CAPSULE | READS: The Fifth Discipline

Key takeaways on: The 5 Disciplines, Loops > Linear Reality & Learning Organization.

ON THE 5 DISCIPLINES: All are concerned with a shift of mind from seeing parts to seeing wholes.

1. Personal Master: Continually clarifying our personal vision, our focusing of energies, developing patience & seeing reality objectively.
2. Building Shared Vision: The capacity of sharing individual visions into collective visions to create together.
3. Mental Models: Learning to unearth our own internal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface to see how they shape our actions.
4. Team Learning: Starts with a dialogue of team members to suspend assumptions and meander into thinking together.
5. Systems Thinking: Fuses all 4 into bodies of practice

ON LOOPS > LINEAR REALITY: Identify a domain to take action ➡ practice systems thinking ➡ execute on it ➡ reflect on it ➡ iterate.

• Reality is made of circles, but we see straight lines.
• We tend to think and tell ourselves that we live very independently, but we are really living in an interconnected web.
• Visions that are truly shared take time to emerge — they grow as a byproduct of interactions of individual visions, ongoing conversation, and insights gradually emerge from these conversations.

LEARNING ORGANIZATION: Redefine how work, works; it’s about learning.

• Find your partners that are committed to a shared vision.
• You don’t learn to sail by racing your boat across the Pacific. You learn to sail in safe places, in conditions where you won’t drown, but will learn.
• Learning is about taking action. The beauty of creative tension is the realization of current reality.

Until questioned and challenged, growth doesn’t occur.

Lay out all the pieces of the puzzle, take things apart to make sense of and put them back together.

Explore the gaps in what you say versus your mental models.

The awareness of interdependence influences the decisions we make and the actions we take.

Listening for the right course of action transcends and unifies visions:

• selling vs enrolling someone in a vision
  > selling = manipulation
  > enrolling = free choice | genuine enthusiasm
  > committed = freedom of choice | feeling fully responsible for making the vision happen | vision is pulling the action | energy, passion & excitement | doesn’t play by rules, responsible for the game, finds ways to make it happen | can accomplish the seemingly impossible
  > compliant = just going along — supportive — but not truly enrolled or committed | accepting in order to get something else

5 Disciplines expanded:

1. Personal Mastery: The bedrock that draws us into actions we deeply care about for developing shared visions (personal vision, commitment to truth & creative tension.
   > vision enables us to ponder: ‘what is that I truly want?’ ‘what is it that I deeply care about?’ ‘what is it that I would like my life to be dedicated to?’
2. Building Shared Vision: A shared vision can be extrinsic.
   > Openness is key
3. Mental Models: Explore the gap between what we say and how we use our own mental models.
   > inquiry versus advocacy: inquiring = stating and acknowledge the data of our assumptions | advocating = encouraging others to explore your views, other views
4. Team Learning: Starts with dialogue and discussion to align & develop the capacity of a team to create results its members truly desire.
   > dialogue = free + open listening | discussion = different views offered + defended
   >> dialogue conditions for team learning<<
   1. innovative coordination action: think insightfully about complex issues + tapping into a collective mind
   2. must regard others as colleagues: maintaining the respect of a friend, safety for vulnerability, leaving your position at the door
   3. mediator to facilitate the context of dialogue: explore thinking behind their views + evidence they have for those views (‘what makes you ask about this?’)

Developing governing idea: what, why, how | what do we believe in?

• mission/purpose: why | the answer to the why do we exist question
• vision: what | picture the vision sought to create
• core values: how | how do we want to act consistent with our values to achieve vision

Shared visions are personal visions that are part of something larger. Think of it as a discipline (not what it IS, but what it DOES)

Introducing Reads as a capsule in the Learn Segment. Each week for the remainder of the year, we’ll be extracting key takeaways and notes from 26 books read in 26 weeks as a practice to nourish learning. Join us in the (re)wiring!