The Fifth Discipline is Peter Senge’s guide to creating what he calls a learning organization, and what we’ll refer to as an evolving organization: an organization that encourages its members to constantly learn and develop their skills, and in turn to use those skills to improve the organization. Such organizations are flexible—able to change and evolve with the times as their members do—and more enjoyable to work for than a traditional organization with a rigid, top-down power structure and strict rules. In short, an evolving organization is better for everyone: It’s both more successful and more fulfilling than a traditional organization.
To create such an evolving organization, or convert an existing organization into one, Senge provides five key practices (what he calls disciplines) to start working into your daily life and company culture.
Senge is a systems scientist: someone who studies how various elements come together to form systems, and how those systems work and interact with each other. He holds an M.S. in social systems modeling and a Ph.D. in management, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Fifth Discipline was his first book—originally published in 1990—and it remains his most famous work.
In The Fifth Discipline, Senge discusses each of his five practices individually and concludes with the most important one: big-picture thinking, the titular Fifth Discipline. In this guide, we put that final practice first to help you understand what we’re working toward, then discuss the other four practices and how they each tie into that end goal.
Senge also puts numerous “rules” of big-picture thinking into a single chapter. We’ve broken up that chapter and put the rules in thematically appropriate places throughout the guide to more clearly connect principles with practices.
Our commentary will explain the science behind Senge’s key ideas, as well as draw connections to other influential business guides such as Skin in the Game, Principles: Life and Work, and Leading Change.
Most people are taught to break problems apart when trying to solve them. This is because supposedly, it’s easier to learn about one thing at a time and then put the pieces together to see how the whole system works. However, Senge argues that life isn’t made of separate elements; rather, the world is made of countless different elements that come together to form systems. By trying to separate those elements from each other, you misrepresent how the world works and thus make it impossible to really understand what you’re observing.
This is one of Senge’s rules of big-picture thinking: Breaking up a system does not produce smaller versions of that system. For example, imagine trying to learn about cars by studying an engine—you might learn more about that one piece of the system, but you can’t extrapolate the rest of the car from it.
(Shortform note: Senge implies that studying the individual parts of systems isn’t worthwhile since they won’t give you a clear picture of the system as a whole. In The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch argues differently: Deutsch believes that all knowledge is important and that studying individual parts of a system is just as likely to lead to a major discovery or breakthrough as studying the system as a whole. For Deutsch, a theoretical physicist, this might mean that studying how subatomic particles behave is just as important to understanding the universe as learning how and why the planets move.)
Senge says that businesses often suffer from a lack of big-picture thinking. Instead of operating as one big system—understanding that every part of the business will influence every other part—many companies try to operate as many individual units, with each person or group only paying attention to their own tasks. As a result, the different parts of the organization may interfere with each other without realizing it.
For example, an innovation allowing the company to ship more goods to a warehouse might seem beneficial, but it will put added strain on the warehouse employees and might lead to them quitting. Unless the company also ensures that the warehouse is prepared for the added workload, this apparently profitable innovation will hurt the company in the long run.
(Shortform note: Senge’s concept of seeing a company as a single, cohesive system is really about synergy: making sure all the different parts work well together to produce the best possible results. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, management expert Stephen Covey writes that you can find synergy by looking for mutually beneficial solutions to problems—discuss the situation and look for answers that help everyone involved, rather than helping one party at the other’s expense.)
Senge says that people naturally look for linear, cause-and-effect relationships because they’re clear and easy to understand. However, big-picture thinking relies on feedback loops. This means when you take an action, that action creates some effect; that effect eventually circles back around and influences the cause (you), often in an unexpected way.
Understanding and incorporating feedback is a crucial part of running an organization. Studying feedback is how you see the effects of your actions on the entire system, rather than just the part of it your decision directly altered.
One example of a feedback loop is an investment bubble: Investors overvalue a company or industry and invest heavily in it, which drives up its value. That causes others to overvalue it even more and invest even more, creating a loop of accelerating investment. However, this loop doesn’t last forever: Eventually, market forces catch up with the investment, the bubble bursts and the value plummets, and those investors unexpectedly lose a great deal of money.
Big-picture thinking could prevent you from being one of those unlucky investors—an accurate view of the market as a whole, rather than a narrow view of a single skyrocketing investment, could help you avoid bad investments or cash out before the bubble bursts.
What Does “Feedback” Mean Here?
Recall that Peter Senge is a systems scientist, and therefore a lot of the vocabulary in The Fifth Discipline comes from systems science rather than from business or marketing. In this case, he’s discussing feedback systems, which are systems that monitor their own outputs and make changes to produce the desired result. As an example, the human body has numerous feedback systems regulating it, such as producing sweat if it detects that your body temperature is too high.
At its most basic, a feedback system needs a sensor to detect output, a control center to make necessary adjustments, and an effector pathway so that the control center’s decisions can be put into practice. In an organization such as a business, various metrics serve as the sensors, and the decision-makers serve as the control center, making adjustments to the organization based on those metrics.
This brings us to another of Senge’s rules: What’s happening today is the result of what you did yesterday. He means that, quite often, you’ll have to wait to see the results of what you do. “Yesterday” isn’t literal—sometimes it takes weeks or months for the feedback to loop back around to you.
Be aware of that delay because otherwise, you might overreact: You take an action but don’t get the expected feedback right away, so you assume that whatever you did isn’t working. As a result, you either double down on your strategy or change your approach entirely. Then, by the time the feedback from the first action reaches you, you’ve already done something else, so you mistake it for the feedback from your second action. The cycle continues, and it usually results in you wildly swinging from one strategy to another.
In short, Senge urges you to be patient, be cautious, and not overreact to delays. Make sure you’ve got a sense of the big picture—including how long it might take for feedback to reach you—before responding to feedback or the lack of it.
(Shortform note: This delay in getting feedback may actually be beneficial. For example, a study in which participants were asked to answer various trivia questions found that a small delay between answering and being told the correct answers improved participants’ focus and memory. In other words, because you have to wait and pay attention to get the feedback from your actions, you’re more likely to remember and incorporate that feedback into future decisions.)
It’s also important to realize that there are countless other systems at work in and around your organization. In fact, Senge says that we could view the whole world as a system made up of countless smaller systems, Therefore, a change you make to one part of your organization could have effects that stretch beyond the organization itself, and those effects could loop back around to your organization in ways that you didn’t foresee.
For example, when Ford started mass-producing cars, company executives probably didn’t realize that they’d be contributing heavily to global warming. However, as climate change became more of a concern, Ford (and other car manufacturers) were pressured to come up with more environmentally friendly vehicles and production methods.
Taleb’s Perspective on Our Complex World
Risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb agrees with Senge’s interpretation of the world as a single immensely complex system. However, while Senge says that we need to constantly learn more about the world so that we can act more effectively within it, Taleb believes that the world is too complex to ever really understand—the only way we can learn is through trial and error (what Senge would call feedback).
Furthermore, Taleb believes that this is a good thing; having to learn through trial and error means that we have to experience personal risk. Having something to lose—having Skin In the Game, as Taleb puts it—forces us to act carefully, thoughtfully, and ethically. In contrast, someone with no skin in the game would have no reason to care if the entire system collapsed.
There are two types of feedback. The first type is called positive feedback—or, as Senge calls it, reinforcing feedback. This type of feedback naturally builds and intensifies, with each effect becoming the cause of the next event.
Positive feedback can either be good or bad for your company. You can be caught in a virtuous cycle where the feedback loop’s momentum pushes you toward your goals—however, you could also get caught in a vicious cycle, where the momentum works against you.
(Shortform note: The idea of the virtuous cycle is commonly credited to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He built one of the world’s largest companies based on this concept—an online marketplace where third-party vendors could sell their products, thereby bringing in customers, which in turn attracts more and better vendors, and so on. Crucially, Bezos also realized that bolstering any part of a positive feedback loop would naturally cause the entire system to grow more quickly. For example, offering incentives for sellers to come to Amazon, or offering special deals to attract new customers, would help the entire site to grow more quickly. This is true of any positive feedback loop: Because the system naturally feeds into itself, accelerating any of it will accelerate all of it.)
The other type of feedback is negative feedback, which Senge calls balancing feedback. Whereas positive feedback builds upon itself, this type of feedback moves toward a balance point where the cause-effect-cause cycle naturally stops. If that balance point is something beneficial for you or your company, this cycle is helpful and you should let it continue.
For example, some companies provide unlimited vacation days; this means that employees can take time off whenever they need to rest and come back to work when they’re ready. Ideally, this creates a balance point where each employee takes exactly enough vacation days to always work at his or her best. This negative feedback loop is beneficial to employers because the improved productivity at work more than makes up for the extra time off.
However, if the balance point is something undesirable, then you must take action to disrupt the feedback loop. Simply doubling down on your current strategy won’t work: Senge explains that however hard you push, the system will push back harder. In other words, you can’t force a system to do something it’s not designed to do—instead, you have to change how the system itself works.
For example, say you run a business and sales (the output) are lower than you’d like. Pouring more money (input) into an advertising campaign might bring in more customers for a short time, but unless your company is able to retain those customers, you’ll soon return to the same level of business you had before the extra advertising (your balance point). Breaking out of this negative feedback loop requires updating your entire company—your system—to both attract and retain new customers, rather than simply increasing the input of money.
Positive and Negative Feedback Loops in Business
Be aware that Senge discusses feedback loops as a systems scientist, meaning that he defines them differently from much of the business world.
Generally, in business, a positive feedback loop means taking feedback from employees and using it to improve company processes or working conditions. Note that this could be considered a positive feedback loop from a systems science standpoint as well because it leads to ever-improving conditions at the company. In other words, the “output” of employee satisfaction keeps increasing after each “input” of employee feedback. However, the business definition is really just one example of a positive feedback loop.
A negative feedback loop means taking critical feedback from customers and using it to improve customer satisfaction. Again, this definition can also fit into the traditional systems science definition because this type of feedback loop aims to reduce the “output” of customer complaints by using the “input” of customer feedback. Ideally, the balance point for such a negative feedback loop is zero—in other words, the business reaches a point where there are no further complaints coming in.
Now that we’ve explained Senge’s most important discipline, we’ll explore the other four disciplines and how they tie into big-picture thinking. The first discipline is constant personal improvement: what Senge calls personal mastery.
To create an evolving organization, the people within that organization must be willing to learn. Senge says that you should see your life as a never-ending learning process and make a commitment to constant growth and self-improvement.
Senge says that personal growth requires two things: clear goals to strive toward, and a creative mindset so you can find ways to reach those goals.
(Shortform note: Here, Senge is describing what leadership expert Robin Sharma calls kaizen: continuous self-improvement. Sharma’s method for practicing kaizen is to make a list of weaknesses you’d like to overcome—such as a lack of energy, poor physical health, or not getting enough sleep—and face each problem head-on, one at a time, pushing your limits a little farther each day. For example, if you’re trying to improve your physical health, you might see how many pushups you can do, then try to increase that number by one each day.)
Dedication to constant improvement makes people feel more committed, happier, and more fulfilled in their work—remember, people are naturally driven to learn. However, many companies don’t encourage personal growth because they can’t easily measure its effectiveness. Instead, those companies expect employees to focus on their day-to-day tasks and to do them “by the book,” with no room for personal growth or new discoveries. In doing so, they stifle people’s potential and enthusiasm.
(Shortform note: A survey from the Society for Human Resource Management confirms what Senge says here. The survey found that the single biggest contributing factor to job satisfaction is the chance to use skills and abilities—in other words, the chance to face challenges and improve by doing so. This trend held true regardless of the responders’ ages, genders, or tenures.)
Senge reminds us that, for all his talk about learning and evolving organizations, organizations don’t actually learn; people learn and then contribute their improved skills and knowledge to the organization. Therefore, when every part of your company—in other words, each individual person within it—is committed to growth and improvement, the organization as a whole will naturally grow and improve.
To incorporate personal improvement into your business, Senge suggests building the company culture around it from the ground up. In short, every member of your company, as well as the company’s policies, must support honesty, creativity, and challenging the status quo.
However, if you’re not in a position to do that, you can also try to start it as a grassroots movement within the organization: Practice personal growth yourself, regardless of whether or not the higher-ups encourage it, and try to get your coworkers to do the same. Hopefully, your supervisor will take note of your department’s improved performance and ask how you accomplished it. That will begin an organizational change from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.
Personal Growth for Its Own Sake
As a partial counterpoint to Senge, entrepreneur Ray Dalio writes in Principles: Life and Work that self-improvement is its own reward. In other words, if you see personal growth as just a means to an end—such as earning more money or being more respected—you’ll soon become frustrated with it. This is because personal growth is a difficult process, and the satisfaction you get from material gains drops off quickly once your basic needs are fulfilled.
Therefore, Dalio believes that you should pursue personal growth and improvement as an end in itself. He believes that the satisfaction you get from improving your own skills and knowledge is far greater than the satisfaction you’d get from ever-increasing wealth. In other words, from Dalio’s perspective, the growth itself is the goal—Senge’s promises of improved job performance on a personal level and a more successful company on the organizational level are just side effects.
The second of Senge’s disciplines is to improve your ability to see the big picture by constantly assessing and updating what you think you know.
What Senge calls mental models are the closely-held beliefs and assumptions that make up your worldview. Your worldview affects how you interpret your experiences, and it therefore constantly influences your thoughts and behavior.
Senge adds that it’s impossible to have a completely correct worldview—all worldviews are subjective and simplified versions of the truth. That's why he calls on us to constantly examine and improve our worldviews: to make them more correct, even though they’ll never be 100% correct.
Senge adds that people often have great ideas about how to improve themselves or their organizations but fail to implement those ideas because they contradict their secretly held beliefs. For example, a store manager might have an idea for a fun event to boost employee morale and customer engagement yet never bring it up because he or she assumes that executives will reject the idea. The manager could challenge this worldview by pitching the idea anyway and seeing if his or her beliefs hold true.
Science Is a Process of Worldview Improvement
Senge’s second discipline—constantly questioning what we think we know—isn’t a new idea. In fact, it’s the same process by which science progresses. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn explains that gaining knowledge isn’t always a linear process of adding to what we already know; sometimes, learning new things requires us to overturn long-established theories and beliefs.
When scientists make observations that can’t be explained by current scientific theories, it’s a sign that they might need to reexamine the current scientific worldview. For example, when astronomers realized that the movements of stars and planets didn’t line up with their Earth-centric theory of the universe, that discovery eventually led to the current Sun-centric theory of the solar system.
In much the same way, each of us should always be on the lookout for new facts or observations that don’t fit our personal worldviews—any such anomaly could be an opportunity to make our worldviews more accurate.
According to Senge, organizations have worldviews just like people do—after all, organizations are made up of people. Furthermore, just like individual worldviews, company worldviews can be examined, questioned, and improved.
Changing an organization’s worldview requires extreme openness and honesty from its members. Therefore, the company culture must encourage everyone to speak their minds, share what they’re really thinking, and help each other realize what biases and assumptions they’re each bringing to the table.
Senge also notes that not everyone has to agree on a single worldview—but, everyone has to work together to give people in charge the most accurate worldview possible. They do this by pointing out flaws in the current mental model, offering ideas and alternatives, and supporting the mental model that is ultimately chosen as the strongest. In other words, everyone agrees to go along with the final decision, even if they still have personal reservations about it.
To keep discussions productive, remember that the goal isn’t to “win” or to have your own plans and ideas chosen. Rather, the goal is to make sure that the company goes forward with the most accurate worldview possible.
(Shortform note: A piece of advice commonly given to couples also applies to teams of any kind: It’s not “you versus me,” it’s “us versus the problem.” In other words, don’t think of these discussions as contests where one person is right and the others are wrong; instead, recognize that you all share the same goal, and work together to find the best way to reach that goal.)
Finally, Senge says that improving a worldview—whether your own or an organization’s—is a constant and ongoing process, just like personal growth. You’ll inevitably find flaws and mistaken beliefs with any worldview, so keep an open mind and continue making changes as needed.
Netflix Company Culture: Team Learning Through Feedback
Netflix is famous for having the sort of company culture Senge describes here: Every member of the organization is empowered to grow and improve, and to provide feedback to help the company endlessly improve as a whole.
As Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings explains in No Rules Rules, Netflix achieved this by making sure that every employee is open to both giving and receiving constructive feedback anywhere, at any time, and from any source—if a brand new employee wanted to give Hastings himself some feedback, the new hire would be encouraged to do so.
To make sure that every employee participates in Netflix’s culture of endless growth and feedback, Hastings created the following guidelines:
For the one giving feedback: Make it helpful and concrete. Any feedback you give should either help someone correct a problem or reinforce something that he or she is doing well. Don’t give feedback simply to vent or to upset the other person.
For the one receiving feedback: Be receptive and give it due consideration. Take any feedback you receive with an open mind; don’t get defensive or make excuses for your actions. You don’t have to act on every piece of feedback you get, but make sure to at least think about what the other person is saying.
With steady feedback from a variety of sources, each person can continuously improve on a personal level and help the company to improve in turn. Ideally, this creates a positive feedback loop of endless improvement.
As your worldview becomes more accurate, you’ll gain a clearer picture of how individual elements come together to form systems, including how those parts influence each other and influence the system as a whole. This large-scale understanding is crucial because—as Senge explains—the line from cause to effect is often long and unclear. We’ve already discussed the time delay in receiving feedback; now Senge adds that changing one part of a system can affect distant, apparently unrelated parts of that system.
For example, imagine taking a painkiller when you have a headache: A pill goes into your stomach, and a little while later your head stops hurting. This doesn’t seem strange because you already know that all the parts of your body are an interconnected system. Senge is urging you to realize that a company functions much like a human body—making a change to one part of the organization could affect any or all of the other parts. Having a more accurate worldview will naturally improve your ability to see this big picture, and it’ll thus help you make effective and productive decisions.
Counterpoint: Predictions Are Bound to Fail
Senge believes that learning more about your company—your system—will allow you to better predict how your actions might impact it. Nassim Nicholas Taleb disagrees: In his book Antifragile, Taleb argues that predicting the future is impossible and that plans based on flawed predictions can have devastating outcomes. Instead, Taleb urges you to make plans with two things in mind:
First, plan for failure. Consider the worst-case scenario your actions could cause and proceed as if it’s guaranteed to happen. So, if you’re considering a risk that might lead to enormous profits but might also put your company out of business—an expensive acquisition that might not pay off, for instance—you know that it’s not worth the risk. However, if your organization could withstand the worst-case scenario, then you know it’s safe to proceed. In short, take the action with the least potential for harm, rather than the one with the most potential for gain. If possible, put safeguards in place to further minimize the harm.
Second, keep your options open. Every choice you make eliminates other choices that you could have made, and the farther ahead you try to plan, the more likely you are to make the wrong choice. Therefore, it’s best to wait on crucial decisions until they absolutely have to be made—that way, when the moment of choice arrives, you still have as many options as possible available to you.
In short, Taleb urges you to base your business model on caution and flexibility rather than risky forecasting; an incorrect prediction could ruin you, but a flexible organization can adapt to any situation without the need for predictions.
A common mission—what Senge calls a shared vision—forms when people orient their personal objectives toward an overarching goal. In other words, an organization comes together and says, “This is the future we want,” and then each member of that organization does his or her best to realize that vision.
Having a common mission gives the organization the energy and perseverance to work toward its long-term goals. Organizations that don’t have a common mission, on the other hand, won’t work as hard because the employees don’t have that motivation.
That doesn’t mean everyone has exactly the same vision, or that they sacrifice their personal aspirations for the common mission. Rather, everyone’s personal motivations influence how they view the common mission: Each person will approach the common mission in a slightly different way based on their own experiences, duties, and worldview. In fact, when coming up with a common mission, Senge advises you to find out what’s most important to each of your employees and to try to work those goals into it.
(Shortform note: We can adapt a tool from Angela Duckworth’s Grit to help align your employees with a common mission. In the context of personal growth, Duckworth suggests setting yourself an audacious overarching goal, then coming up with a series of smaller, manageable goals that each get you closer to that single end goal. From a company perspective, the common mission would be that overarching goal, and employees’ personal objectives are the smaller goals supporting it. You can then break down the individual goals into even smaller actions to determine how your company can support your employees’ goals and thus support its own common mission.)
For example, say a sneaker manufacturer creates a common mission that everybody in the country will have at least one good, solid pair of sneakers. A company survey then reveals that many employees have personal goals of caring for their families and improving the local community. The company might weave those missions together by offering employee discounts (helping them care for their families by giving them shoes) and organizing charity drives to give shoes to impoverished and homeless people (helping employees create positive changes in the community). In this way, a common mission bolsters the company as a whole and the employees as individuals.
(Shortform note: Life coach Jim Kwik says that a lot of our thoughts are attempts to answer our dominant questions: the questions that we ask ourselves repeatedly each day. For example, a business owner might ask, “How can I improve customer satisfaction?” while a boxer might ask, “How can I win my upcoming fight?” Such questions are important because they help us filter through all the information we encounter each day and look for information that’s relevant to answering them. So, if we consider a common mission to be like a dominant question for an entire organization, we can see how just having one will help employees to focus their thoughts and their efforts on finding ways to accomplish it.)
Your company’s common mission is your end goal; big-picture thinking helps you to create and refine that goal, as well as see how to get there. The variety in perspectives from employees all working toward the same goal will help the company as a whole to learn, grow, and find creative solutions to problems.
While your mission should be audacious and inspiring, the steps you take to reach it don’t have to be. Senge explains that you can get big results from small changes, but the most effective changes are often the least obvious ones:, You don’t necessarily need to make big changes, you just need to make the right changes. Of course, which changes are the right ones will depend on your organization and the market you’re operating in. Having a lot of different perspectives and ideas will help you to find and make those less-obvious changes; one person might find a solution that others have overlooked.
(Shortform note: In Range, David Epstein strongly emphasizes the importance of organizations gathering diverse opinions from people who have had many different experiences. In other words, while it’s good to get ideas from a lot of different people, it’s even better if those people come from different backgrounds (for example, ethnic backgrounds or professional backgrounds). By bringing together such diverse knowledge and points of view, the company is more likely to find innovative and effective ways to solve problems and achieve its goals.)
How Small Changes Add Up
In Atomic Habits, entrepreneur James Clear discusses how small adjustments in your day-to-day habits can come together to create powerful changes in your life. Habits compound upon each other—one good habit inspires you to adopt another, and another, and so on until your life is completely transformed. For example, getting in the habit of taking a short walk each day is a good step toward long-term health; however, as you start feeling better from the exercise, you might find yourself inspired to also take up a sport or start eating healthier.
We can apply this same principle to a company or organization: Small adjustments to processes and policies—essentially, the organization’s “habits”—can add up to major improvements in productivity, employee happiness, and customer satisfaction. This is especially true if a small change leads to good feedback from customers or employees. That positive response could then inspire you to make further helpful changes, creating a positive feedback loop that leads to ever-improving outcomes.
Group evolution—what Senge calls team learning—is the process by which a group of people learns how to work together effectively and help each other reach their shared goals. Senge says that group evolution has three key aspects:
1) Group-based worldview improvement. As we discussed previously, team members should work together to identify each other’s faulty assumptions and improve each others’ worldviews.
2) Spontaneous teamwork. A team that has learned to work together and evolve together will sometimes take actions that are unplanned, yet perfectly coordinated. Much like a trained and practiced troupe of improvisational actors, the team members understand and trust each other to the point that their teamwork becomes instinctual.
Shared Consciousness and Individual Empowerment
In Team of Teams, retired US Army general Stanley McChrystal also discusses this sort of spontaneous teamwork, which he calls shared consciousness. McChrystal describes this phenomenon as a moment when people stop thinking as individuals and instead become a single cohesive unit. As an example, he talks about three Navy SEAL snipers who—having built this kind of instinctive teamwork through intense training and experience—acted together without communicating to take down three different targets simultaneously.
McChrystal adds that spontaneous teamwork requires team members to be empowered, meaning each person is able to act on his or her own without needing to consult a superior. In his anecdote, the three snipers didn’t need to wait for a command to fire—they all simply knew when the moment was right and took the opportunity. In fact, needing to get approval from a higher-up would have interrupted their seamless teamwork and made them less effective—they could have missed their opening while waiting for the go-ahead.
In short, spontaneous teamwork happens when people have the authority to act independently and the experience to act synchronously.
3) Connections with other teams. Remember that your team is just one part of a larger system, and whatever decisions you make will likely need other teams from other parts of the organization to put them into practice. Therefore, it will benefit your team (and the organization as a whole) to promote group evolution practices among those other teams as well.
(Shortform note: While different teams will often have different specific goals, they should all share the same overarching interests—namely, making sure the company is successful and pursuing its common mission. Therefore, you can foster connections between seemingly unrelated teams by using those common interests as a starting point. Furthermore, by encouraging every team to constantly work with and learn from each other, you’ll help the organization as a whole to evolve.)
Senge warns that group evolution is a difficult process, and it will take a lot of practice—figuring out how to work together effectively often means discovering all the ways that you don’t work together effectively. Personalities might clash, ideas may interfere with each other, and team members might find themselves stepping on each others’ toes when communication isn’t clear enough. That’s why Senge lays down the rule: Do not assign blame.
An evolving team—and an evolving organization—is bound to make mistakes along the way. In fact, that’s how evolution happens: People make mistakes or run into problems and then learn how to avoid them in the future. Just remember that you are a team, working together and learning together. So, instead of turning against each other to find someone to blame, turn your combined efforts against the problem.
(Shortform note: In Extreme Ownership, former Navy SEALS Jocko Willink and Leif Babin take this rule even further: Not only should you not assign blame to others, but you should also hold yourself personally responsible for everything that goes wrong, regardless of whose “fault” it is. By making every problem your problem, you’ll drive yourself to constantly look for ways to improve yourself and your team. This is an extreme approach to being a team member—hence the title Extreme Ownership—but Willink and Babin believe that each person taking personal responsibility is the most effective way to drive group evolution.)
Senge asserts that group evolution is, in essence, organizational evolution on a smaller scale. It requires the same skills and practices as improving your organization’s worldview, and it’s how your team members help each other to accomplish the organization’s common mission.
Also, your team is part of the organization as a whole—so by helping your team to improve its worldview, develop teamwork, and spread those skills to other teams, you’re directly doing the work of creating an evolving organization.
Remember that an organization is nothing but the people who comprise it—once every team and every person in the organization is practicing personal growth and big-picture thinking, you will have created an evolving organization.
How to Lead Organizational Change
Successfully creating any kind of organizational change, either on a team level or a whole-organization level, is difficult; it requires strong leadership, a clear vision, and collective effort from members of the organization. Leadership expert and consultant John Kotter writes in Leading Change that effective organizational change is a seven-step process:
1. Create urgency. Make sure everyone understands why this change has to happen and why it has to happen now.
2. Make a team. Put together a group of people with diverse skill sets to lead the organizational change.
3. Develop your vision. Make sure you have a clear and specific idea of your company’s future. In other words, what are you ultimately trying to accomplish by making this change?
4. Sell your vision. Prepare a statement that you can distribute through the organization explaining what your vision is and why it’s right for the company. Make sure your statement is clear—avoid jargon—and invite feedback on and discussion about the vision.
5. Clear the way. Identify obstacles to change and overcome them. Common obstacles include pushback from supervisors and managers and insufficient training among core staff.
6. Set small goals to produce small victories. As you implement large-scale and long-term change, keep people motivated and determined by setting achievable milestones and celebrating when you pass them.
7. Update the company culture. Once you’ve accomplished your change, make it stick by making it a part of the company culture. For example, if your goal was to boost employee satisfaction, you might try relaxing the company dress code or guaranteeing more vacation time in employee contracts. Make sure your organizational leaders are on board with the new culture—you might find it necessary to replace the most recalcitrant supervisors or managers.
Circular thinking, rather than linear thinking, is the core of seeing the big picture: You do something, your action creates an effect, then that effect loops back around and affects you in some way. Take some time now to think about a loop you already work with in your daily life.
What’s one feedback loop in your daily life? (Note that this doesn’t have to be work-related—if you do something nice for your family (cause), your action puts them into a good mood (effect), and their good mood makes your day more pleasant (affecting you), that’s a perfectly valid cause-effect-cause loop.)
Is this a positive or negative feedback loop? In other words, does this loop naturally build upon itself, or does it move toward a balance point? Explain how the loop builds upon itself or the balance point that it moves toward.
Does this feedback loop benefit you? If so, how? If not, what change could you make to disrupt the loop?