![Preview of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51w3YtVPjZL.jpg)
updated 19d ago
updated 19d ago
The key to seeing reality systemically is seeing circles of influence rather than straight lines. This is the first step to breaking out of the reactive mindset that comes inevitably from “linear” thinking.
There are two distinct types of feedback processes: reinforcing and balancing.
Balancing (or stabilizing) feedback operates whenever there is a goal-oriented behavior.
Both good news and bad news reinforcing loops accelerate so quickly that they often take people by surprise. A French school-children’s jingle illustrates the process. First there is just one lily pad in a corner of a pond. But every day the number of lily pads doubles. It takes thirty days to fill the pond, but for the first twenty-eight days, no
... See moreTo understand how an organism works we must understand its balancing processes—those that are explicit and implicit.
Leadership in designing IT-based infrastructures starts with designing the composition of the team responsible for implementation. “When I led the SAP implementation for HP’s printing group,” says Anne Murray Allen, “80 percent of the team was from business—finance, procurement, manufacturing—and the entire team worked in one physical space. You co
... See moreWould-be change leaders often limit themselves through encountering two subtle barriers that they fail to recognize: They do not go deeply enough into themselves to discover what is truly calling them, and they do not go deeply enough into the organization to discover what it stands for. When people fail to go deeply enough into themselves, they pu
... See moreYour children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you, not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in th
... See moreThere are two fundamental aspects to seeing systems: seeing patterns of interdependency and seeing into the future. The ability to see interdependencies can be aided by tools like systems diagrams, but can also arise from stories, pictures, and songs. Seeing into the future starts with knowing how to interpret signs that are present today but go un
... See moreMy colleague and co-author of Presence, Otto Scharmer, explains a shift in orientation and intention that arises from three “thresholds,” or openings through which we must pass in leading profound change: opening the head, opening the heart, and opening the will.10 The first involves opening ourselves to see and hear what is in front of us but we h
... See more