Review of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge

All too often, when reading a book in my former field (business writing) I found myself ready to dismiss just about anything as mediocre, no matter how popular or praised.  Well, this is one book that I found really excellent – for content, for clarity, for sincerity, for the stories reported in it.

When I plowed through a business book, I tried to see if I can remember the central ideas, the essence of what the author has to say from the mass of details and stories that make up every business book.  Most often, they are appallingly banal and pathetically over-applied, touted as able to solve just about every problem, in particular if a fee is paid to the authors to come and talk about it in person.  I was prepared to treat this book the same way, and was simply delighted to find a genuinely useful book.  And gee, I was glad that I can get inspired by a book in my former field, rather than bored!

As I see it, this book has three principal ideas.  First, we must think of organizations and their missions as complex systems rather than as conglomerations of isolated problems.  It is pitch for the development of a holistic view – how everything interacts and what factors act upon what other factors.  This is an analytical tool that can pinpoint what should be done, breaking mental habits of looking only at the bottom line of sales revenues, for example, rather than the need to provide better service or delivery times. 

Second, employees must be empowered to make their own decisions locally, requiring honesty and openness throughout the organization as standard practice.  This enables them to question and learn, not just individually but as part of building a unified team, hence the subtitle of a learning organization.  Mistakes are part of this process and should be allowed as valid experiments.

Third, the task of a leader is to design an organizational system within which this can all be accomplished.  Rather than control all decisions in a centralized manner in accordance with a rigid plan, the leader must develop a vision of where they organization should go and then allow his employees to pursue that vision as a team with great autonomy.

I had wanted to read this book for almost ten years.  It was first pointed out to me by a remarkable business leader in mainland China, Zhang Ruimin, the founder of the Haier Group, as a seminal text for him.  He said that he had built a learning organization in accordance with Senge's prescriptions, and after so many years, I see that indeed he did.  What this book did for me was to give me a better idea of Zhang's mind and what went on in it.  But it has also given me a clearer idea of many other remarkable entrepreneurs whom I have had the pleasure and honor to meet over the years in my work.  As Senge explained, these men had a vision, but used the gap that existed between their vision and current reality to inspire their workers to achieve remarkable things as a team. A team that learns. And they created self-reinforcing systems to do so.

Another fascinating aspect of this book is that, in spite of being nearly 35 years old, it felt fresh and its examples did not feel stale and in need of updates.  Many books that old extolled Japan as the model to emulate and explain why that country does everything better than everyone else - just take a look at the nonsense in Michael Porter's books. While this book has some examples from Japan, it does not fall into that trap – for me, that means its analyses have stood the test of time.

This is one of the best business books I ever read - and I read way, way too many of them.