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Sustainable organizations are learning organizations -- and the
five disciplines of learning organizations described by Peter
Senge in The Fifth Discipline are diligently practiced by enterprises
on the never-ending path to sustainability. Those five disciplines
are: team learning, shared vision, mental models, personal mastery
and systems thinking.
Team learning is the capacity of a group to build upon
individual member strengths to collectively perform better than
they could as individual actors. Dialogue, or the ability of members
to suspend judgment in order to engage in deep inquiry to yield
insights and ideas, is an important team learning practice.
Creating shared vision is a discovery process that identifies
a guiding theme to which all members of an organization are willing
to subscribe and to which they agree to be held accountable.
Mental models are "deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations,
or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the
world and how we take action" (Senge, The Fifth Discipline); mental
models are prevalent in organizational life.
Systems thinking maps the underlying cause and effect of
complex patterns existing in natural and social systems, describing
forces that propagate or diminish effect. Systems thinking makes
clear both the whole of the parts and the parts of the whole.
Systems thinking allows identification of leverage points, or
root cause, and identifies opportunities for interpersonal and
technical efficiencies.
Personal mastery, the learning organization's "spiritual cornerstone", represents the disciplined effort to develop greater knowledge, self-awareness, personal vision, mission, balance, and congruence.
A Sustainable Way uses the five organizational learning
disciplines as a model for curricula, experiential learning sessions,
and offsite meetings. Our consultants are not only conversant
in the five disciplines -- the disciplines represent the foundation
of their professional lives.
The competencies, or disciplines of learning organizations, are part of A Sustainable Way's DNA.
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