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The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization

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This book is a collection of theoretical summaries, reports, analyses, and strategies all quite useful to anyone interested in generating some thinking and action around change. The team of five writers (Peter Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts, and Art Kleiner) provide some original work, but also serve as editors to a vast quantity of material drawn from practitioners, theorists, and writers in the field of organizational improvement. According to Senge, "great teams are learning organizations - groups of people who, over time, enhance their capacity to create what they truly desire to create." (p.18) This book is really about creating and building great teams. The learning organization develops its ability to reflect on, discuss, question, and change its current and past practices. To do this, people and groups in the organization need to meaningfully pursue the study and practice of the five disciplines - personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.

The learning organization - Senge's vision for the productive, competitive, and efficient institutions of the future - is in a continuous state of change. Four fundamental questions continuously serve to check and guide a group's learning and improvement (see page 49): (1) Do you continuously test your experiences? ("Are you willing to examine and challenge your sacred cows - not just during crises, but in good times?") (2) Are you producing knowledge? ("Knowledge, in this case, means the capacity for effective action.") (3) Is knowledge shared? ("Is it accessible to all of the organization's members?") (4) Is the learning relevant? ("Is this learning aimed at the organization's core purpose?") If these questions represent the organization's compass, the five disciplines are its map.

Each of the five disciplines is explained, and elaborated in its own lengthy section of the book. In the section on "Systems Thinking" (a set of practices and perspectives, which views all aspects of life as inter-related and playing a role in some larger system), the authors build on the idea of feedback loops (reinforcing and balancing) and introduce five systems archetypes. They are: "fixes that backfire", "limits to growth", "shifting the burden", "tragedy of the commons", and "accidental adversaries". In the section on "Personal Mastery", the authors argue that learning starts with each person. For organizations to learn and improve, people within the organization (perhaps starting with its core leadership) must learn to reflect on and become aware of their own core beliefs and visions. In "Mental Models", the authors argue that learning organizations need to explore the assumptions and attitudes, which guide their institutional directions, practices, and strategies. Articles on scenario planning, the ladder of inference, the left-hand column, and balancing inquiry and advocacy offer practical strategies to investigate our personal mental models as well as those of others in the organization. In "Shared Vision", the authors make the case for the stakeholders of an organization to continually adapt their vision ("an image of a desired future"), values ("how we get to travel to where we want to go"), purpose ("what the organization is here to do"), and goals ("milestones we expect to reach before too long"). The section offers many strategies and perspectives on how to move an organization toward continuous reflection. In "Team Learning", the authors rely mostly on the work of William Isaacs and others, and make a case for educating organization members in the processes and skills of dialogue and skillful discussion.

This book is enlightening and informative. It has already found a place on my shelf for essential reference books.

Senge's second serving of the Learning Organization is filled with practical tips and real-life examples from companies and organizations that have embraced the teachings of the Learning Organization successfully.

The Book is a collaboration of several writers who do a superb job of unraveling the web that is the learning organization. At times, it may seem to the reader that the book is a labyrinth of disjointed concepts and ideas. However, if you have read `The Fifth Discipline' you will find no problems following the concepts introduced. In fact, you will even understand why the writers have chosen to introduce them in that fashion. If you have not read "The Fifth Discipline', do not despair, it will take a little longer to get `the whole picture'.
The Book is divided into 8 main sections:

1) Getting Started addresses the basic concepts and ideas of the Learning Organization.
2) Systems Thinking (the fifth discipline) - Many people have argued that Senge should have delegated the fifth discipline until the end, however, without Systems Thinking, your vision is disjointed and incomplete.
3) Personal Mastery covers the area of individual development and learning. The chapters here are among the most valuable in the area of self-growth and self-improvement.
4) Mental Models - These are the pictures that you have in your head which represent reality.
5) Shared Vision - You've seen the whole picture, you've developed and you understand how you see the world. Now you need to find a common cause with the rest of the people in your organization, something that you all work for.
6) Team Learning - As you work with other people in teams or groups, you need to pass the stuff that you have learnt and the wisdom you've acquired to others. At this stage, the learning is no longer that of the individual, but the group.
7) Arenas of Practice - (Self explanatory)
8) Frontiers - Where do we go from here.

If you are interested in development, learning, growth, leadership, gaining a competitive edge whether at an organizational or personal level, then this book is for you. In fact, I'd venture to say that this is book is for everyone.

Bridging the gap between text and context, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook offers everyone a deep and refreshing look at what work can be and should be. The authors ground their stories, examples, exercises in five conceptual touchstones--personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. And these disciplines accurately reveal three core tasks in leadership: looking at self, developing others, and seeing the larger picture in order to chart a meaningful course. Stories enliven the ideas while examples and exercises offer practical models to use in any organization. Generous side margins, different colored ink, and graphic icons are visual treats as well as immediate graphic guides. And the narrative references to related issues make reading the book more intuitive, more interesting.

In fact, these physical details model the whole point of the book--that learning is essential for sustainable growth, for organizational and personal development.

I had read The Fifth Discipline, and liked the book very much. I knew about the Fieldbook, but found its bulk to be intimidating. Then, Goren Carstedt gave me a copy, and asked me to read it. Although the book invites the reader to skip around, I am a front to back reader. I decided to read it while walking on the treadmill daily. My exercise regimen started to improve because I enjoyed reading this book in 45 minute segments so much. You should probably do the same. Also, if you can skip around, that is better. What I found is that there is a helpful exercise or two for implementing every key idea in The Fifth Discipline. This added much more meaning to that book for me, and also helped me identify and solve some problems that I had been thinking about. I strongly urge you to get this book, read it, and read it again. Be sure to do the exercises that intrigue you, because they will help you to a much better understanding of your business. If you just want help with systems thinking, there is a section of about a 100 pages that you could read in a few hours that would help you very much.

Everyone who reads THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE comes away excited about the benefits of having a learning organization. Yet many get stuck in a rut as they try to implement what they learned in that superb book. THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE FIELD BOOK helps fill in that lack of understanding with dozens of questions, examples and exercises. You'll have a ball with this, even if you only use a little part to focus on where you need help. A great related book for building a learning organization is THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION, which teaches a new thinking process that simplifies and speeds up learning for an organization. It also shows you where you need to get rid of old thinking that is holding you back. You should read and use both.

This fieldbook is so chalk full of ideas it can be a little overwhelming! But, if one takes their time there is much to be learned. I especially appreciated the icons that Senge uses throughout the book (explained at the start) that help the reader to organize their thoughts and to put the ideas into context. This is definately a fieldbook for the leader of the learning organization--a guide that can be used and referred to over and over again.

The Fieldbook attempts at making the esoteric concepts of the fifth discipline more down to earth and contains a treasure trove of strategies, tools, methods and explanations on how to make the learning organization into a reality.

Thus people who have read The fifth discipline will gain the most from this book. It's a must read for people who want to make their organizations transition into a 'learning organization'

EVERYONE I know who has read this book, and that includes an amazingly diverse group of folks from all walks of life and levels within their respective organizations, has either bought a second (or third) copy of this book to give a friend or is toting around a dog-earred, yellow-highlighted, post-it tabbed copy of their own. They seem to have this overwhelming need to work a favorite FIFTH DISCIPLINE FIELDBOOK quote into every meaningful conversation and get a weird look in their eyes when they meet a fellow "Fieldbook Fiend." This book has spawned an incredibly loyal following. Almost cult-like. Its enhancement and amplification of Peter Senge's Five Disciplines and his Guiding Ideas, Innovative Infrastructures, and Methods/Tools/Theories elicits a flow of words like love, cherish, enjoy, inspirational, and wonderful from the mouths of the faithful. The 60 some contributors to this book make it a dynamic, living document that seems to speak to each reader in a different way. With each reading (and everyone reads it more than once!), one feels a stirring in their soul and a rising conviction that I - little 'ol me - CAN make a difference at home, at school, or at work. Chock full of useful ideas, tested techniques, helpful case studies, meaningful advice, and wonderful stories of hope, THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE FIELDBOOK will never just sit on a shelf. I strongly recommend first time buyers obtain a leather book cover and slip it on right from the start. Or, buy two copies. Save yourself the effort of having to log back on and go to AMAZON.COM to buy it later!!!

I really can't recommend this series enough for the advanced student of management, and the audio of the fieldbook is probably the best start. One warning: I have to hone in on about a dozen short sections and listen twenty or thirty times to really get the concepts -- they are big and important. DO the exercizes fully and completely. Tony Robbins, Werner, etc. has nothing up on this fieldbook. I nominate the Fifth Discipline for universal management language in all 'advanced' organizations. We need one -- and this is just an excellent starting point for shared communication, vision, and action. "Hooray! I'm Enlightened!"

I do love this book. I constantly refer to it. I honestly can't imagine the world without Peter Senge's work. This book is very accessible. The format of the content is an excellent example of good instructional design. It is incredibly user-friendly. If you are involved in education, business, corporate training or anything remotely related and wonder how you can make a difference, read and use this book.