I first became familiar with the disciplines of organization theory and group dynamics in graduate school. Swedish education is heavy on projects and team work and so these areas were an important part of my curriculum as well as my practical university experience. As time went by and I graduated, they slowly transformed into mainly latent interests in the back of my mind.
A couple of months back I decided to revisit these interests, motivated by a want to better understand the design of efficient organizations. I was recommended Peter Senge‘s “The Fifth Discipline” as a introduction to organizational design and systems thinking.
Senge is the director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “The Fifth Discipline” was a seminal work because it introduced the notion of a learning organization. A learning organization, as defined by Senge, is
“an organization where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together”.
The book describes how applied systems thinking and efficient team dynamics shape these learning, adaptive, organizations. Its title comes from the five disciplines that Senge argues lay the foundation for developing learning capabilities. The motivation is simple: organizations that are able to adapt quickly and effectively will be able to excel in their field or market. The strong focus on problem solving and learning in groups and team dynamics is important; the latest edition of the book states that at its essence, every organization is a product of how its members think and interact – and this is perhaps the biggest take away.
Soon after I started reading “The Fifth Discipline”, I discovered that my friend and Undercurrent colleague Amy Rae was reading it too. We decided to study and discuss it together and a couple of weeks ago, we published a summary of the discipline of mental models along with some of our thoughts (embedded below). There’ll be more of these summaries soon, but for now we’d love to hear your thoughts on the first one!
There’ll be more of these summaries soon, but for now we’d love to hear your thoughts on the first one!
