The Fifth Discipline

Introduction
As Senge (2006) points out, one of the most important aspects of managing effectively is the ability to realize the value of intrinsic motivation. Senge (2006) notes that after writing his book The Fifth Discipline, a copy of it ended up in the hands of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a world-renowned leader in the quality management revolution back in the 1980s and 1990s. Deming wrote to the author to give his own take on the subject and noted especially that “our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning” (Senge, 2006, p. xii). This motivation is destroyed all throughout the life of the person, with rewards for performance in school and in the workplace—i.e., extrinsic motivators—sapping the strength of intrinsic motivation. Today, managers try to extrinsically motivate when what they should be doing is seeking ways to enhance, boost and make stronger the intrinsic motivation that people are born with but lose sight of along the way. Senge’s (2006) The Fifth Discipline is about managers tapping into that intrinsic motivation and finding ways to unlock it.
Purpose of the Five Disciplines
The Five disciplines have one main goal, according to Senge (2006): that is to develop three core learning competencies—1) the ability to foster aspiration, 2) the ability to develop reflective conversation, and 3) the ability to understand complexity. Fragmentation of problems—breaking them down in order to solve them—has led to the specialization of tasks, with one group of workers taught and trained to focus only on one specific section of one specific problem, without any sense or awareness of what goes on in other parts of the production process. In a sense it is the inevitable outcome of Adam Smith’s (2013) Wealth of Nation’s example of the pin factory worker, who is tasked with one simple, non-complex job of packing the pins in boxes, while another worker is tasked with sealing the boxes, and so on. There is no focus on aspiring for something greater; there is nothing really human about the work at all. It is the opposite of the concept of Buddhist economics, as proposed by Schumacher (1966): as Schumacher notes, work is work should give “man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence” (Schumacher, 1966, p. 2). This is exactly what is missing for the man in the pin factory. It is exactly what the Five Disciplines proposed by Senge (2006) seeks to encourage.
Systems Thinking
Through systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning, the five disciplines of a learning organization can be utilized to create the kind of performance needed by a successful business (Senge, 2006). Systems thinking—aka the Fifth Discipline of the title of Senge’s book—is what allows the other four to be integrated so that they can all work together to produce the desired effect. Senge (2006) gives the example of a painter: “vision without systems thinking ends up painting lovely pictures of the future with no deep understanding of the forces that must be mastered to move from here to there” (p. 12). Vision is absolutely necessary, but systems thinking allows the vision to be applied to the whole rather to just a small piece of the process or puzzle.
Systems thinking is what allows leaders to see the big picture and to work back from that macro perspective to install at the micro level a reflection of the vision that applied at the macro. The pillars to support that vision are erected at the micro level and are stacked on top of one another and integrated with the floors that will provide further support and stability along the way to allow the company to achieve its vision. Sometimes such thinking calls for a totally new way of doing business and of organizing the company, as occurred with Caterpillar when it completely redesigned its way of organizing its processes in-house (Neilson & Pasternack, 2005). What Senge (2006) shows is that systems thinking provides the framework for the business and shows how the strategy to achieve the goals are to be implemented.
In systems thinking, everyone matters and everyone is connected. No stakeholder can be viewed as unimportant in the system. From the most menial job to the most high-skilled job, every job must be done and done well in order for the system to operate effectively. To ensure that this level of effort is achieved, the same vision has to be communicated throughout the organization. Organizational culture is especially important in helping to promote that vision.
An organization is one that “is continually expanding its capacity to create its future” (Senge 2006, p. 14)—which is an important point that Senge makes: a company must be forward-looking, just as Caterpillar was when it decided it needed to decentralize and give itself a major makeover if it wanted to be competitive in the coming years. Even though it was already dominant in the market, its leaders realized that the coming years would see a shift in how businesses evolved and became more effective and unless Caterpillar did the same, it would fall behind and no longer lead the industry. It had a framework and its leaders used systems thinking to give the organization a solid edge in getting to and maintaining their objectives.
The important point to keep in mind about systems thinking, which alludes to what Senge noted when he quoted W. E. Deming, is that it requires a certain capacity for intrinsic motivation. The reason for that is simple: if everything is going well in the present for a company, the externals are all signaling a job well-done. There is no external reward expected for going beyond the here and now and getting back to work to see what comes next. That drive must come from an intrinsic motivator. That is why it is so important that personal mastery be part of the overall picture: it is the essence of intrinsic motivation.
Personal Mastery
Personal mastery refers to the “special level of proficiency” that a professional has in his field (Senge, 2006, p. 7). It does not come from an extrinsic source but is rather intrinsic to every person—though it can be destroyed and wiped out by culture and the institutions that raise children and teach them to act and grow only because of rewards for good behavior. The idea of personal mastery as a personal incentive and motivator is that every person should want to be a master of his skills and of his trade. Senge (2006) shows that this level of mastery is needed in order for systems thinking to be applied appropriately.
For an organization to learn, its workers and stakeholders have to learn. Every person involved in the organization has to become personally motivated to learn and to contribute to the growth of the organization—growth that must occur by way of knowledge and experience (Senge, 2006). To create that drive, every person needs to have a personal vision. This vision can be supported or developed by the organizational vision, but culture is essentially what strengthens it and allows it to take root. That is why the organizational culture most be in alignment with the vision of the organization and must be such that it promotes a personal vision that every worker will be able to make his own.
Mental Models
The mental models aspect of the five disciplines refers to the ideas and images people create for themselves in their own minds. These include the way people generalize about others, about their work, about themselves. Having a strong mental model in place can improve a person’s sense of self, personal awareness and play a big part in the manner in which an individual reacts to the organization and world all around him (Senge, 2006).
The discipline of having a mental model is built up by constant reflection. Reflection, Senge (2006) shows, is a way for the individual to look back on what he has done and what he could change about his performance to make it better. Every worker is capable of engaging in reflection, which is why having a mental model is such an important part of the five disciplines approach to creating a learning organization. Without people in the organization who are willing to reflect on their own experiences and actions and approaches to the job, the organization will never learn a thing or build on the knowledge it already possesses.
The mental model is also what enables the person to make inquiries that can lead to inroads to growth and personal development (Senge, 2006). Such inquires allow a person to challenge assumptions and old ways of thinking that might be leading to stalemates and static growth. The more stagnant a company becomes the more likely it is its workers have no mental model for viewing themselves or their interactions with others and their work. At the end of the day, the mental model has to be shared with others so that it can lead to the fostering of a positive and communication—and shared—workplace environment, where people are aligned in thinking, and can assist one another in the development of a supportive culture. That culture can be of a big help in maintaining a mental model.
Shared Vision
The shared vision is what allows that mental model, the personal mastery and the systems thinking to all work together. Unless that vision developed at the macro level is shared among all at the micro level, there will be no successful development of performance throughout. This is one of the elements that transformative leaders focus on when they are working on implementing a change. Developing the vision is part of the process of change management, but sharing it by way of effective communication is another part—and that shared vision has to be embraced by all (Senge, 2006)—otherwise members of the organization will enter into silos that do not allow for any sort of vision to be consistently applied throughout.
One of the major elements that must be developed via the sharing of vision is the identification of collective goals. If everyone in the organization is working on different goals and none of them are in sync with anyone else’s, there will be no sense of community, no sense of how every individual is part of a whole, how everyone’s work impacts the whole operation, right down to the very last detail. That level of shared vision is what is required (Senge, 2006).
In order for visions to work, however, they have to be clearly defined, articulated and understood. They cannot be vague musings only shared in board meetings or in casual encounters in the hallway. The vision has to be real, concrete, and well-thought-out. The vision has to spell out the future for one and all so that everyone knows exactly what kind of future they are working towards. This way they can align all their thoughts and concentration to the future goal—the vision of where they need to be personally as a worker. Every organization has to have this awareness of what the future will bring and what the company wants to be in the future. The vision is not enough on its own, however; there also has to be a way for that vision to be achievable. How can everyone contribute to that vision and bring it to life? That is what Senge (2006) says a workplace must be willing to ask. To get there, the organization must engage in a high degree of team learning.
Team Learning
Team learning is explained as a “process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its members truly desire” (Senge, 2006, p. 218). As Senge (2006) also points out, the “intelligence of the team exceeds the intelligence of the individuals on the team” (Senge, 2006, p. 9). This means that the collective mind of the team will always be better than the individual mind—simply because there are more minds at work on a team, and they each bring background, thoughts, experiences and the ability to reflect on different aspects of issues and processes.
To promote team learning, dialogue is absolutely vital (Senge, 2006). Dialogue is the process by which communication is effected in a meaningful way: people give a back-and-forth, a give and take, a two-flow of ideas. Feedback is given on the spot in dialogue. An individual puts forward an idea, a comment, a concept—and someone else responds with thoughts on that. The dialogue helps the team to build towards greater understanding.
However, for dialogue to be effective, there has to be a suspension of assumptions—i.e., team members must not go into a dialogue thinking they know everything or already understand the subject. They must put assumptions about what they know aside (Senge, 2006). This allows them to open up and to become open to what others might have to say and what they can offer in terms of helping everyone to grow. The reality is that no one knows everything. Dialogue, as Socrates showed thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, is the best way to enhance one’s learning and understanding at both the micro and the macro levels. Team learning is the ultimate expression of organizational learning. It is what ultimately feeds back into the systems thinking concept and enables the whole organization to keep moving towards the goal of improvement and growth.
Conclusion
The Fifth Discipline by Senge (2006) thus shows how systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning all contribute to the growth of an organization. At the heart of this discipline is the idea that every person has to be personally motivated to want to improve and to succeed. This idea is what drives success, innovation and a willingness to change for the better. As Senge (2006) notes early on in the book, intrinsic motivation is the key to both personal development and organizational development: without it there can be no reflection, no vision, and no learning.
References
Neilson, G. L., & Pasternack, B. A. (2005). The cat that came back. Strategy+Business.
Retrieved from https://www.strategy-business.com/article/05304?gko=56862 
Schumacher, E. F. (1966). Buddhist Economics. Retrieved from
http://www.colorado.edu/economics/morey/4999Ethics/Religion/SchumacherEF_BuddistEconomics.pdf
Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization.
NY: Doubleday.
Smith, A. (2013). On the wealth of nations. Simon and Schuster.