THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE

REPORTED BY:
MICHELLE G. ALLAGA

PETER MICHAEL SENGE

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
Peter Senge was born in Stanford, California in 1947. He earned his
Bachelor’s degree (BSc.) in aerospace engineering from Stanford
University. In 1973, Peter Senge obtained his Master’s degree
(MSc.) in social systems modelling from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. Peter Senge
obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in management in 1978.
Peter Senge gained practical experience in organizations like Ford,
Chrysler, Shell, AT&T, Hanover Insurance and Harley-Davidson in
the 1970s and 1980s. It was around that time that the foundations
were laid for his approach on the five disciplines. In addition to his
work as an engineer, Peter Senge kept on working at MIT as a
Professor

In 1997, Harvard Business Review identified The Fifth Discipline as one of the seminal
management books of the previous 75 years.For this work, he was named "Strategist of the
Century" by Journal of Business Strategy, which said that he was one of a very few people who
"had the greatest impact on the way we conduct business today.

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND

Peter Senge was the Advisor of Groxis, Inc. a tech company based in San Francisco CA. Mr.
Senge is also a senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is part of
the Organizational Learning and Change group. He also serves as Member of the Academic
Board and Academic Advisor, Leadership Development and Organizational Learning Programs
of Axialent Inc which is a global leader in culture transformation. They help multinational
organizations drive sustainable business results by creating effective behavioral change in people
throughout departments, across languages and around the world.

He serves as Member of Advisory Board of Communispace Corporation which delivers customer

inspired growth solutions. They help brands to build insightful relationships with customers;
brings them together to help with decision making and strategic issues. Mr. Senge is also
Chairperson of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), a global community of
organizations, researchers, and consultants dedicated to building knowledge about fundamental
institutional change. Peter Senge is currently the director of the Center for Organizational
Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

What is Discipline?

It is the practice of making people obey rules or standards of behaviour, and punishing them
when they do not. - Merriam Dictionary
An activity that provides mental or physical training or a system of rules of conduct. - Oxford
Dictionary

Fifth Discipline Defined and Explained

Back in 1990 Peter Senge published a book called The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of
the Learning Organization that may hold a formula for overcoming these issues focusing on
group problem solving using the systems thinking method in order to convert companies into
learning organizations..

His book summed up his thinking about how organizations can more effectively adapt and
change based on his systems thinking background at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
had come to the belief that there were five core disciplines or elements that would ensure that
organizations continuously learn, adapt to a changing environment with agility and thrive. He
defined a learning organization as one that has both a culture and the appropriate processes to
deliberately shape the future it wants, rather than be a victim to circumstances.

Also a learning organization seeks to facilitate and encourage learning at all levels of the
organization in order to permit the organization to adapt continually and transform itself in a
highly dynamic and competitive world.

These five disciplines may actually be more appropriate to today’s organizations .Attitudes about
work have changed significantly; younger workers seek flexibility and control over how they
work and what they do. The challenges of operating in a global context, overcoming cultural and
economic barriers, and creating products with universal appeal and relevance are increasingly
difficult. Product obsolescence, fickle consumers and disruptive technologies make it very hard
to plan or to stay even slightly ahead of the competition.

Seven Learning Disabilities

1. “I am my position” – with this disability, individual units in the organization

 focus too closely on their own positions and responsibilities, thus missing out on
bigger pictures and inter-unity.
2. “The enemy is out there” – this disability enables us to find an external agent to
blame
3. “The illusion of taking charge” – when reactivity is mistaken as proactivity
4. “The fixation on events” – when conversations and media are dominated by short-
term events, leading to “event” explanations (instead of “pattern” explanations that
describe longer-term events)
5. “The parable of the boiled frog” – where we do not see gradual changes, much
like a frog in a pot will relax into drowsiness as its water is slowly heated
6. “The delusion of learning from experience” – because some effects are beyond
the current limits our awareness (e.g., effects in time, non-linear effects), we do not
experience many of the effects of our actions
7. “The myth of the management team” – with this disability, management protects
itself from the threat of appearing uncertain or ignorant in the face of collective
inquiry, resulting in “skilled incompetence” (“people who are incredibly proficient
at keeping themselves from learning”)

THE FIVE DISCIPLINES OF CREATING A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

Discipline 1: Personal Mastery

It is a set of specific principles and practices that enables a person to learn, create a personal
vision, and view the world objectively. This describes the strength of people to be proactive and
keep on learning to continuously achieve results which are important for them.

Discipline 2: Shared Vision

Means all employees in a company share the same vision of where the organization needs to go.

Toyota’s vision is about producing defect-free automobiles and they have come further toward
this than any other company in history. Their quality system is embraced by thousands and has
become the standard by which many consumers judge other cars.

Apple’s success, for example, is centered on its strengths in design and in creating simple user
interfaces. By having this clear understanding of what makes them different and what makes
them successful, they have moved from being simply a computer company to one where
whatever it makes or does is embraced by consumers.
Google’s now well-known motto of “do no evil” back on the year 2015 plays out in several ways
including giving employees paid time off to contribute to charities as well as leaving China when
its search results were censored. This commitment to a vision is powerful in pulling people
together to achieve common goals.
Discipline 3:Team Learning

Team learning aligns and develops the capacity of the team as a whole, building on individual
talent and vision to achieve results that members can’t achieve on their own.

Team learning is the collaborative effort to achieve a common goal within the group. The aim of
team learning is to attain the objective through dialogue and discussion, conflicts and defensive
routines, and practice within the group

Cisco Systems ,they have learned that teams, especially those made up of diverse people, are far
more effective in coming up with solutions to difficult problems and in bringing forth innovative
ideas than are individuals.

Discipline 4: Mental Models

It describe the presumptions and generalizations people have which influence their actions. The
first step in having people change their Mental Models is to have people reflect on their own
behavior and beliefs.

Zappos - an online shoe and clothing retailer- has taken a very different approach to how they
are organized by adopting a management system called Holacracy. In this system there are no
managers and employees are empowered to suggest changes or bring up ideas that the group can
discuss and make decisions on. Communication is quick and all information is available to
everyone. Employees are encouraged to challenge their assumptions about everything and to
experiment with new approaches.

Discipline 5: Systems Thinking

the ability to integrate the critical elements of an organization and to understand how each
impacts the other. This Discipline is used to analyze patterns in an organization by looking at it
from a holistic viewpoint rather than small unrelated manageable parts.

Companies are the sum of many sub-systems including R&D, production, sales, human
resources, and so on. If these functions are not working in harmony and do not have an
integrated view of what they are doing, the organization may find itself operating at a lower level
than it would have been.Senge himself describes the elephant metaphor. When you split an
elephant in two, you do not have two small elephants which you can take care of. You can only
take care of the one complete elephant. An organization is like a living organism that should be
managed as one.

International Business Machines or also known as IBM is an example of a firm that has
integrated many of these functions and has a competent, engaged and long-serving workforce.
Employees have been cross-trained and often perform many diverse functions.
11 Principles of Systems Thinking

1. Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions.

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

3. Behavior grows better before it grows worse.

4. The easy way out usually leads back in.

5. The cure can be worse than the disease.

6. Faster is slower.

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

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

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

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

TO WHOM WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THE ADOPTION/UTILIZATION OF THIS

MODERN CONCEPT?

This Concept can be best to use on all types of companies, because we all know that all
companies does not have a perfect management and with the help of these concept members
organizations will be more aware of their personal or group contribution to the success of the
company. A business that has poor management personnel in place has multiple problems. The
issues begin internally and begin to show themselves externally. Eventually, this affects the
overall aesthetic of a business as poor reviews come in and employees begin to quit
unannounced. It is important to employ the right management personalities and skills for what
your particular business needs and this concept can help a lot in making all the department in an
organization in harmony with each other.

HOW CAN THIS MODERN CONCEPT BE BENEFICIAL TO THE ORGANIZATION

YOU ARE CURRENTLY CONNECTED WITH?

My previous employer was Teleperformance, it is an omnichannel company headquartered in

France. The company specializes in outsourced omnichannel customer experience management,
which is a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) also known as Call center.The company
provides customer acquisition, customer care, technical support, debt collection, social media,
and other services around the world. I was hired for the position of customer and technical
support for Philips products for Australia and New Zealand Customers, our office was located at
the 15th - 23rd floor or SM Aura Building in BGC Taguig City. For my Almost a year stay in the
company I know that this concept can be very helpful , not only to Teleperformance but also for
other BPO Companies. Since in call center most of the customers who are calling needs
assistance, it is very important that each and every agent must be able to addressed all the queries
and concerns of the customers. With that being said, this concept can be beneficial in a way that
all of the agents must have a shared vision on what they want the company to achieved, because
there are some agents who are not giving the right answer to the customer or they are not treating
the customers properly, which can affect the whole team. Another is the Personal mastery, it is a
responsibility of an agent to be knowledgeable enough regarding the product or what we call
account that they are supporting. In call center we have this 1-3 months training depends on the
account that you will be handling, and since they will provide training it is a must that once you
are on the floor you must answer all the questions of the customer cause that’s what they are
paying you for. Team Learning is also a must, because in call center we have this what we call
mentor or support they are the ones who helped agents when the question or queries are beyond
their control or knowledge. These support or mentor can also have time to teach or provide some
knowledge to the agents so that agents will not always rely on them. And most importantly is the
system thinking, a BPO company will not succeed if the departments are not working
harmoniously. An example is that when the training department of the BPO company does not
properly trained the agents, the agents will not be a productive on the floor, many customers will
not be satisfied on the service and it will affect the account or the product that they are
supporting, it might lead to losing of customers in the part of the company. And lastly, if that will
happen, worst thing is that account will pull out their product on the BPO and it will be a big loss
to the BPO company.

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES AND DRAWBACKS OF THIS MODERN CONCEPT?

The advantages of this concept is that it will help the members of the to organization have a
common goal or vision for the company. It will also help each and every employee to develop
their strengths and overcome their weaknesses by practicing the personal mastery. It will also
develop a good communication for each and every employee regardless of their position of the
will practice the Team Learning, they will have a collective knowledge towards something and
they will get to learn from each others experience. And of course, the systems thinking will sum
it all by making each and every department of the company analyze the impact of every decision
that they are making to the company.

IF YOU ARE TO MODIFY THE CONCEPT, WHAT INTEGRATION/MODIFICATION

WILL YOU INCLUDE AND WHY? HOW WILL YOU NAME IT THEN?

The concept itself is perfect, but if there is something I would like to integrate or modify on the
concept is that I think it should have a monitoring tools also to check what are the positive and
negative effects the concept after implementing or practicing for a couple of months or more. It
will also serves as a source of information on the management to see what part of the concept
benefits them more and which are not for them to make some adjustments.
Central Theme

According to the book, it is no longer sufficient for an organization to rely upon just one person
to learn for the organization. A successful business is one that can effectively develop the
capacity of the members to learn at all levels of the organization. A learning organization
requires its members to be open to new ideas, be able to communicate effectively with each
other, understand the organization, form a vision shared by all members and work together to
achieve that vision.With these it can also help all members to overcome the learning disabilities.
The complexity and ambiguity we face grows every day, but perhaps Senge’s five disciplines
hold some of the answers about how organizations might cope successfully to improve employee
engagement, customer loyalty, and product excellence.