The Fifth Discipline

Delays, when the effect of one variable on another takes time, constitute the third basic building block for a systems language. Virtually all feedback processes have some form of delay. But often the delays are either unrecognized or not well understood.

Shell’s famous study of corporate longevity (see Chapter 2), which de Geus directed, found that the average life expectancy of Fortune 500 firms was less than forty years, but the study also found some twenty companies around the world which had survived two centuries or longer. Looking for common features that transcended differences in history, n

Another idea overturned by the feedback perspective is anthropocentrism—or seeing ourselves as the center of activities.

The real leverage in most management situations lies in understanding dynamic complexity, not detail complexity.

When personal mastery becomes a discipline—an activity we integrate into our lives—it embodies two underlying movements. The first is continually clarifying what is important to us. We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we forget why we are on that path in the first place. The result is that we only have a dim, or eve

That is, by seeing wholes we learn how to foster health.

STRUCTURE INFLUENCES BEHAVIOR When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.

There is no alternative to learning through experimentation. Benchmarking and studying “best practices” will not suffice—because the prototyping process does not involve just incremental changes in established ways of doing things, but radical new ideas and practices that together create a new way of managing.

systems thinking also needs the disciplines of building shared vision, mental models, team learning, and personal mastery to realize its potential. Building shared vision fosters a commitment to the long term. Mental models focus on the openness needed to unearth shortcomings in our present ways of seeing the world. Team learning develops the skill