The Fifth Discipline

The Art and Practice

of The Learning
Organization
Presented By:
Group A

Introduction to the revised

edition

The Prevailing System of Management

After writing and editing before

publishing first book in 1990
Question by Doubleday: Who Senge
wanted to write a comment for the
book jacket?
Answer: Dr. Edwards Deming, pioneer
in quality management revolution,
made one of the greatest impact in
management practice
Doubted on the response as he did
not know Deming
But received a letter from him with

 Our prevailing system of management has

destroyed our people
People born with intrinsic motivation, self
respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in
learning
Starts from toddlers and during formal
education
On job, individual, teams and divisions are
ranked and rewarded
MBO, quotas, incentive pays, business
plans put together separately further
degrade people

 Senge realized Deming had unveiled much

deeper layer of connection and a bigger task
then he had previously understood
Deming had almost completely stopped using
terminology TQM for being superficial tools and
techniques
The real work transformation of the prevailing
systems of management
This transformation needed Profound
knowledge largely untapped in contemporary
organizations
Only one element of this knowledge was
associated with TQM rest not

 The other three elements mapped directly into

five disciplines: understanding a system,
theory of system and psychology
These elements led a way to represent five
learning disciplines , a way that was not
evident when the original book was completed
Five disciplines represent approaches for
developing three core learning capabilities
Idea from old book, fundamental learning unit
teams
So, core learning capabilities for team- a three
leged stool

Core Learning
Capabilities from
Team
UNDERSTANDI
NG
COMPLEXITY
Systems
Thinking

ASPIRATION
Personal
Mastery
Shared
Vision
REFLECTIVE
CONVERSATION
Mental Modals
Dialogue

 Demings idea common system of management

deep connection between work and school
Cannot transform prevailing system of
management unless transform our prevailing
system of education
People failed to implement real quality
management as they had been socialized in the
ways of thinking and acting
The relationship of boss and employee similar
to teacher and student
Pleasing boss and failing to improve system
that serves customers

Deming prevailing system of management

Management by measurement
Compliance based cultures
Managing outcomes
Right answers vs wrong answers
Uniformity
Predictability and controllability
Excessive competitiveness and distrust
Loss of whole

Will this system of management ever

change on a large scale?

A Time of Crosscurrents

 In 15 years since the first book was

published much has changed in the world
and thus business
Cost and performance pressures
Time to think scarce
Addition of social and environmental
sustainability challenge
Financial capital gain in expense of social
and natural capital
Increase in gaps between haves and haves
not
Global industrial growth and losses of

 Interconnected world creates a greater

awareness than before
Learning from each others cultures and
dialogue among civilizations holds greater
hope for the future
Web of relationship by young people
Now organizational practices that were
limited fifteen years back are now being
deep rooted and have spread
Time of dramatically conflicting forcesthings are getting better but things are
also getting worse

 These conflicting forces play in the

organization
Need for learning capabilities greater and
at the same time challenges of building
such capabilities
Weakening of traditional hierarchy and
opening up new capacity for continual
learning, innovation and adaptation
But, totally dysfunctioning of traditional
hierarchies difficult

Voices from the Front

 New edition of The Fifth Discipline

encomphasses ideas from countless
practitioners of organizational learning
Management System based on love than
fear, curiosity than insistence for right
answers and learning than controlling
Those learning led to addition of new
section in the book Reflections from
Practice
Insights about how practitioners initiate
change and deal creatively with
challenges

Ideas from interview

There are ways of working together that

are vastly more satisfying and more
productive than the prevailing system of
management
Organizations work the way they do
because of how we work, how we think
and interact, the changes required ahead
are not only in our organizations but in
ourselves as well
In building learning organizations there is
no ultimate destination or end state, only
a lifelong journey