The Fifth Discipline

No global supply networks affect more people than those for food. Food production and distribution is the world’s largest industry, employing over a billion people. For most of those living in wealthy northern countries, global food systems seem to be working fine. After all, a consumer in New York or Paris can buy a cantaloupe in the middle of win

If the first choice in pursuing personal mastery is to be true to your own vision, the second fundamental choice in support of personal mastery is commitment to the truth.

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.

Mental Models.

How can a team of committed managers with individual IQs above 120 have a collective IQ of 63?

“The enemy is out there,” however, is almost always an incomplete story. “Out there” and “in here” are usually part of a single system. This learning disability makes it almost impossible to detect the leverage we can use “in here” on problems that straddle the boundary between us and “out there.”

The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared “pictures of the future” that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance. In mastering this discipline, leaders learn the counterproductiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt.

Generative learning cannot be sustained in an organization if people’s thinking is dominated by short-term events. If we focus on events, the best we can ever do is predict an event before it happens so that we can react optimally. But we cannot learn to create.

Without personal mastery, people are so steeped in the reactive mindset (“someone/something else is creating my problems”) that they are deeply threatened by the systems perspective.

Similarly, as the five component learning disciplines converge they will not create the learning organization but rather a new wave of experimentation and advancement.