The Fifth Discipline by Senge (1994) refers to the learning organization as an ultimate state which may be difficult for goal-oriented Westerners to achieve. Cultural shifts may be required; learning requires constant study and practice, and team learning involves systems thinking, mental model reflection, shared vision, and dialogue, which may conflict with current goals for a successful manager to be in control, forceful, and decisive (pp. xv, xvi).
The five learning disciplines include: systems thinking, with interrelated actions; personal mastery, to include continual clarification of personal vision and seeing reality objectively; mental models, or assumptions, generalizations, etc. that influence how we learn and behave; building shared vision, or the capacity to hold a shared picture of the future to be created; and team learning, or thinking together with the discipline of dialogue (pp. 6-11). The fifth discipline is systems thinking; it needs and integrates all the disciplines (pp. 12, 69).
Organizations, like people, have learning disabilities and become prisoners of their own thinking; people do not see how their actions affect other positions, blame is prevalent, situations build and become overwhelming (pp. 17-27, 51-52). Laws of the fifth discipline include concepts such as: yesterday's solutions create todays problems; some interventions work short term only; easy solutions lead back to the problem; the cure can be worse than the disease; cause and effect may not be closely related in time and space; there is no blame; etc. (pp. 57-67).
Metanoia is a word used to describe the shift of mind that takes place in a learning organization. This word refers to the grasping of a deeper meaning of learning, a movement of mind, a transcendence. This shift takes place as people become part of something larger than themselves; they become part of a team, connected and generative (pp. 13-14).
Systems thinkin...