The Fifth Discipline Essay

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Introduction

As Senge (2006) points out, one of the most important aspects of managing effectively is the ability to realize the value of intrinsic motivation. Senge (2006) notes that after writing his book The Fifth Discipline, a copy of it ended up in the hands of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a world-renowned leader in the quality management revolution back in the 1980s and 1990s. Deming wrote to the author to give his own take on the subject and noted especially that “our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning” (Senge, 2006, p. xii). This motivation is destroyed all throughout the life of the person, with rewards for performance in school and in the workplace—i.e., extrinsic motivators—sapping the strength of intrinsic motivation. Today, managers try to extrinsically motivate when what they should be doing is seeking ways to enhance, boost and make stronger the intrinsic motivation that people are born with but lose sight of along the way. Senge’s (2006) The Fifth Discipline is about managers tapping into that intrinsic motivation and finding ways to unlock it.

Purpose of the Five Disciplines

The Five disciplines have one main goal, according to Senge (2006): that is to develop three core learning competencies—1) the ability to foster aspiration, 2) the ability to develop reflective conversation, and 3) the ability to understand complexity. Fragmentation of problems—breaking them down in order to solve them—has led to the specialization of tasks, with one group of workers taught and trained to focus only on one specific section of one specific problem, without any sense or awareness of what goes on in other parts of the production process. In a sense it is the inevitable outcome of Adam Smith’s (2013) Wealth of Nation’s example of the pin factory worker, who is tasked with one simple, non-complex job of packing the pins in boxes, while another worker is tasked with sealing the boxes, and so on. There is no focus on aspiring for something greater; there is nothing really human about the work at all. It is the opposite of the concept of Buddhist economics, as proposed by Schumacher (1966): as Schumacher notes, work is work should give “man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence” (Schumacher, 1966, p. 2). This is exactly what is missing for the man in the pin factory. It is exactly what the Five Disciplines proposed by Senge (2006) seeks to encourage.

Systems Thinking

Through systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning, the five disciplines of a learning organization can be utilized to create the kind of performance needed by a successful business (Senge, 2006). Systems thinking—aka the Fifth Discipline of the title of Senge’s book—is what allows the other four to be integrated so that they can all work together to produce the desired effect. Senge (2006) gives the example of a painter: “vision without systems thinking ends up painting lovely pictures of the future with no deep understanding of the forces that must be mastered to move from here to there” (p. 12). Vision is absolutely necessary, but systems thinking allows the vision to be applied to the whole rather to just a small piece of the process or puzzle.

Systems thinking is what allows leaders to see the big picture and to work back from that macro perspective to install at the micro level a reflection of the vision that applied at the macro. The pillars to support that vision are erected at the micro level and are stacked on top of one another and integrated with the floors that will provide further support and stability along the way to allow the company to achieve its vision.

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Sometimes such thinking calls for a totally new way of doing business and of organizing the company, as occurred with Caterpillar when it completely redesigned its way of organizing its processes in-house (Neilson & Pasternack, 2005). What Senge (2006) shows is that systems thinking provides the framework for the business and shows how the strategy to achieve the goals are to be implemented.

In systems thinking, everyone matters and everyone is connected. No stakeholder can be viewed as unimportant in the system. From the most menial job to the most high-skilled job, every job must be done and done well in order for the system to operate effectively. To ensure that this level of effort is achieved, the same vision has to be communicated throughout the organization. Organizational culture is…

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…Learning

Team learning is explained as a “process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its members truly desire” (Senge, 2006, p. 218). As Senge (2006) also points out, the “intelligence of the team exceeds the intelligence of the individuals on the team” (Senge, 2006, p. 9). This means that the collective mind of the team will always be better than the individual mind—simply because there are more minds at work on a team, and they each bring background, thoughts, experiences and the ability to reflect on different aspects of issues and processes.

To promote team learning, dialogue is absolutely vital (Senge, 2006). Dialogue is the process by which communication is effected in a meaningful way: people give a back-and-forth, a give and take, a two-flow of ideas. Feedback is given on the spot in dialogue. An individual puts forward an idea, a comment, a concept—and someone else responds with thoughts on that. The dialogue helps the team to build towards greater understanding.

However, for dialogue to be effective, there has to be a suspension of assumptions—i.e., team members must not go into a dialogue thinking they know everything or already understand the subject. They must put assumptions about what they know aside (Senge, 2006). This allows them to open up and to become open to what others might have to say and what they can offer in terms of helping everyone to grow. The reality is that no one knows everything. Dialogue, as Socrates showed thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, is the best way to enhance one’s learning and understanding at both the micro and the macro levels. Team learning is the ultimate expression of organizational learning. It is what ultimately feeds back into the systems thinking concept and enables the whole organization to keep moving towards the goal of improvement and growth.

Conclusion

The Fifth Discipline by Senge (2006) thus shows how systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning all contribute to the growth of an organization. At the heart of this discipline is the idea that every person has to be personally motivated to want to improve and to succeed. This idea is what drives success, innovation and a willingness to change for the better. As Senge (2006) notes early on in the book, intrinsic motivation is….....

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