The Fifth Discipline

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
Author(s)	Peter Senge
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Currency
Publication date	1990 (first edition) 2006 (second edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-385-26095-4 (first edition) ISBN 0-385-51725-4 (second edition)
OCLC Number	318247346

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Senge 1990) is a book by Peter Senge (a senior lecturer at MIT) focusing on group problem solving using the systems thinking method in order to convert companies into learning organizations. The five disciplines represent approaches (theories and methods) for developing three core learning capabilities: fostering aspiration, developing reflective conversation, and understanding complexity.

The Five Disciplines

The five disciplines of the learning organization discussed in the book are:

1. "Personal mastery is a discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively." (p. 7)
2. "Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action." (p. 8)
3. "Building shared vision a practice of unearthing shared pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance." (p. 9)
4. "Team learning starts with dialogue, the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into genuine thinking together." (p. 10)
5. Systems thinking - The Fifth Discipline that integrates the other 4.

"Systems thinking also needs the disciplines of building shared vision, mental models, team learning, and personal mastery to realize its potential. Building shared vision fosters a commitment to the long term. Mental models focus on the openness needed to unearth shortcomings in our present ways of seeing the world. Team learning develops the skills of groups of people to look for the larger picture beyond individual perspectives. And personal mastery fosters the personal motivation to continually learn how our actions affect our world." (p. 12)

The Learning Disabilities

• 1) "I am my position."

People fail to recognize their purpose as a part of the enterprise. Instead, they see themselves as an inconsequential part of a system over which they have little influence, leading them to limit themselves to the jobs they must perform at their own positions. This makes it hard to pinpoint the reason an enterprise is failing, with so many hidden 'loose screws' around.

• 2) "The enemy out there."
• 3) The Illusion of Taking Charge
• 4) The Fixation of Events

The tendency to see things as results of short-term events undermines our ability to see things on a grander scale. Cave men needed to react to events quickly for survival. However, the biggest threats we face nowadays are rarely sudden events, but slow, gradual processes, such as environmental changes.

• 5) The Parable of the Boiling frog
• 6) The Delusion of Learning from Experience
• 7) The Myth of the Management Team

The 11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline

1. Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."
2. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
3. Behavior grows better before it grows worse.
4. The easy way out usually leads back in.
5. The cure can be worse than the disease.
6. Faster is slower.
7. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
8. Small changes can produce big results...but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
9. You can have your cake and eat it too ---but not all at once.
10. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
11. There is no blame.

See also

• Organizational learning
• Peter Senge
• System Archetypes

References

• Senge, Peter M. (1990), The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday/Currency, ISBN 0385260946, http://books.google.com/books?id=bVZqAAAAMAAJ 
• Gharajedaghi, Jamshid (1999), Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity, Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, ISBN 0750671637, http://books.google.com/books?id=7N-sFxFntakC&