Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Summary of Key Points from: The Fifth Discipline − The Art and Practice of Learning Organizations Peter Senge

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Senge speaks of the Five Component Technologies and Eleven Laws of the Fifth Discipline

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Component Technologies  Systems Thinking  Personal Mastery  Mental Models  Building a Shared Vision  Team Learning

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Systems Thinking  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts  See ourselves as connected to the world  Aware of how our activities and actions create problems  Disciplines are integrated  School functions as an ecosystem  Newton: for every action………there is an equal and opposite reaction

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Personal Mastery  A special level of proficient  Realize that results are important  Continually clarify and deepen our personal vision  Commitment to and capacity for learning  Reciprocity between the person and the organization  Constructivisim and continuous improvement

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Mental Models  The deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, and images we have that influence how we understand the world and how we take action  Expose your own thinking and keep thinking open to the influence of others  Make your own reasoning explicit and encourage others to explore your view  Actively inquire into others’ visions that differ from yours

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Building a Shared Vision  People excel and learn not because they are told to do so, but because they want to (intrinsic motivation)  Involves skills of unearthing pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance  There is a “counter productiveness” when we try to dictate a vision.

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Team Learning  Dialogue rather than discussion  The ability to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine, thorough process together  When teams work, they produce extraordinary results, and individual members grow more rapidly than they would have without the team.

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Today’s Problems Come from Yesterday’s Solutions  Some solutions simply shift problems from one part of the organization or system to another.

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 The Harder you Push, the Harder the System Pushes Back  Job training in the 60’s—housing and training in the city; people moved to the city for housing and jobs; caused overcrowding; not enough housing or jobs  Malnutrition—food subsidies create higher population growth; more malnutrition  We end up contributing to the problem.

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Behavior Grows Better Before it Grows Worse  In any change operation, things seemingly get better before hitting the wall  Important to understand that things will be cyclic in nature  Critical to train staff about what to expect

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 The Easy Way Out Usually Leads Back In  If the solution to an issue was that easy to see or obvious, wouldn’t we have already done it?  “What we need is a bigger hammer!?”

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 The Cure Can Be Worse than the Disease  Usually we shift the burden to someone else: –Give it to a consultant –Give it to a helper  Or, we give the problem a new name

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Faster is Slower  Systems thinking is more challenging and more promising.  It causes us to look down the road with a more reflective purpose.

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Cause and Effect are not Closely Related in Time and Space  As children in play, we were never far away from a solution … as long as we confine our play to one set of toys.  If there is a problem in math, it must be the math teacher. Instead, might it be the text, the curriculum, the room, the student’s background, etc.?  Once again, the answer is usually not obvious.

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Small changes can produce big results— but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious  To tackle the problem, determine where the leverage is … a change where minimum effort will lead to significant improvement.  Learn to see the underlying structures rather than the event.  Think in terms of the process of change rather than the snapshots of events.

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 You can have your cake and eat it too…but not at the same time  High cost versus low quality…can you have high quality and low cost?  Wait for one thing while you focus on the other—not one at the expense of the other.

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 Dividing Elephants in Half Does Not Produce Two Elephants  Blind men and the elephant  Principle of a system boundary  What is happening on the edges?

Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business and Education 2006 There is No Blame  We have met the enemy and he is us…