Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5242 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Synopsis
Peter Senge, founder and director of the Society for Organisational Learning and senior lecturer at MIT, has found the means of creating a 'learning organisation'. In "The Fifth Discipline", he draws the blueprints for an organisation where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nutured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are contually learning together. "The Fifth Discipline" fuses these features together into a coherent body of theory and practice, making the whole of an organisation more effective than the sum of its parts. Mastering the disciplines will: reignite the spark of learning, driven by people focused on what truly matters to them; bridge teamwork into macro-creativity; free you from confining assumptions and mind-sets; teach you to see the forest and the trees; and end the struggle between work and family time. "The Fifth Discipline" is a remarkable book that draws on science, spiritual values, psychology, the cutting edge of management thought and Senge's work with leading companies which employ Fifth Discipline methods.

Reading it provides a searching personal experience and a dramatic professional shift of mind. This edition contains more than 100 pages of new material about how companies are actually using and benefiting from Fifth Discipline practices, as well as a new foreword from Peter Senge about his work with the Fifth Discipline over the last 15 years.

From the Publisher
In the long run, the only sustainable source of competitive advantage is your organisation's ability to learn faster than its competitors.

From the Back Cover
Peter Senge, founder and director of the Society for Organisational Learning and senior lecturer at MIT, has found the means of creating a 'learning organisation'. In The Fifth Discipline, he draws the blueprints for an organisation where people create the results they truly desire, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are contually learning together.
The Fifth Discipline fuses these features together into a coherent body of theory and practice, making the whole of an organisation more effective than the sum of its parts.

Mastering the disciplines will:
*Reignite the spark of learning, driven by people fosucsed on what truly matters to them
*Bridge teamwork into macro-creativity
*Free you from confining assumptions and mind-sets
*Teach you to see the forest and the trees
*End the struggle between work and family time

The Fifth Discipline is a remarkable book that draws on science, spiritual values, psychology, the cutting edge of management thought and Senge's work with leading companies which employ Fifth Discipline methods. Reading it provides a searching personal experience and a dramatic professional shift of mind.

Named one of the seminal management books of the last 75 years by Harvard Business Review, The Fifth Discipline sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide in it first edition. This second edition contains more than 100 pages of new material about how companies are actually using and benefiting from Fifth Discipline practices, as well as a new foreword from Peter Senge about his work with the Fifth Discipline over the last 15 years.

Customer Reviews

Thought Leadership, and Breakthrough ideas
I found this book highly simulating but required heavy study to transfer the ideas into the working environment. I found the framework was incomplete especially around the issues of creating a learning environment. Senges' framework for Systems is best described in terms of 'systems dynamics' which leads onto a more developed theory by others on system complexity and emergence.

He describes what might be an end state without detailing how to get there, the later follow up field book on tools and methods now fills this gap neatly. Both books together are perfect.

This book sets out theory very well, it also provides Thought Leadership, Breakthrough ideas and Inspiration. Its well written and enjoyable.

True wisdom inside
Over 15 years and a few hundred more pages later this book remains number one on the list of management must reads.
Systems thinking remains, in my opinion the way to go and the idea of learning organizations is still valid today. What is really special here is the idea that it's all about people. Some say the concepts are a bit too "new age" and Senge acknowledges this and admits that the term "carries a lot of baggage". W Edwards Deming spoke of a new economic age which was his terminology.
Great book, will alway be near at hand for me.