Analytical Reading Notes — Fifth Discipline
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.
KEY IDEAS :-
Some of the Key Ideas that stays with me as I complete the reading of this Book are :-
· Dynamic Thinking instead of Static Thinking
· Today’s Problems come from Yesterday’s Solutions
· Compensating Feedback à The Harder you push, the more effort seems to be required
· Low-Leverage Intervention à Things that seem better in the short run
· Shifting the Burden to the Inter-venor
· High Leverage -> Minimum Effort + Maximum Performance
· See Structures that underlie complex situations. For e.g. à Tap Water Example — Interplay between variables à Identify Cyclic Cause-Effect
· Identify Situations where Counter-Intuitive Methods would work
· Principle — Identify factors limiting growth — Find Sources of Limitation
· We focus on symptoms where the stress is greatest such as job rotation, team management, universal stock ownership, and only four levels of hierarchy (with only four pay levels in the whole company
· The key is strengthening the “fundamental solution” of building service capacity. This is best done by limiting demand growth and by a commitment to service quality.
· For Americans — Time is the enemy. For the Japanese, time is an ally.”
· The Inertia of a Deeply entrenched mental models can overwhelm even the best systematic insights
· Self-Investigative Exercises :-
Recognizing the leaps of Abstraction (Noticing jumps from observation to generalization)
Exposing the left-hand column (Articulating what we normally do not say)
Balancing inquiry and Advocacy skills
Conversations should produce genuine learning, rather than reinforcing prior views
· Personal visions derive their power from an individual’s deep caring for the vision.
· The power of fear underlies negative visions. The power of aspiration drives positive visions
· Suspending assumptions is difficult, Bohm maintains, because of “the very nature of thought. Thought continually deludes us into a view that “this is the way it is.
· Hierarchy is antithetical to dialogue, and it is difficult to escape hierarchy in organizations.”
· Convergent problems have a solution: “the more intelligently you study them, the more the answers converge.” Divergent problems have no “correct” solution. The more they are studied by people with knowledge and intelligence the more they “come up with answers which contradict one another.”
· Static Thinking à Central v/s Local Control?/Achievement v/s Everyone feeling valued
· Localized Organizations
· Shared Vision à The origin of the vision is much less important than the process whereby it comes to be shared. It is not truly a “shared vision” until it connects with the personal visions of people throughout the organization.
· A “political environment” is one in which “who” is more important than “what.”
· Alignment -> When a group of people function as a whole.
RELEVANT EXTRACTS :-
> Tapping the potential of people, Inamori believes, will require new ,| understanding of the “subconscious mind,” “willpower,” and “ac-’ tion of the heart . . . sincere desire to serve the world.” He teaches Kyocera employees to look inward as they continually strive fori “perfection.
> The second is continually learning how to see current reality more clearly. We’ve all known people entangled in counterproductive relationships, who remain stuck because they keep pretending everything is all right.
> The juxtaposition of vision (what we want) and a clear picture of current reality (where we are relative to what we want) generates what we call “creative tension”: a force to bring them together, caused by the natural tendency of tension to seek resolution. The essence of personal mastery is learning how to generate and sustain creative tension in our lives.
> In fact, sadly, most social movements operate through conflict manipulation or “negative vision,” focusing on getting away from what we don’t want, rather than on creating what we do want: antidrugs, antinuclear arms, antinuclear power, antismok-ing, anti-abortion, or anti government corruption.
> In my life, for example, I often felt that people let me down at critical junctures in major projects. When this happened, I would “bulldoze” through, overcoming the obstacle of their disloyalty or incompetence. It took many years before I recognized this as a recurring pattern, my own special form of the “willpower” strategy, rooted in a deep feeling of being powerless to change the way others let me down. Invariably, I ended up feeling as if “I’ve got to do it all myself.
> He sees the reality of his past, how the choices he made steadily whittled away his compassion and increased his self-centeredness.
> Today, “vision” is a familiar concept in corporate leadership. But when you look carefully you find that most “visions” are one person’s (or one group’s) vision imposed on an organization. Such visions, at best, command compliance — not commitment.
> But sometimes they emanate from personal visions of individuals who are not in positions of authority. Sometimes they just “bubble up” from people interacting at many levels. The origin of the vision is much less important than the process whereby it comes to be shared. It is not truly a “shared vision” until it connects with the personal visions of people throughout the organization.
> My job, fundamentally, is listening to what the organization is trying to say, and them making sure that it is forcefully articulated.”
> The prototypical “good soldier” of genuine compliance will do whatever is expected of him, willingly. “I believe in the people behind the vision; I’ll do whatever is needed, and more, to the fullest of my ability.”
> Approaching the visioning as an inquiry process does not mean that I have to give up my view. On the contrary, visions need strong advocates. But advocates who can also inquire into others’ visions open the possibility for the vision to evolve, to become “larger” than our individual visions. That is the principle of the hologram.
Bohm identifies three basic conditions that are necessary for dialogue:
1. all participants must “suspend” their assumptions, literally to hold them “as if suspended before us”;
2. all participants must regard one another as colleagues;
3. there must be a “facilitator” who “holds the context” of dialogue
> In fact, he is so brilliant at articulating his vision that he intimidates everyone around him. Consequently, his view rarely get challenged publicly. People have learned not to express their own views and visions around him. While he would not see his own forcefulness as a defensive strategy, if he looked carefully, he would see that it functions in exactly that way.
> Suspension of assumptions. Typically people take a position and defend it, holding to it. Others take up opposite positions and polarization results. In this session, we would like to examine some of our assumptions underlying our direction and strategy and not seek to defend them.
> Acting as colleagues. We are asking everyone to leave his or her position at the door. There will be no particular hierarchy in this meeting, except for the facilitator, who will, hopefully, keep us on track.
> Spirit of inquiry. We would like to have people being to explore the thinking behind their views, the deeper assumptions they may hold, and the evidence they have that leads them to these views. So it will be fair to begin to ask other questions such as “What leads you to say or believe this?” or “What makes you ask about this?”
> We tend to be a very control-oriented organization overall . . . Because they’ve got control and won’t let me in, I’m going to go over here and do my own thing because I feel powerless to affect that at all.
> In the “smooth surface” teams, members believe that they must suppress their conflicting views in order to maintain the team — if each person spoke her or his mind, the team would be torn apart by irreconcilable differences.
> The polarized team is one where managers “speak out,” but conflicting views are deeply entrenched. Everyone knows where everyone else stands, and there is little movement.
> Secondly, on a deeper level, no one’s view is changing or being affected. After stating our opinions, if we don’t agree, we simply conclude that “people are different” and go our separate ways. If one decision.
EPIPHANY:-
· Breakthrough v/s Incremental à Two Approaches
· Identify Problem -> Develop Solutions -> Identify Side Effects
· Alignment -> When a group of people function as a whole
