Making a Better World
Peter M. Senge
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Profit and Purpose
The Vision of Learning
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Introduction
Our ideal of the learning organization comes from a different understanding
of learning. Our culture uses the word learning in a way that equates it
with taking in information: "I know a lot because I read a lot." This is a
very weak definition of learning. The expression for learning in Chinese is
made up of two symbols: One stands for studying, the other for practicing
constantly. In China, you can't think of learning without thinking of
practicing constantly.
The central definition of learning is the enhancement of capacity to produce
results that matter to you. We=re all inquisitive about things we care
about, and companies need to tap that intrinsic motivation. Because once you
start doing your life's work, everything changes. When you connect what
matters in your life and what you're doing professionally, work has a very
different meaning.
People sometimes ask me, "How do you tap that motivation for production
workers?" They imply that it's more difficult to find meaning if you're
doing a job on the front line. Why would it be more difficult, unless these
people are doing something they don't want to do or are treated as if
they're only there to execute tasks and don't have brains.
The way jobs are defined by the system of management somewhat determines the
opportunity people have to bring their whole selves to work. There's nothing
wrong with hierarchy, but we might redefine it in a non-value-laden way,
saying it exists because people at different levels deal with different time
horizons. Some are focused on 20 years, some on 10 days. It's like somebody
plays left field, and somebody pitches. It's a position. But we have tied
positions with value, believing some people are more important because of
their position.
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Profit and Purpose
I question whether the fundamental purpose of any organization is to make a
profit. I don=t think that's descriptive of most successful companies. Russ
Ackoff, at the Wharton School of Economics, says profit is like oxygen. If
you don't have enough, you won't be around long; but if you think life is
about breathing, you're missing something. Obviously, profit is important.
But it doesn't tell you about the purpose of the enterprise. The founders of
such companies as Ford and AT&T believed that if you did something well, a
natural by-product would be making a lot of money. That's not so radical.
Maybe what's more radical is thinking about a multiplicity of dimensions of
purpose, where one might be the continual growth of everyone in the
enterprise. But that doesn't exist by itself. I personally wouldn't want to
be part of a business solely focused on that, and not trying to contribute
something to the world.
A social mission is the essence of a successful business: doing something
that makes a difference to somebody. Otherwise, they wouldn't want to pay
for it. The problem is that the phrase "social responsibility" has become a
hackneyed phrase that sounds like do-goodism, and it doesn't get the right
spirit of it. For organizations to prosper over the long term, they must
contribute something. And the more they can contribute on multiple
dimensions, the more they're likely to prosper. Those multiple dimensions
include communities, customers, and employees. Yes, that amounts to a
socially responsible view, but it also amounts to a systems view.
We tend to think in terms of dichotomies, of either/ors: Either it's good
for society, or it's smart business. Might it be possible to have
organizations that are both more consistent with our deeper values, and more
effective?
We've bought into the idea that to be successful in business, you have to
violate your values. The idea has been propagated using all these metaphors
about the law of the jungle. But the root goes back to the industrial era,
when we developed a set of practices which were not sustainable. Ideas that
began with the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution became crystallized
in Western reductionist philosophy: the attitude that we could control our
world. We tried to set our own rules, with no appeal to the larger systems
of which we are a part. It certainly accomplished a lot, but it's not
sustainable over the long run.
Paul Hawken talks about imagining an economic system where every enterprise
is responsible for the life cycle of its products. So you build a car, and
you own those parts forever.
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The Vision of Learning
The learning organization is really a vision. We need to be weaned from the
model of fostering innovation by watching companies that are doing it right
and copying them. One good illustration of how vision works comes from Allen
Kay, who led the research at Xerox Park that produced the technical
breakthroughs that led to the personal computer. He was responsible for the
user interface. The vision they had was of a ADynabook.@ It would be like a
bookCsomething you could carry with youCbut fully interactive. By Kay's own
assessment they failed, because the machine they created was not as portable
as a book.
But that's the point. It wasn't whether they accomplished the vision; it was
what the vision did. We're so hooked on getting it right that we miss the
essence of the creative orientation, which is to aspire to something really
worth our effort. Maybe you never fully accomplish the vision. The vision=s
an abstraction.
Kay always thought of himself as a forcing function for change. And that's
what the learning organization is about. The more progress that any
organization makes, the more it will see its inadequacy. The most radical
aspect of the way we approach things is to focus on thinking. Most people
believe you change organizations by rearranging external conditions such as
the reward systems, the information technologies. Our premise is that
organizations are the way they are because of how people think. Until we
change how we think and interact, nothing really changes.
The idea of creative tension is important. When we have a vision of where we
want to be and we tell the truth about where we are now, there=s a natural
tension between the two. Creative tension points us in two directions:
toward our aspiration, but also toward our ability to inquire into the
current realityCnot just the conditions, but the underlying causes of the
conditions.
Now, as soon as you go in that direction, it doesn't take much thought to
realize there is no current reality, no absolute truth. There are only
interpretations. And these are a reflection of underlying assumptions. So
that leads you into the discipline of surfacing the assumptions we bring to
the table, and how do you have conversations that free up those assumptions
so that we can come to a deeper shared sense of what's going on?
For example, Royal Dutch Shell, the first company in the West to work with
mental models, was at the bottom of the oil industry in the early seventies,
and today it's at the top of the industry. A big part of that was a change
in how they went about planning. At Shell, they talk about planning as
learning. They see the purpose of planning as surfacing the underlying
assumptions behind managers= plans. Every strategy is an expression of a set
of assumptions. Usually, business people argue about the right strategy, and
that's pointless. The real conversation should be, what are our different
assumptions, and how can we understand how each other's thinking? Many
people at the top of organizations today are disoriented. They don't know
what they're supposed to be doing. On the one hand, they may be pushing
empowerment or breaking down traditional hierarchy. But, they're wondering:
"What's my job? My job has always been making the key decisions, or having a
key influence on how they get made. So what do I do now?"
We need to begin thinking of leaders as designers, stewards, and teachers,
and not as the key decision-makers. I see many people leaning in that
direction. It's not a matter of saying to someone, "Do it like they do it."
You have to understand the direction of change underway in our time, and not
just try to copy people. The shared vision is an essential element to unite
people, but it's just as important to develop a shared understanding of
current reality. The Shell story illustrates the power of surfacing our
hidden assumptions and developing more coherent shared images of reality.
That is a very non-trivial task. In fact, it=s much harder than developing a
shared vision.
How do you surface mental models? One key is the principle called "the
ladder of abstraction," which has to do with developing awareness of how we
move from direct observation to interpretation. It's like this: The meeting
started at nine o'clock, and Joe walked in at 9:15. What goes off in
everybody's head? "Joe's late; he's not committed; he can't organize time."
That's not data. The data is that Joe walked in at 9:15. The rest is an
interpretation nobody bothers to test. The problem is not that we have these
thoughts, but that we treat them as data. That's where the discipline of
working with mental model starts. We have to become self-conscious of our
own thinking.
Maybe we need to pull back and say, "Let's look at the facts here," and try
to separate the facts from the interpretation. But then you come to the next
level of skills. If you go to Joe and say, "Joe, why did you come in at
9:15?" and try to be fact-based, very likely his first reaction will be
defensiveness. We need to learn to talk to one another in ways that will
bring assumptions into the open without invoking defensiveness. It's not
easy; there are no quick answers. The world has changed profoundly, but we
haven't changed with it. It's absolutely awesome the power we've acquired to
shape the world. And yet our wisdom hasn't increased; in fact, it's
diminished. It's like we're driving down a road at night and speeding up,
and at the same time turning our headlights down.
All the major crises we face in the world today are systemic, and they're
man-made. That's absolutely unique in human history. All the major threats
we used to face were short-term dramatic events, caused by something outside
ourselves, whether a natural disaster or a saber-toothed tiger. But crises
today are slow, gradual processes. And they're of our own making.
Our work is all about making a better world. You take any area of real
concern, like long-term environmental issues, it's very difficult to have
improvement without a significant change in the way businesses operate.
Businesses collectively are more important than government today. They have
more global impact, more ability to influence things. We all need to live
our lives in the service of our highest aspirations. We can't afford to be
paralyzed by fear or apprehension. We need a better sense of what the deeper
issues are and what the changes are we're called upon to make.
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Peter Senge is a faculty member of MIT, director of the Center for
Organizational Learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management, founding
partner of Innovation Associates, author of The Fifth Discipline, and
contributing editor to Executive Excellence (617) 253-1575.