SHIFT:

FROM TEMPORARY TO STABILITY

“Wala’y forever.”

This expression is often heard from the teenagers nowadays to describe the new

generation-kind of relationships where most do not last longer compared to the previous

relationships. This may be meaningless as it sounds like, but the expression can have an

implication to what we can observe in any organizations that we know of. There is a

metaphor that some organizations, may it be large or small, face the predicament of lasting

for several years.

The question of how an organization could last is answered with the book written by

Peter Senge, “The Fifth Discipline”. It is explained in the book the underlying reasons why

organizations or groups do not make it ‘til the end even if it’s making a reasonable profit.

In an article published by Soundview Management (2011), they emphasized that, “As

the world becomes more interconnected and business becomes more complex and dynamic,

work must become more “learningful.” This means that now, it is not enough that there is

only one individual who is learning in the processes of an organization. Each member should

be qualified to engage themselves in the learning processes for the team.

Senge, in his book, highlights the five disciplines that each of us should ponder with.

These are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared visions, and

team learning.

Systems thinking is into the notion that people must look at the “wholeness” of things

rather than its separate parts. It supports the idea of “interconnectedness” of the systems

involved in a situation. This discipline reminds us that everything around us is linked to one

another, therefore, when faced in a situation where it created confusion in us, we must try to

remember that it is caused by preceding events, turning us to focus on it instead of looking

only at the present moment.

 Personal mastery is in Senge’s second list of discipline. This discipline involves

having continual reflection and establishing objective perception to things around us. A

person who knows exactly his/her own thinking processes gains complete control over his/her

self and this is a crucial step for the entire organization as a whole.

How we also perceive things mentally is how we also create our reality. This is the

idea of Mental Model, the third discipline on the list. If we perceive negative thoughts in our

minds in the onset of the day, we will also harbor negative experiences throughout the day.

Our minds, therefore, shape our reality, so it makes sense for us to perceive optimism to

manifest positivity until the end of the day.

The fourth one, building shared vision, goes beyond telling the members what ought

to be done. This is more on sharing to the rest of the group the goals that the organization

wanted to achieve in the long run. The organization will be more efficient if all the members

obtain the desire to achieve those goals.

Team Learning, on the other hand, tells us that an organization can work better if all

the members are learning. Let’s cross out in this part the idea that only the managers and/or

the people in the higher ranks are entitled to learn because in reality, the members could even

contribute meaningfully to the company with what they’ve also learned. Two heads are better

than one, as the cliché goes.

These abovementioned disciplines are all related to one another. In order for an

organization to succeed, each should be used to serve as a foundation of one another. This is

an idea highlighted by the Systems Thinking, which makes it as a cornerstone among these

disciplines.

If the organizations we know of would take this idea into consideration, perhaps, the

“walay forever” expression in this context would no longer be acceptable.

 MOVIE TO BOOK: AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMPLICATION OF SENGE’S
FIFTH DISCIPLINE TO MIRACLE SEASON

In 1975, a digital camera was released for the first time worldwide by a company

named Kodak. After this breakthrough, Engineer Sasson co-created the first modern DSLR

camera in 1989. Years later, the world invented online photo sharing. However, Kodak

remained focusing on photo printing. 37 years later, Kodak went bankrupt. As Ollerton

(2018) puts it, the once very well-known company in photography “is no longer the byword

for photography it once was”.

This is what Peter Senge wanted everybody to put a lot of thought with. For any

organization to transpire throughout years, it must keep up with the pace of the generation.

For it to do so, there must be a consensus within the members of the group, and this could be

made possible if each member gets to see a whole picture of the entire system of business

processes.

Let us use the Miracle Season, a 2018 American drama film based on a real-life story,

as an example. There’s this team of women volleyball players from Iowa City West High

School whose members left shattered after the death of their team captain. The team was in

the middle of trying to win over the state championship when her death occurred. In the

group, there’s no one else who deserved to be the next captain, except for the captain’s

closest friend.

The journey of leading the team wasn’t really easy at first. It wasn’t ‘til the new

captain found a way to tap on her team’s commitment and perseverance. It started with

sharing to her team the struggle that she’s been feeling since her friend’s death and what

would have been her goal if she would be around. Each member gradually became conscious

on what they wanted to achieve as a whole. Each tried to feel the ideas of the other as they

sternly conversate about it. This is where the shared vision comes in.
 They started to practice like they’ve used to do so. The coach, who was there always

to guide during their training did not only make them do the hitting, defending, striking, etc.

She also made them picture themselves in their minds where they will be in as they perform

stunts. This is how mental model was used in the team.

There many ups and downs in competition, which was indispensable in the team’s

journey. This is where resentments arise anew towards the new team captain as soon as they

compare the old and the new team captains. Eventually, the members learned to cope up with

it as they were given once in a while to reflect on their own thoughts. There was, in fact, a

blame game within the team, which faded eventually as the members learned to control their

selves.

As the three former disciplines were mastered by the team, it had also become easier

for them to achieve team learning. The team members, as a result, learned to be willing to

shift their mental models and be open to learn from their colleagues.

At the end of the film, the team won the state championship, which was what they had

endeavored in the very beginning. In the celebration of their victory, all expressed thoughts of

their journey, as well as the profound insight they gained: that everything might not have

been pleasant at first (starting with their captain’s death), but everything has been connected

with one another. Their loss became a gain. The process was frustrating, distressing and

shattering, but it was returned with an immense favor. Had the group not able to grapple the

whole picture, had they not understood the situation they were molded with.

The story was a real-life depiction of Senge’s notion of the Fifth Discipline. The

metaphor presented might be outside the bounds of a business organization, but the idea can

be undisputedly applied to in the said context.

 The story of Kodak could also end up the same with the story in the Miracle Season.

Who knows one of its members had anticipated the situation, but the appeal was dismissed

and decided not to be heard of.

A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

There are three blind men. These blind men accidentally bump into a huge but

unidentified object. None of them know that it was an elephant. Curious, each tried to figure

out what the object is. The first blind man touched the elephant’s tusk, and exclaimed, “it’s a

tough and elongated object!” The second blind man touched one of its legs, and exclaimed,

it’s rough and sturdy!”. The third blind man touched its body and said, “it’s rough and hairy!”

Each could provide description for the elephant, but like what Peter Senge had emphasized,

none of them would be able to guess what the object is, primarily because the three men have

only looked at the parts of the elephants, but not the whole.

It’s similar with systems thinking. You can only understand the system of a rainstorm

by contemplating the whole rather than any individual part of the pattern. This is emphasized

in a blog posted by Soundview blogsite (2011). Systems thinking proposes that business

organizations are connected by the threads of interconnectivity, and that each has Domino

effect to one another. This discipline serves as an adhesive that combine the other disciplines.

The other disciplines include Personal Mastery, Mental Models, Building Shared

Vision and Team Learning. Personal Mastery posits recurrent checking of our inner selves

and amassing our energies towards our vision. Mental Models involves creating mental

images in shaping reality which eventually affects our behavior. Building Shared Vision

entails that the mental images we’ve created need to be relayed to the rest of the team for

them to develop the sense of wanting to achieve the same vision. Team Learning is final in
the list, which is possible if all the members have successfully envisioned one goal to the rest

of the members.

Most of the organizations fail because of early signs of trouble that are being

overlooked. These warning signs are often disregarded both by the leaders and workers and

this is attributed to how they perceive their roles in the organization. Here now comes the

different learning disabilities that occur in an organization: 1) I am my position; 2) the enemy

is out there; and 3) fixation on events.

Limiting your focus on your position in the workplace – this is the characteristic of

the first barrier. Rather than focusing on the purpose and seeing the relevance of his/her

position to the other functions, “contributions to the organization are constrained within the

positional definitions, knowledge and skills that could benefit the enterprise may be hidden

away” (Macfarlane, n.d.).

When unprecedented situations arise, it’s much easier to lay blame than to look for

sources that can mitigate the problem. This is the second profound barrier. Profound, for this

applies true across all types of organizations. Putting the blame easily puts individuals at ease

rather than thinking back to where matters could’ve started before it worsened.

Being preoccupied with short-term and inability to see future implications of things is

also an organization’s learning disability. To set an example, a production team that, though

successfully held a concert event in a particular place, often revisit the part where few

technical problems occurred that had almost ruined the said event. While this may be typical

in most situations, its subtle effects would eventually grow worse.

Learning disabilities in organizations emerge primarily because of, as how

MacFarlane (n.d.) puts it, “the way they (organizations) are designed and managed, the way

people’s jobs are defined, and most importantly, the way we have all been taught to think and

interact,
 Generally, Senge wants every individual to change their perspective on all things in

life. He doesn’t want us to be in the same situation with the three blind men who, no matter

how many words they come up with, would still not be able to determine what the object

really is.

DELVING DEEPER:
PROBING INTO SENGE’S DISCIPLINES

Despite the world’s advancement given the technology and recent breakthroughs

brought by different entities, the question on sustainability of these organizations is still

raised. Peter Senge’s attempt to respond to this inquiry has brought him to writing the book,

the Fifth Discipline, providing to all individuals definite answers to make organizations last

long.

In the book, he talks about the five disciplines that serve as pillars for a successful

organization, with accentuation on Systemic Thinking as the cornerstone among the

disciplines.

Systems Thinking pertains to wholeness. According to Senge, while we were taught

back when we are still younger to break down our problems so that we could solve them, this

only impedes us to see the bigger picture. Losing enthusiasm to continue dealing with the

situation could be attributed to this since we now lack the appreciation of the whole. Thus, we

also tend to break situations down into parts because we believe that we could make them

again as a whole. This concept was emphasized on Suzuki’s The Gospel According to Zen, as

mentioned by Flood (1998), that “…we murder wholes by dissecting them into parts, yet

expect to put the parts back together to re-create the original living whole”.

On the other hand, Personal Mastery is concerned with developing one’s own

proficiency (Flood, 1998). Deepening understanding of one’s self leads to developing

personal vision. If this is successfully honed, it would now be easy for an individual to turn

his/her intrinsic motivations into reality. In this part now comes the tensions when these

desires aren’t met. Flood identified these tensions as creative and emotional. Furthermore,

this may also contribute to developing sense of unworthiness and powerlessness of an

individual when visions are failed to turn into real. With this, a person’s energy must be

diverted to change the negative into positive.

Mental models is next on the list, which is pointed out by Senge as the discipline

which requires methods of reflection and inquiry. “Conscious awareness your immediate

thoughts and gut-level instincts is important to ensure that your mental model is in line with

the organization's goals,” highlights one of the Google blog sites’ post. In connection to this,

Senge indicated in his book some advocacy and inquiry guidelines that will enable a man to

outdo that which action science claims. The latter entails that when an individual is placed in

an embarrassing situation, he/she is inclined to unconsciously self-protect, control, defend,

smooth over or cover-up while engaging in a dialogue.

Flood (1998) defined Shared Vision as “shared operating values, a common sense of

purpose, indeed, a basic level of mutuality” that is in the context of an organization. Shared

vision contradicts the idea of having top management who only holds the knowledge of the

organization’s processes. This discipline upholds that there must be co-creating, instead of

just telling, among the members of the organization’s vision in an intensive discussion and

dialogue.

Team Learning, as complementary to formerly discussed discipline, aspires for

directing energy of all members of the organization, therefore creating synergy. The concepts

of dialogue and discussion is given more weight in this part, which are considered as primary

keys to achieve agreement within the members of the group. Dialogue is more on presenting

and defending different views for decision-making while dialogue is deeper since it “involves
suspending one's own views, exploring issues from many points of view, and visiting the

mental models and personal visions of others.” (Flood, 1998)

For a successful change in business organizations, leaders must also change their

ways of thinking. To make such change, the five disciplines must be put into practice.

References:

Flood, R. (1998). “Fifth Discipline”: Review and Discussion. Article in Systemic Practice

and Action Research. Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Guzman, R. (2018). The Miracle Season Review. https://www.msn.com/en-

us/money/companies/12-famous-businesses-that-very-publicly-failed/ss-

AAzfHPc#image=5

MacFarlane, M.R., (n.d.) Fifth Discipline: An Executive Summary. Queen’s University. 803

Organizational Leadership. miles.marcfarlane@queensu.ca

Ollerton, N. (2018). 12 Famous Businesses that Very Publicly Failed.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/12-famous-businesses-that-very-

publicly-failed/ss-AAzfHPc#image=5

Senge, P.M., 1990, The Fifth Discipline – The Art & Practice of a Learning

Organization,  New York: Doubleday

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (2011). Soundview

Executive Book Summaries. www.summary.com

https://blog.12min.com/the-fifth-discipline-summary-pdf/

https://sites.google.com/site/academyfifthdiscipline/the-five-disciplines/mental-models

THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE BY PETER SENGE

Reflection

Let me use the #relate upon encountering and having read Peter Senge’s Fifth

Discipline.

Expression of sentiments are commonly heard in the faculty office. I am not an

exception to this. Facing both personal and work-related demands, most of the time, drains

the enthusiasm that we brought with us during our earlier years in the job. The “negative”

feeling even intensified the past few months with the shift in education and working at night

to sustain my family’s needs.

The Fifth Discipline was like a refresher. It made me do retrospection of the situation

where I am in right now. The Systems Thinking reminds me not to try to solve problems

separately, because the temporary solutions in each could just create another problem and

could be a burden. Mental models encourage me to be optimistic at all times, because my

reality is shaped with my thoughts. When doing tasks, I keep in mind the end-goal, so that I

could save time and effort (Personal Vision). For instance, things to finish when I’m

scheduled to report to school on a specific day. Months ago, I used to keep my thoughts with

my colleagues, which didn’t really turn out good. There was even a week in school where
there was a misunderstanding between me and them. With Team Learning, I’ve also

reminded to let my thoughts and listen to theirs to avoid conflict.