The Fifth Discipline Senge, Peter M.

Description

Product Description
An MIT Professor’s pathbreaking book on building  “learning organizations” — corporations that  overcome inherent obstacles to learning and  develop dynamic ways to pinpoint the threats that face  them and to recognize new opportunities. Not only  is the learning organization a new source of  competitive advantage, it also offers a marvelously  empowering approach to work, one which promises that,  as Archimedes put it, “with a lever long  enough… single-handed I can move the world.”
From Publishers Weekly
A director at MIT’s Sloan School, Senge here proposes the “systems thinking” method to help a corporation to become a “learning organization,” one that integrates at all personnel levels indifferently related company functions (sales, product design, etc.) to “expand the ability to produce.” He describes requisite disciplines, of which systems-thinking is the fifth. Others include “personal mastery” of one’s capacities and “team learning” through group discussion of individual objectives and problems. Employees and managers are also encouraged to examine together their often negative perceptions or “mental models” of company people and procedures. The text is esoteric and flavored with terms like “recontextualized rationality,” but the book should help inventory-addled retailers whom the author cites as unaware of their customers’ desire for quality. Macmillan Book Clubs selection.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“Forget your old, tired ideas about leadership. The  most successful corporation of the 1990s will be  something called a learning organization.” —  
Fortune Magazine.
From the Publisher
An MIT Professor’s pathbreaking book on building “learning organizations” — corporations that overcome inherent obstacles to learning and develop dynamic ways to pinpoint the threats that face them and to recognize new opportunities. Not only is the learning organization a new source of competitive advantage, it also offers a marvelously empowering approach to work, one which promises that, as Archimedes put it, “with a lever long enough… single-handed I can move the world.”

“Forget your old, tired ideas about leadership. The most successful corporation of the 1990s will be something called a learning organization.” — Fortune Magazine.
From the Inside Flap
An MIT Professor’s pathbreaking book on building “learning organizations” — corporations that overcome inherent obstacles to learning and develop dynamic ways to pinpoint the threats that face them and to recognize new opportunities. Not only is the learning organization a new source of competitive advantage, it also offers a marvelously empowering approach to work, one which promises that, as Archimedes put it, “with a lever long enough… single-handed I can move the world.”
From the Back Cover
“Forget your old, tired ideas about leadership. The most successful corporation of the 1990s will be something called a learning organization.” —
Fortune Magazine.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Give Me a Lever Long Enough… And Single-Handed I Can Move The World

From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole. When we then try to “see the big picture,” we try to reassemble the fragments in our minds, to list and organize all the pieces. But, as physicist David Bohm says, the task is futile–similar to trying to reassemble the fragments of a broken mirror to see a true reflection. Thus, after a while we give up trying to see the whole altogether.

The tools and ideas presented in this book are for destroying the illusion that the world is created of separate, unrelated forces. When w