The Fifth Discipline - The Five Disciplines

The Five Disciplines

The five disciplines of the learning organization discussed in the book are:

1. "Personal mastery is a discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively." (p. 7)
2. "Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action." (p. 8)
3. "Building shared vision a practice of unearthing shared pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance." (p. 9)
4. "Team learning starts with dialogue, the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into genuine thinking together." (p. 10)
5. Systems thinking - The Fifth Discipline that integrates the other 4.

"Systems thinking also needs the disciplines of building shared vision, mental models, team learning, and personal mastery to realize its potential. Building shared vision fosters a commitment to the long term. Mental models focus on the openness needed to unearth shortcomings in our present ways of seeing the world. Team learning develops the skills of groups of people to look for the larger picture beyond individual perspectives. And personal mastery fosters the personal motivation to continually learn how our actions affect our world." (p. 12)