📖 The Fifth Discipline

The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization

1990. Peter Senge

First published almost 30 years ago, this was by most accounts a somewhat radical book at the time. Senior MIT lecturer and first time author Senge lays out the five disciplines required to build a “learning organisation” where “the whole of the organisation [is] more effective than the sum of it’s parts”. However rather than covering the usual trite attributes, Senge explains theories like mental models, complexity theory, and systems thinking.

“In the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organisation’s ability to learn faster than the competition”

Learning Disabilities

Senge believes it is no accident that most organisations learn poorly. “The way they are designed and managed, the way peoples jobs are defined, and, most importantly, the way we have all been taught to think and interact create fundamental learning disabilities.”

“I am my position”

The benefits of a clearer separation between people and their positions—or ‘roles and souls’, as Brian Roberson would say—have been expanded on a lot in the years since this was published. But while modern implementations chase the flexibility it allows, Senge’s warning is more on how it takes the focus away from the whole.

When people in organisations focus only on their position, they have little sense of responsibility for the results produced when all positions interact.

“The enemy is out there”

A byproduct of the “non-systemic” view of “I am my position” above, this is Senge’s way of articulating people’s “deeply felt need” to find someone, or something outside ourselves to blame when things go wrong. This rears it’s head when silos within an organisation blame each-other for systemic issues, but pops up everywhere. Annie Duke talks about poker players love telling their “bad beats” stories of how they played a hand well but got unlucky; “it’s devastating for learning”.

The illusion of taking charge

Being proactive is “too often reactiveness in disguise”. Taking decisive action on the symptoms typically won’t yield the same results as taking the time to think about the system, and “how we contribute to our own problems”.

The fixation on events

Events are the outputs, but by looking at the big picture, the whole system, we stand a better chance of understanding the root causes.

“We are conditioned to see life as a series of events, and for every event we think there is one obvious cause”.

The parable of the boiled egg a frog

Like the frog, Senge argues that our internal apparatus for sensing threats to survival is geared to sudden changes in environment. Instead we must learn to slow down and see the gradual processes that “often pose the greatest threats”.

The delusion of learning from experience

Although learning from experience is best, too often we don’t have line of sight on the consequences of our actions and decisions.

The myth of the management team

Most management teams are not teams at all, but what Katzenbach & Smith would call a working group. Rather than coming together to solve complex, cross-functional issues, it typically is where you find the worst examples of politics, siloed thinking, and bureaucracy.

Structure influences behaviour

People today love talking about the importance of “A players” and “talent density”. Obviously having good people is important, but Senge’s more holistic view of the underlying structures reveals that “when placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.”

Thinking systemically enables you to get beyond the obvious and instead uncover the structural causes of behaviour.

The systems perspective tells us that we must look beyond individual mistakes or bad luck to understand important problems. We must look beyond the personalities and events. We must look into the underlying structures which shape individual actions and create the conditions where types of events become likely.

The books is named after five bodies of theory and method which come together to establish a learning organisation.

Personal Mastery

This is Senge’s phrase for “the discipline of personal growth and learning”, because after-all, “organisations learn only through individuals who learn”. And, true to form of course, Senge looks at the structures that characterise personal mastery as a discipline:

Creative tension

The gap that exists between our vision and the reality. This gap can be daunting, but it can also be a “source of energy” that drives action. It is illustrated with the image of a rubber band stretched between two hands representing your vision and reality.

“There are only two possible ways ways for the tension to resolve itself: pull reality toward the vision, or pull the vision toward reality.”

Emotional tension

This is the stress people fell while holding creative tension. Discouragement about how little progress is being made towards a vision, can often drive people to lower their vision, as a coping mechanism, to relieve themselves of the emotional tension.

“In organisations, goals erode because of low tolerance for emotional tension”.

Structural conflict

Using more rubber band analogies, Senge talks about the tension between pursuing our vision, and our deep seated belief in our own powerlessness or unworthiness.

Commitment to the truth

A relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories of why things are the way they are.

Mental Models

Mental models are defined here as the deeply held internal images of how the world works which “limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting”. He argues that major breakthroughs can be unlocked through the discipline of managing mental models— that is by surfacing, testing, and updating them.

Leaps of abstraction

This occurs when people observe certain behaviours, and then make a generalisation to explain them. When these assumptions start being treated as fact without testing, it is referred to as a leap of abstraction.

Ask yourself what you believe about the way the world works. [Then] ask “What is the ‘data’ on which this generalisation is based?” Then ask yourself, “Am I willing to consider that this generalisation may be inaccurate or misleading?”

Shared Vision

While talk of purpose and vision are everywhere, Senge focuses on cultivating a shared vision in organisations. Rather than locking yourself away in a conference room wordsmith-ing away at a vision statement, he argues that real energy and commitment comes from when people’s personal visions align, and from that connection a shared vision emerges.

When people are committed to a shared vision—that is they freely “enroll” themselves—the energy that is unlocked far surpasses what is typically found in organisations.

“Today, many managers are justifiably wary of whether the energy released through commitment can be controlled and directed. So, we settle for compliance and content ourselves with moving people up the compliance ladder.”

Team Learning

One of the shorter chapters, this covers topics like differentiating between discussion and dialogue, similar to whats more commonly referred to now as advocacy and inquiry. Themes and disciplines from previous chapters are revisited but this time more specifically in the context of small teams and they collaborate; Addressing the defensive routines we inherit from our mental models, and dealing with the current reality and it’c conflicts.

Most interesting in this chapter however is Senge’s belief that practice is the missing link for teams. Team learning is a skill after-all and all skills need to be practised. He suggests setting up “practice fields” where your team can lay some ground rules before a meeting say, and then conduct that meeting more intentionally with the goal of integrating learning and working. If that sounds a little abstract, he takes 5 pages out to walk through a real example of such a meeting.

Systems thinking

The book however is not called The Five Disciplines, but rather the Fifth Discipline and systems thinking is the fifth discipline. It is the one that integrates the other four, and is the core of the entire book.

Senge does a great job of breaking down the fundamental concepts, and explains them using accessible illustrations like the system of filling a glass of water. Ultimately, it is about a shift of mind “from seeing parts to seeing wholes”, “a framework for seeing into relationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots.”

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say this is the best book I have read. I wish I read it 10 years ago. Much of the work I do is influenced by people, who were influenced by this book. I have picked up much of the concepts over the last few years from various sources, but little did I know they were laid out and explained brilliantly in this one book publishes 30 years ago. The theory behind mental models, complexity theory, and systems thinking have much broader applications than just how I practice my work and the ramifications can be profound.