Though Shell, BP, Hanover, and Harley-Davidson took very different approaches to developing capacity to work with mental models, their work involved developing skills in two broad categories: skills of reflection and skills of inquiry. Skills of reflection concern slowing down our own thinking processes so that we can become more aware of how we

that it is vital to hold to critical performance standards “through thick and thin,” and to do whatever it takes to meet those standards. The standards that are most important are those that matter the most to the customer. They usually include product quality (design and manufacture), delivery times, service reliability and quality, and

Reflective practice is the essence of the discipline of mental models.

Reinforcing (or amplifying) feedback processes are the engines of growth.

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

We have created the structures that currently dominate by virtue of how we have operated in the past, and they can change if we see them and start to operate differently.

As Argyris also says, defensive routines are “self-sealing”—they obscure their own existence. This comes in large measure because we have society-wide norms that say that we should be open and that defensiveness is bad. This makes it difficult to acknowledge defensive routines, even if we know that we are being defensive. If Tabor’s corporate

A company that lacks a purpose worthy of commitment fails to foster commitment. It forces people to lead fragmented lives that can never tap the passion, imagination, willingness to take risks, patience, persistence, and desire for meaning that are the cornerstones of long-term financial success.

“circle organization,” re-conceiving traditional top management roles in terms of three overlapping circles of activity: “create demand,” “produce product,” and “provide support.”