Peter senge

Biography
• 1947 – Born on 1 Jan, Stanford, California, United States
• 1970 – Degree: Stanford Graduate Engineering
• 1972 – Master MIT Graduate in social system modelling
• Mid 1970 – Leadership 7 Mastery Seminar
• PhD – MIT Graduating Economic Modelling Comparison
• Mid 1980- Innovation Associates Same Partners, director, System
Thinking & Organizational Learning MIT
The fifth discipline:The Art and Practice of the
Learning Organization (1990)
• Convert companies into learning organization.
• Group problem solving using the systems thinking method .
• 7 learning disabilities in an organization.
• 11 laws of learning organization.
• Create five disciplines approaches.
• Developing 3 core learning capabilities.
• Fostering aspiration
• Developing reflective conversation
• Understanding complexity
7 LEARNING DISABILITIES IN AN ORGANIZATION

1. I am my Position
2. The enemy is out there
3. The Illusion of taking charge
4. The fixation on events
5. The parable of the boiled frog
6. The delusion of learning from experience
7. The myth of the management team
11 Laws of Learning Organizations
• Law 1: Today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions.”
• Law 2: The harder you push, the harder the system pushes you
back.
• Law 3: Behavior grows better before it grows worse
• Law 4: The easy way out usually leads back in.
• Law 5: The cure can be worse than the disease
• Law 6: Faster is slower.
• Law 7: Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
• Law 8: Small changes can produce big results–but the areas of
highest leverage are often the least obvious.
• Law 9: You can have your cake and eat it too–but not at once
• Law 10: Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small
elephants.
• Law 11: There is no blame.
Why need learn?

1. Workforce simply follow orders

2. Employees seem unmotivated or uninterested in their work.
3. Lack communication between each other.
4. Teams argue constantly and lack real productivity.
Why need to change?

1. Increasing rates
• Accelerating economic, technological, social, and environmental
change challenge managers to learn at increasing rates.
2. Competitive advantages
• Will recognize that the only truly sustainable competitive advantage is
the rate at which organizations learn.
3. Complex System
• We must increasingly learn how to design and manage complex
systems with multiple feedback effects, long time delays, and
nonlinear responses to our decisions .
According to Senge, there are four challenges in
initiating changes:

 There must be a compelling case for change.

 There must be time to change.

 There must be help during the change process.

 As the perceived barriers to change are removed, it is important that

some new problem, not before considered important or perhaps not
even recognized, doesn't become a critical barrier.
Learning Organization

• Peter Senge defined a learning organization as:

•
• “… a place where people continually expand their capacity to create results they
truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where
collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning how to
learn”.

• The System of Learning Organization:

 Invest in improving the quality of thinking, the capacity for reflection and team
learning, and the ability to develop shared visions and shared understandings of
complex business issues.
 Engage in strategy and strategic planning activities
 Gains valuable information by analysing past and current trends.
 Differences between Learning Organization and
Organizational Learning
Learning organization Organizational learning

Refers to? Refers to activities within an Refers to a form of organization

organization
Level amount of normativity Normative and unknown Descriptive and known
For who? Focuses on practitioners and Targets academics
consultants
• The three legs represent an inter-related set of competencies for a
deep commitment to learning.
Aspiration.
 The learner crystallizes their vision of what are we trying to
accomplish here.
Capacity for reflective conversation.
 Ping-pong game than true talking and thinking together
Understand complexity.
 people should take time to understand the bigger picture of
relationships.
5 Disciplines of the Learning Organization

1. System Thinking
• Also called as the cornerstone of the learning organization
• (ability to comprehend and address the whole, and to examine the
interrelationship between the parts provide)

Definition: System thinking is a way of thinking about, describing, and

understanding the forces and interrelationships that shape the
behaviours
Feedback
(Most important element of system thinking)
• 1. Reinforcing Feedback
• Example: a manager who does not fully appreciate the impact her
expectations have on an employee’s performance.
• 2. Balancing Feedback
• Example: People who work long hours often complain about having to
work on weekends.
Systems thinking is the holistic
thinking that brings the other
four disciplines together in a
way that can lead to
organizational learning.
• Is a discipline for seeing structures (the patterns and connections
underlying seemingly diverse personal, organizational and societal
issues)
• Is a language for learning and acting
• Helps us see how we create our reality
• Points to higher leverage solutions to problems
• Integrates the other disciplines
• Helps us understand and describe complex issues
System Thinking benefit
• Change our thinking to match the interconnected, dynamic complexity
of communities and their environments
• Communicate with others and create new ways of thinking and seeing
and develop shared understanding
• Change our behavior to work with the complex forces in the system
(instead of against them) to realize our vision
• Identify and test a wider variety of possible actions
• Be aware of the potential for unintended consequences of our actions
• Expand the choices available to us and identify those choices where
we can develop significant leverage
2. Personal Mastery

• Definition: The discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our

personal vision, of focusing our energies, or developing patience, and
of seeing reality objectively.
• The System of Personal Mastery:
• Managers must understand that employee must want to do change. Managers
will help create the environment, which includes modelling the desired
behaviours.
• Managers must work daily at creating a climate that promotes personal
mastery.
Personal mastery will be strengthened in two
major ways:
• 1. Reinforce the notion that personal growth is indeed truly valued in
the organization.
• 2. Provide a sort of ‘on-the-job-training,’
3. Mental Models

• Definition: Deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even

pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and
how we take action.
• The System of Mental Model:
• Includes the ability to carry on ‘learningful’ conversations that
balance inquiry and advocacy, where people expose their own
thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of
others. (revealing our hidden assumptions)
• Managers must take the time to reflect on their existing mental
models until their assumptions and beliefs are brought out into the
open
4. Shared Vision

• Definition: Individual vision or goals are integrated into a shared

organizational vision.
• The System of Shared Vision:
Managers need to understand that visions are not announced from the
top or that they come from strategic planning process in order for
them to master the discipline of building shared vision.
Senior management must realize that their vision cannot be
considered ‘shared’ until others in the organization feel part of it.
5. Team Learning

• Definition: The process of aligning and developing the capacities of a

team to create the results its members truly desire.
• The System of Team Learning:
• Must be seen as a collective discipline.
• It’s necessary for conflict to present in order for a team to grow and
develop and to be effective.
2 primary ways that team communicate
• Dialogue -‘deep listening’ and the free exploration of ideas
• Discussion - refers to searching for the best view to support decisions
once all views have all been presented
3 Levels of Approaches in the 5 Disciplines:

• Practice- what the individual does, which is the lowest level.

• Principles - what the individual does in keeping with the guiding
ideas of the organization
• Essences - what the individual automatically thinks in terms of the
whole organization, which is the highest level of mastery
Criticism of the Management Theory

• Personal Mastery - Threaten the established order of a well-managed

company. .
• Change -Senge never really addresses the central issue of the
relationship between power and learning, knowledge and expertise,
learning and leadership. For Senge change is driven by learning, not
by authority.
• Learning Organizations -Threatens people’s life outside work.
• Mental Models - Considered problematic because they limit people to
familiar ways of thinking and acting, as well as limit their openness to
new ideas