Quotes from book
The Fifth Discipline

The Fifth Discipline
Peter M. Senge

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization is a book by Peter Senge focusing on group problem solving using the systems thinking method in order to convert companies into learning organizations. The five disciplines represent approaches for developing three core learning capabilities: fostering aspiration, developing reflective conversation, and understanding complexity.

Peter M. Senge photo

“Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change. That is, by seeing wholes we learn how to foster health. To do so, systems thinking offers a language that begins by restructuring how we think.”

Peter M. Senge book The Fifth Discipline

Source: The Fifth Discipline (1990), p. 69

Peter M. Senge photo

“A cloud masses, the sky darkens, leaves twist upward, and we know that it will rain. We also know that after the storm, the runoff will feed into groundwater miles away, and the sky will grow clear by tomorrow. All of these events are distant in time and space, if they're all connected within the same pattern. Each has an influence on the rest, and influence that is usually hidden from view. You can only understand the system of rainstorm by contemplating the whole not any part of the pattern.
Businesses and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved.”

Peter M. Senge book The Fifth Discipline

Source: The Fifth Discipline (1990), p. 7 as cited in: Vivien Martin (2003) Leading Change in Health and Social Care. p. 37

Peter M. Senge photo

“Systems thinking is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns rather than static snapshots. It is a set of general principles spanning fields as diverse as physical and social sciences, engineering and management”

Peter M. Senge book The Fifth Discipline

Source: The Fifth Discipline (1990), p. 68

Similar authors

Peter M. Senge photo
Peter M. Senge 17
American scientist 1947
Herbert A. Simon photo
Herbert A. Simon 58
American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and p…
Martin Lewis Perl photo
Martin Lewis Perl 9
American scientist
Jerome Isaac Friedman photo
Jerome Isaac Friedman 6
American physicist
Hans Bethe photo
Hans Bethe 2
German-American nuclear physicist
Richard Feynman photo
Richard Feynman 181
American theoretical physicist
Reinhold Niebuhr photo
Reinhold Niebuhr 65
American protestant theologian
Noam Chomsky photo
Noam Chomsky 334
american linguist, philosopher and activist
Isaac Asimov photo
Isaac Asimov 303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni…
Enrico Fermi photo
Enrico Fermi 9
Italian physicist