The Fifth Discipline Summary

The Fifth Discipline written by Peter Senge in 1990 highlights the main disciplines that are required for the establishment of a successful learning organization. According to Senge (1990) a learning organization aims to facilitate and encourage consistent learning at all levels of the organization and continually seeks to be competitive in the workforce. Senge divides his book into 5 inter-connected parts. The first part of the book, consisting of Chapters one till three titled “How Our Actions Create Our Reality and How We can Change It”, provides readers with an evaluative outlook at the fundamental aspects of learning organizations and common limitations or “learning disabilities” that are often found in contemporary business organizations.

These are:

• Systems thinking: seeing the big picture

• Personal mastery: deepening the vision and qualities of every individual

• Mental models: working out what our assumptions and prejudices are and what they should be

• Building shared vision: something for everyone to be passionate about

• Team learning: how to use dialogue (genuine “thinking together” rather than simple discussion or argument) to build a team that as a whole compensates for the weaknesses of individual members

Systems thinking is defined as seeing the pattern among connected events regardless of different time and place. It is mandatory to follow the whole pattern to understand the system, and one cannot simply skip any step of the system. Systems thinking exists as conceptual framework, emerging since past fifty years, that aids in making sense of patterns, and to helping to evaluate situations in order to make effective

“The myth of the management team”. Mostly teams in business tend to avoid anything that may damage their image. They put stop to opposition and if there is any disagreement in a team it is stem down to as a team’s joint disagreement rather than a personal difference of opinion. Argyris (1982) terms this occurrence as “skilled incompetence” as even in situations where we feel uncertain or ignorant, we make an effort to not appear uncertain or ignorant. We feel ashamed to admit what we do not know and this very acts bars us from learning anything new. Ultimately the teams which breakdown or fail perform quite well under pressure are those that have kept themselves from