Learning and improving should be part of everybody´s daily job and not just a temporary one day event or a project. The forth constraint is the fixation on events instead of focus on small continuous improvements. Proactive action is defined by people daring to face the results of their own behavior and the willingness to change it to prevent problems from reoccurring in the future. The illusion of taking charge is the third constraint for learning, and describes the danger of reactive action instead of proactive action. When people are task-focused, they are likely to not able to see their own influence on the company goals and as a result point to others in organization as the root cause of all problems. The second constraint for learning is the result from the first syndrome and is called the enemy is there syndrome. Talking in terms of tasks only results in lack of accountability for the product or service the company delivers. This syndrome is described by people talking about what tasks they perform in an organization instead of what value they add to the company goal. The first one is the I-am-my-position syndrome. Traditionally there are SEVEN LEARNING CONSTRAINTS. The more people in an organization learn, the more value they can create for the company. Lifelong learning is important for an organization because learning results in creating. The best way to change events is therefore to change the system, which will lead to different behavior. A System (level 3) leads to a certain behaviors (level 2) which can lead to certain events (level 1). These three ways of explaining are linked to one another. Senge describes THREE LEVELS OF EXPLAINATION: a reactive explanation based on events (1), a responsive explanation based on behavior (2) and a generative explanation based on structural level (3). One way in which systems thinking is executed is the way in which situations are explained by employees. This discipline integrates the previous 4. An organization is like a living organism and should according to Senge also be managed as one. You can only take care of the one complete elephant. When you split an elephant in two, you do not have two small elephants which you can take care of. Senge himself describes the elephant metaphor. System Thinking is used to analyze patterns in an organization by looking at it from a holistic viewpoint rather than small unrelated manageable parts. The team members have to be willing to shift their mental models and be open to learn from their colleagues. Effective teamwork leads to results which individuals could not have achieved on their own (1) and individuals within a team learn more and faster than they would have without the team (2). Senge describes a shared vision as follows: People are not playing according to the rules of the game, but feed responsible for the game. Only when the vision is authentic and shared, employees will automatically participate in the improvement processes to get the company closer to accomplishing its vision. One part of openness is to quit playing ´power games´ and be open and honest about what your real needs are.Ī Shared Vision means all employees in a company share the same vision of where the organization needs to go (instead of a vision-statement where management has written where the organization should be going).
One important Value Senge describes is openness. Personal values can overcome the shortcomings of hierarchical power. One of the mental models in every organization is the official hierarchy. The first step in having people change their Mental Models is to have people reflect on their own behavior and beliefs. Mental Models describe the presumptions and generalizations people have which influence their actions. Two factors which are of importance in this discipline are: defining what is important to us (1) and being able to see the current reality as it is (2). Personal Mastery describes the strength of people to be proactive and keep on learning to continuously achieve results which are important for them. THE FIVE DISCIPLINES OF CREATING A LEARNING ORGANIZATION in more detail, are: The 5 disciplines will shortly be addressed in this article, as well as three levels of explanations, seven learning constraints and nine system archetypes which will help practicing Systems Thinking. These five disciplines: A shared Vision (1), Mental Models (2), Team Learning (3), Personal Mastery (4) and System Thinking (5).The fifth Discipline, System Thinking, is the one discipline that binds the other four and therefore the discipline where the focus of Change Management should be. The title of Peter Senge´s book the Fifth Discipline cites one of the five Disciplines to create a Learning Organization.
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