The disciplines of the learning organization are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and organizational learning. The Fifth Discipline is about seeing these collectively as a whole, which is systems thinking applied to these other elements, and understanding how they interact. This is a journey, not a destination.

Organizational learning disabilities are tragic. There are seven recognizable patterns:

1. I am not my position - the need for connecting roles to purpose
2. The enemy is out there - blaming others vs working on ourselves
3. The illusion of taking charge - being prematurely proactive before understanding how we contribute to our own problems
4. The fixation on events - rather than root causes
5. The parable of the boiled frog - insights require patience and reflection
6. The delusion of learning from experience - consequences are separated from causes
7. The myth of the management team - tendencies to protect turf, squelch dissent, and spin situations

The 'laws' of the fifth discipline include:

1. Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."

Solutions that merely shift problems from one part of the system to another often are not discovered for a while; those who thought they solved the problem initially are different from those who inherit the transferred problem.

2. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.

Systems thinking has a name for this phenomenon: Compensating Feedback: when well-intentioned interventions trigger responses that offset the benefits of the those interventions.

3. Behavior grows better, before it grows worse.

Low level interventions would be much less alluring if it were not for the fact that many actually work, in the short term. Compensating feedback usually involves a time lag between the short term benefit and the long term impact that actually increases costs, rather than reduces them (though often 'invisibly').

4. The easy way out usually leads back in.

Pushing harder and harder on familiar solutions, while fundamental problems persist or worsen, is a reliable indicator of non-systemic thinking - what we often call the "what we need here is a bigger hammer" syndrome.

5. The cure can be worse than the disease.

Shifting the burden structures show that any long term solution must, as Meadows says, "strengthen the ability of the system to shoulder its own burdens."

6. Faster is slower.

Natural systems (whether ecosystems, animals, or organizations) have intrinsically optimal rates of growth. The optimal rate is far less than the fastest possible growth. The real implications of this perspective can be a new type of action rooted in a new way of thinking. However, the systems principles can also become excuses for inaction - for doing nothing rather than taking actions which might backfire, or even make matters worse.

7. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.

There is a fundamental mismatch between the nature of reality in complex systems and our predominant thinking about that reality. The first step in correcting that mismatch is to let go of the notion that cause and effect are close in time and space

8. Small changes can produce big results - but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.

Small, well focused actions can sometimes produce significant, enduring improvements. Systems thinkers refer to this principle as "leverage". The problem is that such high-leverage changes are usually non-obvious to most participants in the system. They are not "close in time and space" to obvious problem symptoms. This is what makes life interesting.

There are no simple rules for finding high-leverage changes, but there are ways of thinking which make it more likely. Learning to see underlying "structures" rather than "events" is a starting point: each of the "systems archetypes". Thinking in terms of processes of change rather than "snapshots" is another.

9. You can have your cake and eat it too - but not at once.

Sometimes the knottiest dilemmas, when seen from the systems point of view, aren't dilemmas at all. They are artifacts of a snapshot of a situation in time, rather than "process" thinking, and appear in a whole new light once you think consciously of change over time.

10. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.

The key principle, called the "principle of the system boundary," is that the interactions that must be examined are those most important to the issue at hand, regardless of parochial organizational boundaries.

11. There is no blame.

There is no outside; you and the cause of your problems are part of a single system. The cure lies in your relationship with your "enemy."

The 'archetypes' (patterns) of systems dynamics, and the leverage points which they present, include:

1. Limits to growth.

A reinforcing process is producing a desired result, but secondary effects (via a balancing process) eventually slow the rate of this success. Instead of pushihng growth, remove the constraints which limit it.

2. Shifting the burden.

A problem generates symptoms that demand attention, but the problem itself is obscure or appears intractable to solve. The burden is shifted to 'solutions' that themselves ameliorate the symptoms, but leavel the underlying problem in place. Over time, it grows worse, yet the system loses it's ability to recognize the original problem. Solutions should address fundamental causes.

The range of attitudes towards achieving a goal include:

1. Commitment: Personal desire to achieve the goal, and motivation to create whatever new structure is necessary to make that happen
2. Enrollment: Personalinterest in the goal, and willing to do whatever can be done within the existing framework, including removing roadblocks and constraints
3. Compliance: Recognizes the benefits of the goal, and does everything explicitly directed to do... a 'good soldier'
4. Apathy: neither for or against the goal. Little energy or enthusiasm
5. Resistance: Actively works against the goal, and deflects requests to address constraints which stand in the way

ASIN: 

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

Author: Peter M. Senge

Publisher: Crown Business (2006)

Binding: Paperback, 445 pages