5 Key Disciplines of a learning organization
Peter Senge believes that leadership requires generative thinking to identify the current reality, define the aspiration or vision, and create and pursue strategies to move from the present to the desired future.
Learning organizations engage in these five key disciplines to generate creative responses to problems at hand. It is essential that the five disciplines develop simultaneously because the integration of the disciplines creates the tools for change.
Shared Vision: Building a shared vision requires individuals to share and discuss their personal vision, and in the examination of their personal visions for the future, forge a common identity, work towards common ideals, and create a shared vision.
Personal mastery: A continual process of clarifying what a person wants in life through patience and focus, while developing the skills and insights necessary to achieve those desires, and looking at reality objectively.
Systems thinking: A conceptual framework (a body of knowledge and tools) that helps people to see patterns and how to change them.
Team Learning: Team learning depends on the ability of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into genuine thinking together. It requires they learn how to recognize patterns of team interactions that promote or hinder team learning.
Mental Models: Mental models are the deeply ingrained assumptions we carry, consciously or unconsciously, that influence how we understand the world and determine the actions we take. Successfully working with mental models requires people to identify and scrutinize their mental models.
Shared Vision: Building a shared vision requires individuals to share and discuss their personal vision, and in the examination of their personal visions for the future, forge a common identity, work towards common ideals, and create a shared vision.
Personal mastery: A continual process of clarifying what a person wants in life through patience and focus, while developing the skills and insights necessary to achieve those desires, and looking at reality objectively.
Systems thinking: A conceptual framework (a body of knowledge and tools) that helps people to see patterns and how to change them.
Team Learning: Team learning depends on the ability of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into genuine thinking together. It requires they learn how to recognize patterns of team interactions that promote or hinder team learning.
Mental Models: Mental models are the deeply ingrained assumptions we carry, consciously or unconsciously, that influence how we understand the world and determine the actions we take. Successfully working with mental models requires people to identify and scrutinize their mental models.
Strengths of the five disciplines- More organization wide participation
- Innovative ideas from multiple sources - Promotes shared vision - Motivation of lower performing members increases over time in response to external pressures. - Large systems change occurs from the bottom up and not from the result of one person or the dominant group imposing their will on others. |
In this short video, Peter Senge explains The Learning Organization in his own words.
critiques of the five disciplines- Everyone has to buy-in, therefore actions can be restrained.
- Free-riding: the tendency of members to contribute less when they are not performing individually. -Bill Cropper, CEO of The Change Forum feels that even today, “ the perfect ‘learning organization’ is not an attainable goal, but rather a desirable and useful set of guiding ideas and principles for people and organizations to aspire towards “ |