Fifth Discipline: Peter Senge
For Peter Senge (1990), change is teaming and learning is change. In his book "The Fifth Discipline", Senge argues in favour of the learning organisation, an organisation 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.
As managers he argues that you must learn to look for seven organisational 'learning disabilities' and use the "Five Disciplines" as antidotes to them.
The Five Disciplines are:
Personal Mastery people should approach life and work as an artist would approach a work of art
Mental Models deeply ingrained assumptions or mental images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action
Building Shared Vision when there is a genuine vision people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to
Team Learning team members engaging in true dialogue with their assumptions suspended
Systems Thinking this the integrative (fifth) discipline that fuses the other 4 into a coherent body of theory and practice
Learning Organisations are those that are able to move past mere survival learning to engage in generative learning - learning that enhances are capacity to create.
