Peter Senge - The Fifth Discipline (1990)

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In great teams, conflict becomes productive. The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking, for discovering new solutions no one individual would have come to on his own.

Peter Senge
An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as important as a clear vision.

Peter Senge
The discipline of personal mastery...starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us (and) living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.

Peter Senge
If people don't have their own vision, all they can do is 'sign-up' for someone else's.

Peter Senge
Small changes can produce big results - but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.

Peter Senge
The most effective people are those who can "hold" their vision while remaining committed to seeing current reality clearly

Peter Senge
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 even inaccurate, view of what's really important to us.

Peter Senge
The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.

Peter Senge
When teams are truly learning, not only are they producing extraordinary results, but the individual members are growing more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise.

Peter Senge
In dialogue, individuals gain insights that simply could not be achieved individually.

Peter Senge
In a sluggish system, aggressiveness produces instability. Either be patient or make the system more responsive.

Peter Senge
Willpower is so common among highly successful people that many see its characteristics as synonymous with success.

Peter Senge
Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.

Peter Senge
The systems perspective tells us that we must look beyond individual mistakes or bad luck to understand important problems.

Peter Senge
When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.

Peter Senge
Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.

Peter Senge
Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change. That is, by seeing wholes we learn how to foster health. To do so, systems thinking offers a language that begins by restructuring how we think.

Peter Senge
Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.

Peter Senge
Systems thinking is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns rather than static snapshots. It is a set of general principles spanning fields as diverse as physical and social sciences, engineering and management

Peter Senge
The gap between vision and current reality is also a source of energy. If there were no gap, there would be no need for any action to move towards the vision. We call this gap creative tension.

Peter Senge
Personal mastery teaches us to choose. Choosing is a courageous act: picking the results and actions which you will make into your destiny.

Peter Senge
Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

Peter Senge
Courage is simply doing whatever is needed in pursuit of the vision

Peter Senge
People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them-in effect, they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. The do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.

Peter Senge
I do not believe great organizations have ever been built by trying to emulate another, any more than individual greatness is achieved by trying to copy another 'great person'.

Peter Senge
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.

Peter Senge
Teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. This is where the "rubber stamp meets the road"; unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn.

Peter Senge