeling powerlessness to bring change and unworthy of getting what we truly desire.
• A commitment to the truth is the “relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit and deceive ourselves and to continually challenge our theories of why things are the way they are.” It asks us to recognize that all we have are assumptions and that we should challenge them. The biggest threat to a commitment to the truth is certainty. As Elon Musk advises instead, “take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”
• Donald Schon: “Reflection that [isn’t] connected to action is what [makes] people think they don’t have time for this. A culture that integrates action and reflection arrives at better decisions to which people can genuinely commit.”

2. Mental model

• Truth-default theory; Rutger Bregman; socially adaptive behavior and trust as pro-social: “Suppose you trust someone, and she merits that trust. That’s a huge upside. Trustworthy people feel validated and motivated by being trusted. What’s the downside if you’re wrong? As long as you don’t expose yourself to unacceptable loss, you’ll feel pain and disappointment. The upside to mistrust? You minimize this pain and disappointment. What’s the downside to mistrust? … you will demotivate and drive the best people away.” (Jim Collins describing Bill Lazier)

Senge outlines three tools for organizations to surface and test mental models:

1. tools that promote personal awareness and reflective skills,
2. “infrastructures” that institute this as a regular practice, and
3. a culture that promotes inquiry and challenges our thinking.

As the CEO of Hanover Insurance put it, “the healthy corporations will be ones which can systematize ways to bring people together to develop the best possible mental models for facing any situation.”

The goal of bringing people together is to practice four sub-disciplines within the discipline of mental models:

1. recognizing the gap between what we say and what we do,
2. recognizing “leaps of abstraction”, or generalizations we make without testing,
3. articulating what we are thinking but not saying, and
4. balancing inquiry and advocacy.

3. Shared Vision (Common Purpose and Shared Consciousness)

• Abraham Maslow on effective teams: “the task was no longer separate from the self.”
• Def: “A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people’s hearts, a force of impressive power. It may be inspired by an idea, but once it goes further – if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one person – then it is no longer an abstraction. It is palpable. People begin to see it as if it exists. Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.”
• “There is a world of difference between compliance and commitment. The committed person brings an energy, passion, and excitement that cannot be generated by someone who is only compliant, even genuinely compliant. The committed person doesn’t play by the rules of the game. He is responsible for the game. If the rules of the game stand in the way of achieving the vision, he will find ways to change the rules. A group of people truly committed to a common vision is an awesome force.”
• “Ultimately, leaders intent on building shared visions must be willing to continually share their personal visions. They must also be prepared to ask, ‘Will you follow me?’ This can be difficult. For a person who has been setting goals all through his career and simply announcing them, asking for support can feel very vulnerable.”
• Senges recommendations:
• Be enrolled yourself – every leader from the top down needs to be bought into the process, or else it’s selling not enrolling.
• Be on the level – no sugar coating. Describe your vision as simply and honestly as you can.
• Let the other person choose – don’t convince another of the shared vision. Create time and safety for people to develop their own sense of vision.

The reinforcing cycle: Once a shared vision takes shape, it spreads because of a “reinforcing process of increasing clarity, enthusiasm, communication and commitment.” The more people talk about it, the clearer it gets. The clearer it gets, the more enthusiasm for it builds. The more it builds, the more conflicting ideas will emerge, however.

The author closes this section by warning of three ways visions can die:

• People become discouraged by the difficulty in bringing the vision into reality – personal mastery plays a bedrock role in overcoming this risk.
• People get overwhelmed by the demands of work and lose focus on the vision – creating time to think and reflect away from fighting fires can help here.
• People forget their connection to one another – approaching visioning as a joint inquiry, where all opinions are respected can foster a sense of togetherness around the shared vision.

5. Systems Thinking

• Beer game: Each individual action is well-motivated and defensible. There is no one to blame…
• Reality is made up of circles but we see straight lines. If we want to see systemwide interrelationships, we need a language of interrelationships, a language made up of circles.
1. Structure influences behavior – it’s easy to find blame with someone or something, but very often the game is set up to fail by its very structure.
2. Structure in human systems is subtle – the structure we use to make decisions is infinitely complex and difficult to predict.
3. Leverage comes from new ways of thinking – people often ignore how their decisions affect others; by communicating we are able to understand and eliminate instability in any system.
• Necessary language:
• Reinforcing (or amplifying) feedback is the engine of growth.
• Balancing (or stabilizing) feedback operates whenever there is a goal-oriented behavior. If the goal is not to move, then balancing feedback will act the way the brakes in a car do.
• A balancing process is always operating to reduce a gap between what is desired and what exists.
• Many feedback processes contain “delays,” which make the consequences of actions occur gradually.
• Resistance is a response by the system, trying to maintain an implicit system goal. Until this goal is recognized, the change effort is doomed to failure.
• Rules:
• Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions.
• The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
• Behavior grows better before it grows worse.
• The easy way out usually leads back in.
• The cure can be worse than the disease.
• Faster is slower.
• Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
• Small changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
• You can have your cake and eat it too – but not at once.
• Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
• There is no blame.
• Lessons
• Aggressive action often produces exactly the opposite of what is intended. It produces instability and oscillation, instead of moving you more quickly toward your goal.
• Leverage lies in the balancing loop – not the reinforcing loop. To change the behavior of the system, you must identify and change the limiting factor.
• Successes usually involve genuine efforts to redistribute control, and deal with the threats of giving up unilateral control.
• The skillful leader is always focused on the next set of limitations and working to understand their nature and how they can be addressed.
• Beware the symptomatic solution. Solutions that address only the symptoms of a problem, not fundamental causes, tend to have short-term benefits at best.
• “A truly profound and different insight is the way you begin to see that the system causes its own behavior.” – Donella Meadows