The Fifth Discipline - The Learning Disabilities

The Learning Disabilities

• 1) "I am my position."

People fail to recognize their purpose as a part of the enterprise. Instead, they see themselves as an inconsequential part of a system over which they have little influence, leading them to limit themselves to the jobs they must perform at their own positions. This makes it hard to pinpoint the reason an enterprise is failing, with so many hidden 'loose screws' around.

• 2) "The enemy out there."

There is in each of a propensity to find someone or something outside ourselves to blame when things go wrong. This disability makes it almost impossible to detect the leverage we have on problems that straddle the boundary between us and "out there."

• 3) The Illusion of Taking Charge

All too often, proactiveness is reactiveness in disguise. Whether in business or politics, if we simply become more aggressive fighting the "enemy out there," we are reacting -- regardless of what we call it. True proactiveness comes from seeing how we contribute to our own problems. It is a product of our way of thinking, not our emotional state.

• 4) The Fixation of Events

Focusing on events distract us from seeing the longer-term patterns of change that lie behind the event and from understanding the cause of those patterns. The tendency to see things as results of short-term events undermines our ability to see things on a grander scale. Cave men needed to react to events quickly for survival. However, the biggest threats we face nowadays are rarely sudden events, but slow, gradual processes, such as environmental changes.

• 5) The Parable of the Boiling frog

We are adept at responding to sudden changes in our environment. We are terrible at assessing slow, gradual changes, even when they threaten our survival.

• 6) The Delusion of Learning from Experience

Practice makes permanent, rather than perfect

• 7) The Myth of the Management Team