Learning Organization and the Five Disciplines:
Introduction:
Peter Senge (2006) had described learning organizations as those where employees would persistently strive to develop and expand their abilities so that they could achieve desired results, where they could be able to nurture the innovative and extensive thinking patterns aiming to achieve mutual goals and objectives, and they would discover to envision the “whole together”.
I completely agree with his idea and believe that the rationale for firms in today’s competitive environment is that only those firms would excel who would acclimatize, become flexible as well as creative in situations of rapid change. In order to excel, these firms must learn to realize how they could tap their employees’ ability and commitment to learn and adapt at all levels of management. It is vital to strongly focus employees’ learning in teams and problem solving as Senge (2006 & 2008) had emphasized that every output/product of the firm is the result of the thinking and interaction of its members and it could be the biggest take away. He had attempted to trace the prevalent learning disabilities that had afflicted most firms, expounded on the essential rules of “The Fifth Discipline” and explained different “System Models/Archetypes” that would form certain dysfunctional patterns and affect overall performance.
Organizational Learning:
Senge (2006 & 2008) had pointed out that when people were asked how they felt being a part of a good team, they would highlight the meaningfulness and significance of the experience and the feeling of being connected and generative- they would emphasize on being a part of a great team. But he had argued that for firms and individuals, learning only to survive- “adaptive learning” is not enough. Though it is essential, but this learning must be supported by “generative learning” that would seek to support and improve our ability to create. The speed at which these firms would strive to learn and adjust with the changing business environment would ultimately become the source of sustainable competitive advantage for them.
I would emphasize that a “learning organization would be the one who would have acquired system thinking after it would master the other four disciplines outlined by Peter Senge.
The Five Disciplines:
Senge (2006) had outlined five significant disciplines, and system thinking has been called as the fifth discipline. The other disciplines involved Personal Mastery, Senge had emphasized that organizations cannot learn without the involvement of their employees- when they would learn only then these organizations would learn. Personal mastery had been constituted of two components. Firstly, it is important that one must define his goals and targets, and secondly he must have a measure to estimate how close he is to his targets. There could be a “creative tension” that would result when one could clearly identify the reality but unsatisfied with it so there would be a gap in how he is functioning and where he aspired to be. This discipline emphasizes that one would persistently clarify and deepen his personal vision, focus his energy towards his vision, develop tolerance and see the reality impartially. The second discipline out of five is the “Mental Models”- a framework that would determine our thinking and action and has been regarded as the structure for our mind’s cognitive process. Garvin et al (2008) had pointed out the flawed mental models- people would try to act to circumvent any threat or discomfiture. He had argued that these people could be trained to make out these flaws in their mental models but it would be a challenging task to get these people state what they feel or believe while keeping their inner fear of condemnation away. Flood (1999) who had also covered Senge’s disciplines had mentioned that mental models were the images, deeply rooted assumptions and generalizations that influence our attitude towards the world and actions. Flood’s views had supported the analysis of Garvin et al that working with this model would begin when we would learn to turn the mirror inwardly and learn to discover our internal feelings and imaginations of the world, and finally reveal and take them outside and hold them for meticulous analysis.
The third discipline “Team Learning” would involve employees who would be empowered to work collectively towards a common goal and everybody would be completely and jointly responsible for his act and its consequences (Senge, 1990). When the employees would have clear and just goals, responsibilities and anticipations, they would comprehend their individual contribution means a lot towards organizational achievement, they would encourage team learning. The fourth discipline “Shared Vision” could be regarded as a vibrant vision of a long term objective. Flood (1999) has argued that the individual vision of the members would collectively form the shared vision for a learning organization. In short, he stressed the need to align employees’ vision with the vision of the firm and leaders of the firm could play a significant role in developing a shared vision. Senge (2006) has also stressed that you cannot sell a shared vision, and it is only developed when all the members of the organizations enroll in it. The fifth discipline, system thinking indicates the capacity of employees to envision the system not in separate components but as a whole system. The fifth discipline requires that in order to improve the decision making on continual basis, we must learn new skills and should be provided with appropriate tools.
Garvin et al (2008) had mentioned that Argyris & Schon (1996) divided learning in three different types; first was single loop learning (when the main focus is on techniques and making them more efficient), double loop (incorporated assessment of the learning framework which is the cause of strategies and objectives) and triple-loop learning which goes beyond insight and creates a total shift in our comprehension of the context.
System Thinking:
Also known as System Dynamics, the concept was pioneered by J.W. Forrestor and later Senge (2006) had popularized it in his book- The fifth discipline. System thinking had been regarded as a core component for every learning organization. System thinking is the capacity to foresee the bigger picture, focus on the web of interconnections of a system apart from linear causal relations, and facilitate the study of continuous processes. System thinking incorporated cause and effect philosophy to a much higher extent and showed that we could not determine the vital system properties by summing its individual components but only through the interrelations among these components. This had been the major reason that the concept of system thinking is essential for every learning organization; system thinking had been used to execute the other four disciplines. I agree that without this fifth discipline, the remaining four disciplines could not accomplish their objective since they would be segregated; system thinking combined the other elements so that a whole system is formed. It would be the system with its properties surpassing the combination of its components/parts. However Flood (1999) has argued that the opposite could also be possible; it is impossible to achieve system thinking without the other elements. Therefore it could be stated that the underlying principle of the fifth discipline highlighted the fact that systems should not be viewed as isolated parts but interrelationships and Flood’s argument supported this fact that all five disciplines will be necessary to execute system thinking successfully.
Every firm would strive for constant development and the fifth discipline would provide them the opportunity to achieve this objective. This fifth discipline could be positioned as the most important element of organizational learning. As mentioned earlier Senge (2006) has described this discipline as the keystone element/discipline. Flood (1999) has highlighted that System thinking would help in seeing the issue from the holistic viewpoint, it would put the issue in a larger whole perspective and would aim to discover the place to make the most effective and suitable intervention. With the help of the fifth discipline, one could make out what fundamental links were causing that issue, as opposed to a situation where one would have to just react and put out fires consistently. For instance, I would provide a hypothetical situation that could be a common scenario for some firms:
The sales team members were participating in an off-site meeting focusing on the issue of increasing sales and thus the overall revenue. Few members suggested including training in to the sale of the firm’s new product/service. Now here the problem is that there was no representation of the training department in making this decision. After this decision was implemented, it was a surprise in the form of added demands for the training department and surely they were not ready for this. The increasing demands for training services would therefore burned out the trainers and this could lead to a decrease in the communal resource of the firm which is training. If they had applied system thinking to solve the issue of increase in sales revenue, the management would have evaluated what would be the impact of increasing training for the sales people responsible for a particular product/service on the other parts/functions of the firm and a better alternative could have been sought out. The fifth discipline-system thinking could assist in identifying and responding to one or more changes before they could lead to a disaster. System thinking would keep firms and individuals from becoming a “boiled frog”- if a frog is taken and put in a pot of boiling water, if will definitely jump out and vanish. But if it is captured and put in rather cold water and then the water is heated gradually, the frog would remain in that water ultimately cooking to death (Zulauf, 1997).
This example of frog could be related to those learning organizations with the objective of reacting only when the change would become larger than the quantifiable and forecasted threshold, so there would be no response to changes below that level. So the change, boiling slow enough would not prompt these organizations until it is very late to respond. But system thinking would help these organizations to make out and give importance to series of small changes, adjusting and developing plans to benefit the organization before this series of change become a crisis.
Another advantage of system thinking is that learning organizations would be able to fully comprehend the ramifications of their judgments; they could assess a situation and decide at what place and time they could make the most successful and efficient intervention.
System Thinking and Complex Adaptive Systems:
A complex adaptive system could be described as a combination of individual representatives/agents, who would have the freedom act in totally unpredictable manner, but their action would have interconnectedness and therefore the act of one agent would totally transform the context for other agents (Kelly & Ramalingam, 2011). For instance, take an example of the Healthcare industry, and agents/people who work with in the medicine use process, the delivery system in the hospitals and the healthcare policy. Learning organizations as a complex system opens a new opportunity for the emergence of productive management approaches and leadership. Strategies and allocation of resources would be established taking in to consideration the whole system and its outcomes. Therefore, the management will not be allocating resources and making strategies for individual systems and would focus its attention towards efficient delivery of service across the entire organization. For instance in a complex healthcare framework, system thinking would result in rather holistic and innovative thinking as opposed to the individual parts of the departmental or functional segments that had been pursued traditionally by healthcare organizations (ASHP Foundation, 2010 & Cooksey, 2003). How system thinking deals with medicine management for patients suffering from chronic illness and have complex medication schedules for the treatment, medication discharge and related education to patients and jobs description of employees, could have a huge impact on observance, agreement and persistence for such patients (with complex medication schedule). The system thinking would aim to shift in viewpoints to have a wider focus on better care of such patients (ASHP Foundation, 2010).
Conclusion:
Organizational Learning is all about individuals and their collaboration to accomplish organizational (collective) as well as personal objectives. It is vital that individuals should get together, share knowledge, establish objectives and prepare plans collaboratively so that they could learn as a group and practice system thinking. The following advantages could be identified by employing system thinking:
1- Increase in knowledge- more right questions will be raised.
2- There would be an involvement of stakeholders in the overall system thinking process (one example of the sales and training team has been discussed earlier in this paper).
3- All the stakeholders would have a common understanding of the challenge/issue.
4- There would be an integration and consideration of different viewpoints.
5- Creation of a vision which would be beyond everyday activities.
6- A long-term forecasting by the management/ decision makers.
7- The big picture would ultimately reflect as a sustainable competitive advantage for the learning organization.
References
ASHP Foundation (2010). Evolution in Systems Thinking. ASHP Foundation. Retrieved March 8, 2013, from http://www.ashpfoundation.org/leadershipprimer/Primer9.html
Cooksey, R. W. (2003). Learnership in complex organisational textures. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 24(4), 204-214.
Flood, R. L. (1999). Chapter 2. In Rethinking the fifth discipline : learning within the unknowable (pp. 13-28). London ; New York: Routledge.
Garvin, D. A., Edmondson, A. C., & Gino, F. (2008). 'Is Yours a Learning Organization?'. Harvard Business Review, 86(3), 109-118.
Kelly, E. M., & Ramalingam, B. (2011). 'Organisational learning and compexity science : exploring the joint potential'. In The SAGE handbook of complexity and management (pp. 349-365). London: Sage.
Senge, P. (2006). Give me a lever long enough and single - handed I can move the world'. In The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization (pp. 3-16). London ; Sydney: Random House.
Senge, P. (2008). Innovation inspired by living systems. In The necessary revolution : how individuals and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world (pp. 285-291). New York ; London: Doubleday.
Zulauf, C. A. (1997). Systems Thinking. American Society for Training & Development.
