The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies for Building a Learning Organization

See Charlie Kiefer’s cameo “Executive Team Leadership,” (page 435).

you can’t practice systems thinking as an individual—not because the discipline itself is difficult, but because good results in a complex system depend on bringing in as many perspectives as possible.

Ultimately, we are inventing one source of leverage for “Tragedy of the Commons” problems now, through our efforts to create learning organizations.*

The solution (or solutions) are obvious and immediate; they relieve the problem symptom quickly. But they divert attention away from the real or fundamental source of the problem, which becomes weaker as less attention is paid to it. This reinforces the perception that there is no other way out except the symptomatic solution.

this loop describes a “pile-up” of overwork on an overburdened team: The team’s agenda is full. The fuller the agenda, the less time people take to sit down and fully explore issues in depth. Therefore, the team’s level of focus is scattered. The more scattered it is, the lower the level of shared understanding among team members. The lower

pattern of behavior something like this: One indicator is your feeling that you need to try the same solution just a little more, and then a little more, and then one more time … until you catch yourself resisting the idea of trying anything else.

The second attribute of winning companies will be systemic understanding.

For every limit, there are effective strategies, but we usually don’t see them. Our natural tendency is to look for what worked in the past and to keep redoubling our efforts, instead of paying attention to the constraints.

Balancing loops are often found in situations which seem to be self-correcting and self-regulating, whether the participants like it or not.