Based on:

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

Peter Senge, 1990

Yonatan Reshef
School of Business
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
T6G 2R6 CANADA

MENU

1. Introduction

2. The Laws of the Fifth Discipline

3. Personal Mastery

4. Mental Models

5. Shared Visions

6. Team Learning

7. Slides
    

Introduction

System thinking is the Fifth Discipline.  The other four disciplines are: personal mastery, mental models, shared visions, and team learning.  The first two are oriented to the individual and the last two are oriented to groups.  Systems thinking has the distinction of being the "fifth discipline" since it serves to make the results of the other disciplines work together for business benefit. 
 

1. Business and other human endeavors are systems. They are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, interactions, values, norms and shared understandings which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other.
2. One can only understand such systems by contemplating the whole, not any individual part of the pattern. Frequently, since we are part of the system, it is very difficult to see the whole pattern of effects. Instead, we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to be solved.



An Elephant Story Did you hear the story about three blind men and the elephant? The first blind man touched the elephant's leg and exclaimed, ''This animal is like a huge tree!'' The second blind man happened to hold onto the elephant's tail and rejoined: ''No, this animal is like a snake!'' The third blind man protested: ''You're both wrong! This animal is like a wall.'' (He was touching the elephant's flank.) Each blind man thinks he is right and the others are wrong, even though all three of them are all touching the same elephant.

Others argue that the range of organizational learning conceptualization varies due to both discipline and focus: as knowledge acquisition; as adaptation; as skill learning; as development of shared knowledge base; as development of shared assumptions, and; as institutional know-how (Mitki, Shani, and Meiri. 1997. Journal of Organizational Change Management: 428). 

According to Garvin (HBR, July-August, 1993: 80), "a learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights."

He goes on and explains that his definition starts with a simple truth: new ideas are essential if learning is to take place.  Sometimes they are created anew; at other times they arrive from outside the organization or are communicated by knowledgeable insiders.  Whatever their source, these ideas are the trigger for organizational improvement.  But they cannot by themselves create a learning organization.  Without accompanying changes in the way that work gets done, only the potential for improvement exists.

Learning organization -- An organization that acquires new knowledge and translates it into new ways of behaving.

Building Blocks
Systematic problem solving
Experimentation with new approaches
Learning from own experiences
Learning from the experiences and best practices of others
Transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organization
 

I. The Laws of the Fifth Discipline

1. Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions." Solutions that merely shift problems from one part of a system to another often go undetected because, those who "solved" the first problem are different from those who inherit the new problem (Examples: resistance to antibiotics; kids watching too much TV; a need to close down hospital beds; a new government dealing with the problems created by its predecessor.)
    
2. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. The more effort you expend trying to improve matters, the more effort seems to be required. This phenomenon is called "compensating feedback." (Examples: pushing TQM on workers; educating children.)
    
3. Behavior grows better before it grows worse. Compensating feedback usually involves a "delay," a time lag between the short-term benefit and the long-term disbenefit. In complex human systems there are always many ways to make things look better in the short run. Only eventually does the compensating feedback come back to haunt you. (Examples: layoffs; punishing people.)
    
4. The easy way out usually leads back in. We all find comfort applying familiar solutions to problems, sticking to what we know best. Pushing harder and harder on familiar solutions, while fundamental problems persist or worsen, is a reliable indicator of nonsystemic thinking. We need a new type of action rooted in a new way of thinking. (Examples: budget cuts; early retirement programs.)
    
5. The cure can be worse than the disease. The long-term, most insidious consequence of applying nonsystemic solutions is increased need for more and more of the solution (Example: narcotic effects -- heavy reliance on arbitrators and mediators to resolve industrial relations disputes.)
    
6. Faster is slower. The optimal rate is far less than the fastest possible growth.  (Examples: building a new sport team by buying the best players you can get with your money; drive very fast and cause an accident.)
    
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 ways of thinking about the 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 (Examples: the effects of parents' behaviors on children; laying off nurses and teachers to cope with tough economic times; extensive use of antibiotics).
    
8. Small changes can produce big results -- but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious. Systems thinking shows that small, well-focused actions can sometimes produce significant, enduring improvements, if they are in the right place. Systems thinking refers to this principle as "leverage." There are no simple rules for finding high-leverage changes, but there are ways of thinking that make it more likely. Learning to see underlying "structures" rather than "events" is a starting point; thinking in terms of processes of change rather than "snapshots" is another (Examples: you get a big result for just being nice/fair to people.)
    
9. You can have your cake and eat it too -- but not at once. Many apparent dilemmas, such as central versus local control, appear as rigid "either-or" choices, because we think of what is possible at a fixed point in time. Next month, it may be true that we must choose one or the other, but the real leverage lies in seeing how both can improve over time.  (Examples: When implementing TQM, you have to adopt a long-term view; spending money on education/self development = long-term investment.)
    
10. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants. Living systems have integrity. Their character depends on the whole. The same is true for organizations; to understand the most challenging issues requires seeing the whole system that generates the issues. The key principle here is that the interactions that must be examined are those most important to the issue at hand, regardless of parochial organizational boundaries. (Examples: In a soccer/hockey team, you cannot improve the team by working only with the forwards/defensemen; managing a department.)
     
11. There is no blame. Systems thinking assumes that there is no outside circumstances to blame for your problems; that you and the cause of your problems are part of a single system. The cure lies in your relationship with your "enemy" (Example: low course evaluations.)

II. Personal Mastery
(139-173)

Personal mastery (PM) is the discipline of personal growth, learning and emotional development. PM involves seeing one's life as a creative work, being able to clarify what is really important, and learning to see current reality more clearly. Organizations should thus enable individuals to approach their lives as a creative work, and to live life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint. PM requires organizations to absolutely, fully, intrinsically commit themselves to the well-being of their people. People with high level of personal mastery are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life they truly seek.

PM means that:

• People continually clarify what is important to them (they hold a personal vision)
• People continually learn how to see current reality more clearly

Creative tension

The juxtaposition of vision (what we want) and a clear picture of current reality (where we are relative to what we want) generates "creative tension." In other words, the difference between what's important, what we want, and where we are now produces a creative tension. Creative tension is a force that aims to bring vision and reality together. The essence of PM is learning how to generate and sustain creative tension in our lives, understanding that the journey is more important than "arriving." Put differently, mastery of creative tension transforms the way one views "failure." Failure is, simply, a short fall, evidence of the gap between vision and current reality. Failure is an opportunity for learning -- about inaccurate pictures of current reality, about strategies that didn't work as expected, about the clarity of the vision.

Unfortunately, often, when our vision is at odds with current reality we experience a "structural conflict." This conflict is structural because it is a result of a structure of conflicting forces: pulling us simultaneously toward and away from what we want. There are several strategies to cope with structural conflicts: 

1. Letting our visions erode; 
2. Engaging in "conflict manipulation" -- using fear to pressure ourselves or others to pursue a target more aggressively or avoid it altogether (negative visions); and
3. Applying excessive willpower -- they try to overpower all forms of resistance to achieving their goals. 

All three strategies are an anathema to the discipline of PM. Instead, we should understand the causes of problems. The first critical task in dealing with structural conflicts is to recognize them, and the resulting behavior, when they are operating. In other words, we must continually clarify to ourselves why our situation is the way it is. Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner. Once we can see them and name them, they no longer have the same hold on us.  Then, structural conflicts are likely to give way to creative tension.

Why PM?

People with high levels of personal mastery are more committed. They take more initiative. They have a broader and deeper sense of responsibility in their work. They learn faster.

Summary

PM is about learning to keep both a personal vision and a clear picture of the current reality. It is about understanding where you want to be, where you are at present, the sources of the gap, and what how you can deal with it emotionally and practically. 

We can only set up conditions which encourage and support people who want to increase their own personal mastery. Why offer such encouragement and support? Organizations learn only through individuals who learn (but remember, individual learning does not automatically translate into organizational learning). And, it is increasingly clear that learning does not occur in any enduring fashion unless it is sparked by people's own ardent interest and curiosity. If people only compliantly accept training in statistical process control, team work, leadership, etc., the effects of this training last for a while. But, if training is related to a person's own vision, then that person will do whatever he or she can to keep learning.

Therefore, organization leaders should work relentlessly to foster a climate in which the principles of personal mastery are practiced in daily life. That means, building an organization where it is safe for people to create visions, where inquiry and commitment to the truth are the norm, and where challenging the status quo is expected -- especially when the status quo includes obscuring aspects of current reality that people seek to avoid. However, an organizational commitment to personal mastery would be naive and foolish if leaders in the organization lacked the capabilities of building shared vision and shared mental models to guide local decision makers.

III. Mental Models
(174-204)

We define mental models, or paradigms, as the rationalities developed by organizational groups to make sense of their work experiences (an interpretive schemata that help people assign meaning to events). TQM is often radically different from existing managerial approaches and, consequently, challenges prevailing control-based paradigms in regard to how the organization should be run. A preliminary required condition for successful TQM implementation is that the paradigm shift be championed and orchestrated by top managers (Deming, 1986; Ishikawa, 1985; Jacob, 1993). Yet to be effective, the new paradigm requires significant consensus and acceptance of its associated goals, values and underlying assumptions by all organization members. In other words, effective implementation of TQM must make sense to everyone involved, not just managers.

Accomplishing paradigm shifts is difficult. While paradigms are essential guides to action they also exert powerful inertial forces that militate against a smooth change process. Rather than immediately accepting a new perspective, even when there are problems with an old one, people often try to fit ambiguous information into their existing paradigm to preserve their existing cognitive structures (Bartunek, 1984; Murray & Reshef, 1988; Barr, Stimpert & Huff, 1992). Consequently, quality "programs presented as radical departures from the organization's past fail because the cognitive structures of members, whose cooperation is necessary for successful implementation, constrain their understanding and support of the new initiatives" (Reger et al., 1994: 566).

For example, under traditional Taylorist management, employees have been part of a work system extolling values such as division of labor, unilateral decision making, status distinctions, reward for individual performance, and employment at will. An employee paradigm compatible with this work system likely includes convictions such as, management behaviors are self-driven in pursuit of profits, entitlements, and status (Ryan & Oestreich, 1991: 85-99). Therefore, employees have little in common with management, and should stay away from management decision making (Murray & Reshef, 1988).

These pre-existing convictions thus act as powerful interpretive filters. Interpretive filters affect the precision with which a transmitted TQM message validly conveys the desired meaning. Such filters render some management TQM activities legitimate and acceptable. Others may be considered as attempts to "get more for less," and hence arbitrary and unacceptable. The greater the distance between the new, TQM, and employee paradigms, the greater the likelihood that the TQM practices will be unacceptable to the employees.

During the initial phase of the TQM implementation process, management and employees might operate out of distinctly separate paradigms regarding the TQM intervention. They would have their own understandings of the important variables involved in the change, and their own perceptions of the likely sequence of events once new practices are initiated. Given the premium TQM writers put on management-worker trust, cooperation, and consensual decision making, a successful transition to TQM will remain elusive as long as employee interpretations of TQM remain anchored in a management control philosophy.

Managing Paradigm Changes

How can management persuade employees who have not been socialized into a TQM system to "pull" in the TQM direction, to identify with the TQM organization and its goals, and to wish to facilitate these goals? How should management encode its TQM message to account for different interpretive filters the employees may use?

Kurt Lewin's Approach to Paradigm Change

The process whereby paradigms are altered and new understandings are developed is clarified by Lewin's (1947) unfreezing, moving, and refreezing characterization. During the unfreezing stage, management has to shake out old employee convictions to make way for new ones. At this stage, management should articulate and rationalize the new, TQM organizational order. Once old convictions are unfrozen and discarded, new understandings about roles, responsibilities and relationships can be achieved. New convictions ultimately become "frozen" as they are supported by the occurrence of anticipated events (Barr, Stimpert & Huff, 1992).

Rousseau's Approach to Paradigm Change
(she uses the term "contract" instead of paradigm. Academy of Management Executive, 1996, Vol. 10, 1, 50-59)

STAGE	INTERVENTION
CHALLENGING THE OLD CONTRACT    Stress    Disruption	1. Provide new discrepant information (educate people). Why do we need to change?
PREPARATION FOR CHANGE    Ending old paradigm    Reducing losses    Bridging to new paradigm	1. Involve people in information gathering (send them out to talk with customers and benchmark successful firms) 2. Interpret new information (show videos of customers describing service and let employees react to it) 3. Acknowledge the end of the old paradigm (celebrate good features of old paradigm) 4. Create transitional structures (cross-functional task forces to manage change)
PARADIGM GENERATION    Sense making     Veterans become "new"	1. Evoke "new paradigm" script (have people sign on to "new company" by completing an orientation session; clearly outline new expectations and commitments) 2. Make paradigm makers (managers) readily available to share information 3. Encourage active involvement in new paradigm creation
LIVING THE NEW PARADIGM    Reality checking	1. Be consistent in word and action (train everyone in new terms) 2. Follow through (align managers, human resources practices, etc.) 3. Refresh (re-emphasize the mission and new paradigm frequently)

Senge's Approach to Paradigm Improvement
How Can We Align Our Beliefs with Our Practices?

Senge suggests (Ch. 10) a different scheme to manage paradigm shifts -- surfacing, testing, and improving. To be able to manage paradigms, people have to acquire several skills:

1. People should acquire the ability to recognize "leaps of abstraction." Leaps of abstraction occur when we move from direct observation (concrete data) to generalization without testing (e.g., all students are lazy people who want to get good marks by doing minimum work). Leaps of abstraction impede learning because they become axiomatic. What was once an assumption becomes treated as fact. To avoid leaps of abstraction, ask yourself: What are the data on which this generalization is based? Where possible, test the generalization directly.
   
   
2. Left-hand column. This technique reveals ways that we manipulate situations to avoid dealing with how we actually think and feel, and thereby prevent a counterproductive situations from improving. This exercise compares "what one's thinking" with "what is said/done." The left-hand exercise always succeeds in bringing hidden assumptions to the surface and showing how they influence behavior. By not squarely facing our problems, we undermine opportunities to learn in conflictual situations. There is no one "right" way to handle difficult situations, but it helps to see how one's own reasoning and actions can contribute to making matters worse. "Openness" and "merit" are needed if one is to learn how to manage one's mental model.
   
   
3. Balancing inquiry and advocacy. Most managers are trained to be advocates. But when managers need to tap insights from others, their advocacy skills become counterproductive; they can close us off from actually learning from one another. As each side reasonably and calmly advocates his viewpoint just a bit more strongly, positions become more and more rigid. Advocacy without inquiry begets more advocacy. Simple questions such as, "What is it that leads you to that position?" and "Can you illustrate your point for me?" can introduce an element of inquiry into a discussion. Yet, pure inquiry is also limited. The reason being, we almost always do have a view. The most productive learning usually occurs when managers combine skills in advocacy and inquiry. When operating in pure advocacy, the goal is to win the argument (prove a point). When inquiry and advocacy are combined, the goal is no longer "to win the argument" but to find the best argument.
   
   
4. Espoused theory vs. theory-in-use. Here, the problem lies not in the gap but in failing to tell the truth about the gap. Until the gap between one's espoused theory and one's current behavior is recognized, no learning can occur.

   Entrenched mental models will thwart changes that could come from systems thinking. Managers must learn to reflect on their current mental models -- until prevailing assumptions are brought into the open, there is no reason to expect mental models to change, and there is little purpose in systems thinking.

IV. Shared Vision
(205-232)

A shared vision is a shared "picture of the future."  It is an organizational master plan which directs the organization's members. A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people's hearts, a force of impressive power. A shared vision is the first step in allowing people who mistrusted each other to begin to work together. It creates a common identity. In fact, an organization's shared sense of purpose, vision, and operating values establish the most basic level of commonality. With a shared vision, work becomes part of pursuing a larger purpose embodied in the organizations' products or services.

The problem: It may simply not be possible to convince human beings rationally to embrace a long-term view.

Building a shared vision is not a "one-shot" activity. It is ongoing and never-ending. Importantly, a vision is not truly a "shared vision" until is connects with the personal visions of people throughout the organization. In other words, for those in leadership and in positions of power, what is most important is to remember that their visions are still personal visions. Just because they occupy a position of leadership does not mean that their personal visions are automatically "the organization's vision."

Spreading Visions

Leaders do not sell visions. Selling generally means getting someone to do something that he might not do if they were in full possession of all the facts. Enrolling, by contrast, literally means "placing one's name on the roll." Enrollment implies free choice, while "being sold" often does not. Next, committed describes a state of being not only enrolled but feeling fully responsible for making the vision happen. The committed people bring an energy, passion, and excitement that cannot be generated if you are only compliant, that is if you are only playing by the rules.

Managers should remember, there is nothing they can do to get another person to enroll or commit. Enrollment and commitment require freedom of choice. To establish conditions most favorable to enrollment managers should:

* Be enrolled themselves.
* Be on the level/honest/ - do not inflate benefits or expectations.
* Let the other person choose.

Anchoring Vision in Governing Ideas

Building a shared vision is actually only one piece of a larger activity: developing the "governing ideas" for the enterprise, its vision, purpose or mission, and core values. The vision must be consistent with values that people live by day by day.

The governing ideas answer three critical questions: "What?" "Why?" and "How?"

* Vision is the "What?" -- the picture of the future we seek to create.
* Purpose (or mission) is the "Why?" -- Why do we exist?
* Core Values answer the question "How do we want to act, consistent with our mission, along the path toward achieving our vision?"

Limiting Factors

1. The visioning process can wither if, as more people get involved, the diversity of views dissipates focus and generates unmanageable conflicts. Diversity of visions will grow until it exceeds the organization's capacity to "harmonize" diversity.

   Remedy: The most important skills to circumvent this limit are the "reflection and inquiry" skills. By inquiring into others' visions, we open the possibility for the vision to evolve, to become "larger" than our individual visions.

2. Visions can also die because people become discouraged by the apparent difficulty in bringing vision into reality. Here, the limiting factor is the capacity of people in the organization to "hold" creative tension.
    
3. Emerging visions can also die because people get overwhelmed by the demands of current reality and lose their focus on vision.

   Remedy: In this case, the leverage must lie in finding ways to focus less time and effort on fighting crises and managing current reality, or to break off those pursuing the new vision from those responsible for handling "current reality."

4. Finally, a vision can die if people forget their connection to one another. The spirit of connection is fragile. It is undermined whenever we lose our respect for one another and for each other's views.

Note, vision becomes a living force only when people truly believe they can shape their future. As people in an organization begin to learn how existing policies and actions are creating their current reality (systems thinking vs. "event mentality"), a new, more fertile soil for vision develops.

V. Team Learning
(233-269)

Team learning is the process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its members truly desire.

1. The discipline of team learning involves mastering the practices of dialogue and discussion, the two distinct ways that teams converse.

   Dialogue -- in dialogue there is free and creative exploration of complex and subtle issues, a deep "listening" to one another and suspending of one's own views.

   Discussion -- in discussion different views are presented and defended and there is a search for the best view to support decisions that must be made at this time.

2. Team learning also involves learning how to deal creatively with the powerful forces opposing productive dialogue and discussion in working teams. Chief among these are "defensive routines." Teams, for example, may resist seeing important problems more systematically. Team learning, therefore, requires mastering of systems thinking. Teams should understand how their own actions may be creating the very problems with which they try so hard to cope.
   
   
3. The discipline of team learning requires practice.

Dialogue and Discussion

The principles of dialogue are:

• Suspending assumption. All participants must "suspend" their assumptions, literally to hold them "as if suspended before us." It means being aware of our assumptions and holding them up for examination. This cannot be done if we are defending our opinions. Nor, can it be done if we are unaware of our assumptions, or unaware that our views are based on assumptions, rather than undeniable fact.
   
• Seeing each other as colleagues. All participants must regard one another as colleagues. What is necessary going in is the willingness to consider each other as colleagues. Colleagueship does not mean that you need to agree or share the same views. On the contrary, the real power of seeing each other as colleagues comes into play when there are differences of view. Choosing to view "adversaries" as "colleagues with different views" has the greatest benefits.
   
• A facilitator who "holds the context" of dialogue. In the absence of a skilled facilitator, our habits of thought continually pull us toward discussion and away from dialogue. The facilitator helps people maintain ownership of the process and the outcomes -- we are responsible for what is happening; keeps the dialogue moving; influences the flow of development simply through participating (e.g. "but the opposite view may also be true").
   
• Balancing dialogue and discussion. In team learning, discussion is the necessary counterpart of dialogue. In a discussion, different views are presented and defended, and this may provide useful analysis of the whole situation. In dialogue, different views are presented as a means toward discovering a new view. In a discussion, decisions are made. In a dialogue, complex issues are explored. When a team must reach agreement and decisions must be taken, some discussion is needed. On the other hand, dialogues are diverging; they do not seek agreement, but richer grasp of complex issues. Both dialogue and discussion can lead to new courses of action; but actions are often the focus of discussion, whereas new actions emerge as a by-product of dialogue.

Conflict and Defensive Routines

The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking, for discovering new solutions no one individual would have come to on her own. Conflict becomes, in effect, part of the ongoing dialogue. The difference between great teams and mediocre teams lies in how they face conflict and deal with the defensiveness that invariably surrounds conflict. Defensive routines are entrenched habits we use to protect ourselves from the embarrassment and threat that come with exposing our thinking.

Defensive routines are so diverse and so commonplace, they usually go unnoticed. For example, in the guise of being helpful, we shelter someone from criticism, but also shelter ourselves from engaging difficult issues. The most creative defensive routines are those we cannot see. Some managers believe that to remain confident they must remain rigid. Whichever bind they find themselves in, managers who take on the burden of having to know the answers become highly skillful in defensive routines that preserve their aura as capable decision makers by not revealing the thinking behind their decisions. The paradox is that when defensive routines succeed in preventing immediate pain they also prevent us from learning how to reduce what causes the pain in the first place.

How to make defensive routines discussible is a real challenge. One has to have the skills to confront defensiveness without producing more defensiveness. The core principle here is a ruthless commitment to seeing rather than obscuring current reality.

Practice

• have all members of the team together;
• explaining the ground rules of dialogue:
  • suspension of assumptions
  • acting as colleagues; no hierarchy
  • spirit of inquiry (explore the thinking behind views and the evidence used that leads to these views)
• enforce those ground rules;
• encourage team members to raise the most difficult, subtle, and conflictual issues essential to the team's work. Acknowledge your own frustration, fears, insecurity, assumptions and reasoning. Invite criticism.