The Fifth Discipline

Book: The fifth discipline Author Peter Senge Publisher {{{publisher}}} Buy from trademe ISBN 978-0385260954 Keywords systems thinking, organisation, business *edit this form here *see Help:Templates for details about how to make wiki templates

"Learning disabilities are tragic in children, but they are fatal in organisations. because of them, few corporations live even half as long as a person - most die before they reach the age of forty."

The organisations that excel will be those that discover how to tap their people's commitment and capacity to learn at every level in the company."

What will distinguish these companies from the traditional "controlling" organisations will be mastery of certain basic disciplines. Leading management thinker Peter Senge identifies five new "competent technologies" which provide the vital dimensions in building organisations that can truly learn:

• Systems Thinking
• Personal Mastery
• Mental Models
• Building Shared Vision
• Team Learning

The Fifth Discipline is a remarkable book that draws on science, spiritual values, psychology, the cutting edge of management thought and the author's work with leading companies which employ Fifth Discipline methods.

The author PETER M. SENGE is Director of the Systems Thinking and Organisational Learning Program at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Concepts

• Page 228 introduces the idea of an organisation's ability to "harmonise diversity" in shared vision, see collaboration
• Page 240 introduces the dichotomy of dialogue/discussion
• Page 285: A good paragraph on the meaning of freedom
• Page 287: "Localness" is Peter Senge's term for what we call "bottom up"
• Page 293: Organisation as Organism

Dichotomies

• Hierarchical/Learning organisation (top-down/bottom-up)
• Reactive/Proactive
• Reason/Intuition
• Advocacy/Inquiry
• Emotional/Creative tension
• Discussion/Disalogue
• Participitive/Reflective openness
• Divergent/Convergent problems

Feedback

Nad

I first read this book in 2000 after it was recommended to me by a friend. I'd mentioned to him that I was interested in applying Taoist principles to organisational systems, and he recommended I read "The fifth discipline" as it was very relevant to that line of thought. He was right, it resonated deeply and has helped to form the foundations of my understanding of an organisational system. Now about eight years later I've read it again, this time from the context of defining almost everything in systems thinking terms. The second time round was also very illuminating, it showed some good confirmations of progress in the fundamentals and a fresh perspective on how we might get some of our less productive threads rolling again!