The Fifth Discipline

Senge says that he incorporated conversations between multiple people engaged in the learning organization in Part 4. In the original Part 4, he compared the learning organizations’ creation process with prototypes, using the DC-3 prototype and other plane prototypes before the first commercial plane as examples. Years later, he still sees the learning organization as ever-growing with still more prototypes. Even though the world has grown more complex, and systems seem largely uncritical, the concepts of the learning organization and systemic thinking are steadily growing in popularity and leaders are becoming more open to focusing on helping people and improving systems than following the same management strategies.

Senge remarks how radical his ideas were when The Fifth Discipline was first released in 1990 and says that the people he has spoken to who incorporated his ideas have made their understanding more systemic and reflective. He uses the example of BP’s then Executive Vice President Vivienne Cox, who had used Senge’s ideas and discussed matters honestly with the team. Senge notes that this has allowed Cox to thrive at BP. He states that businesses often engage in participative openness rather than reflective openness because they are uncomfortable with being so vulnerable with their teams.