Peter senge the fifth discipline pdf download

Each participant made well-motivated, clearly defensible judgments based on reasonable guesses about what might happen. There were no villains, but there was a crisis nonetheless—built into the structure of the system. In the last twenty years, the beer game has been played thousands of times in classes and management training seminars.

It has been played on five continents, among people of all ages, nationalities, cultural origins, and vastly varied business backgrounds. Yet every time the game is played the same crises ensue. First, there is growing demand that can't be met.

Orders build throughout the system. Inventories are depleted. Backlogs grow. Then the beer arrives en masse while incoming orders suddenly decline.

By the end of the experiment, almost all players are sitting with large inventories they cannot unload— for example, it is not unusual to find brewery inventory levels in the hundreds overhanging orders from wholesalers for eight, ten, or twelve cases per week. The causes of the behavior must lie in the structure of the game itself.

Moreover "beer game"-type structures create similar crises in real-life production- distribution systems. For instance, in , personal computer memory chips were cheap and readily available; sales went down by 18 percent and American producers suffered 25 to 60 percent losses. The result was a to percent increase in prices for the same chips. After a huge order buildup and increases in delivery delays throughout the industry, demand collapsed and you could have virtually any product you wanted off any supplier's shelf overnight.

Within a few years, Siemens, Signetics, Northern Telecom, Honeywell, and Schlumberger all entered the business by buying weakened semiconductor manufacturers. The companies already are idling plants and laying off workers at rates not seen for years. Similar boom and bust cycles continue to recur in diverse service businesses. For example, real estate is notoriously cyclic, often fueled by speculators who drive up Unfortunately, the people in the real estate industry are too busy trying to address the problems they have left over from the last one.

A real retailer can order from three or four wholesalers at once, wait for the first group of deliveries to arrive, and cancel the other orders. Real producers often run up against production capacity limits not present in the game, thereby exacerbating panic throughout the distribution system. In turn, producers invest in additional capacity because they believe that current demand levels will continue into the future, then find themselves strapped with excess capacity once demand collapses.

The systems perspective tells us that we must look beyond individual mistakes or bad luck to understand important problems. We must look beyond personalities and events. We must look into the underlying structures which shape individual actions and create the conditions where types of events become likely.

As Donella Meadows expresses it: A truly profound and different insight is the way you begin to see that the system causes its own behavior. Two thirds of the way through War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy breaks off from his narrative about the history of Napoleon and czarist Russia to contemplate why historians, in general, are unable to explain very much: The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century present the spectacle of an extraordinary movement of millions of men.

Men leave their habitual pursuits; rush from one side of Europe to the other; plunder, slaughter one another, triumph and despair; and the whole current of life is transformed and presents a quickened activity, first moving at a growing speed, and then slowly slackening again.

What was the cause of that activity, or from what laws did it arise? The historians, in reply to that inquiry, lay before us the sayings and doings of some dozens of men in one of the buildings in the city of Paris, summing up those doings and sayings by one word —revolution. Then they give us a detailed biography of Napoleon, and of certain persons favorably or hostilely disposed to him; talk of the influence of some of these persons upon others; and then say that this it is to which the activity is due; and these are its laws.

But, the human intellect not only refuses to believe in that explanation, but flatly declares that the method of explanation is not a correct one. The sum of men's individual wills produced both the revolution and Napoleon; and only the sum of those wills endured them and then destroyed them.

Tolstoy argues that only in trying to understand underlying "laws of history," his own synonym for what we now call systemic structures, lies any hope for deeper understanding: For the investigation of the laws of history, we must completely change the subject of observations, must let kings and ministers and generals alone, and study the homogeneous, infinitesimal elements by which the masses are led. No one can say how far it has been given to man to advance in that direction in understanding the laws of history.

But it is obvious that only in that direction lies any possibility of discovering historical laws; and that the human intellect has hitherto not devoted to that method of research one millionth part of the energy that historians have put into the description of the doings of various kings, ministers, and generals.

Rather, "systemic structure" is concerned with the key interrelationships that influence behavior over time. These are not interrelationships between people, but among key variables, such as population, natural resources, and food production in a developing country; or engineers' product ideas and technical and managerial know- how in a high-tech company.

In the beer game, the structure that caused wild swings in orders and inventories involved the multiple-stage supply chain and the delays intervening between different stages, the limited information available at each stage in the system, and the goals, costs, perceptions, and fears that influenced individuals' orders for beer.

But it is very important to understand that when we use the term "systemic structure" we do not just mean structure outside the individual. The nature of structure in human systems is subtle because we are part of the structure. This means that we often have the power to alter structures within which we are operating. However, more often than not, we do not perceive that power. In fact, we usually don't see the structures at play much at all.

Rather, we just find ourselves feeling compelled to act in certain ways. In , psychologist Philip Zimbardo performed an experiment in which college students were placed in the roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison set up in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford.

What started as mild resistance by the "prisoners" and assertiveness by the "guards," steadily escalated into increasing rebelliousness and abusiveness, until the "guards" began to physically abuse the "prisoners" and the experimenters felt the situation was dangerously out of control. The experiment was ended prematurely, after six days, when students began to suffer from depression, uncontrollable crying, and psychosomatic illnesses.

It occurred in a private meeting with a high-ranking member of the Soviet embassy, a few months after the Soviets had sent troops into Afghanistan. The official talked, eloquently and with great sincerity, about how the U. The U. Beginning in the late s, as threats from guerrilla factions increased, the ruling government asked for increasing Soviet assistance. Modest assistance led to greater needs for broader help. It came to a point, the official explained, where "We really had no choice but to intervene militarily.

It also brought to mind similar stories of American officials, ten or fifteen years earlier, trying to explain how the United States became entangled in Vietnam. How can such controlling structures be recognized? How would such knowledge help us to be more successful in a complex system?

The beer game provides a laboratory for exploring how structure influences behavior. Each player—retailer, wholesaler, and brewery —made only one decision per week: how much beer to order. The retailer is the first to boost orders significantly, with orders peaking around Week At that point, the expected beer fails to arrive on time— because of backlogs at the wholesale and brewery levels. But the retailer, not thinking of those backlogs, dramatically increased orders to get beer at any cost.

That sudden jump in orders is then amplified through the whole system—first by the wholesaler, and then by the brewery. Wholesaler orders peak at about 40, and brewery production peaks at about The result is a characteristic pattern of buildup and decline in orders at each position, amplified in intensity as you move "up-stream," from retailers to breweries.

In other words, the further from the ultimate consumer, the higher the orders, and the more dramatic the collapse. In fact, virtually all brewery players go through major crises, ending with near-zero production rates only weeks after having produced 40, 60, or more gross per week.

The retailer's inventory begins to drop below zero at around Week 5. The retailer's backlog continues to increase for several weeks and the retailer doesn't get back to a positive inventory until around Weeks 12 to Similarly, the wholesaler is in backlog from around Week 7 through around Weeks 15 to 18, and the brewery from Week 9 through Weeks 18 to Once inventories begin to accumulate, they reach large values about 40 for the retailer, 80 to for the wholesaler, and 60 to 80 for the brewery by Week 30 —much larger than intended.

So each position goes through an inventory-backlog cycle: first there is insufficient inventory, then there is too much inventory. These characterisic patterns of overshoot and collapse in ordering and inventory- backlog cycles occur despite stable consumer demand.

The actual consumer orders experienced only one change. In Week 2, consumer orders doubled—going from four cases of beer per week to eight.

They remained at eight cases per week for the rest of the game. In other words, after a one-time increase, consumer demand, for the rest of the simulation, was perfectly flat! Of course, none of the players other than the retailer knew consumer demand, and even the retailers saw demand only week by week, with no clue about what would come next. After the beer game, we ask the people who played wholesalers and brewers to draw what they think the consumer orders were.

Most draw a curve which rises and falls, just as their orders rose and fell. Such assumptions of an "external cause" are characteristic of nonsystemic thinking. Players' guesses regarding consumer demand shed light on our deeply felt need to find someone or something to blame when there are problems. Initially, after the game is over, many believe that the culprits are the players in the other positions. This belief is shattered by seeing that the same problems arise in all plays of the game, regardless of who is manning the different positions.

Many then direct their search for a scapegoat toward the consumer. But when their guesses are compared with the flat customer orders, this theory too is shot down. This has a devastating impact on some players. I'll never forget the president of a large trucking firm sitting back, wide-eyed, staring at the beer game charts. At the next break, he ran to the telephones. One of our divisions had tremendously unstable fluctuations in fleet usage. It seemed pretty obvious that the division president didn't have what it took to get the job done.

We automatically blamed the man, just as each of us in the experiment automatically blamed the brewery. It just hit me that the problems were probably structural, not personal. I just dashed out to call our corporate headquarters and cancel his termination process. In fact, given the "physical system" of inventories, shipping delays, and limited information, there is substantial room for improving most team's scores.

Following the "no strategy" strategy, each player would simply place new orders equal to orders he received. This is about the simplest ordering policy possible. If you receive new incoming orders for four cases of beer, you place orders for four. If you receive incoming orders for eight, you place orders for eight. Given the pattern of consumer demand in this game, that means ordering four cases or truckloads every week—until you receive your first order of eight.

Thereafter you order eight. When this strategy is followed unswervingly by all three players, all three positions settle into a form of stability by Week The retailer and wholesaler never quite catch up with their backlogs. Backlogs develop, as in the basic game, due to the delays in getting orders filled. Backlogs persist because the players make no effort to correct them— because the "no strategy" strategy precludes placing the orders in excess of orders received needed to correct backlogs.

Is the "no strategy" strategy successful? Probably, most players would say no. After all, the strategy generates persistent backlogs.

This means that everyone throughout the system is kept waiting longer than necessary for his orders to be filled.

In real life, such a situation would, undoubtedly, invite competitors to enter a market and provide better delivery service. Moreover, total cost generated by all positions in the "no strategy" strategy is lower than what is achieved by 75 percent of the teams that play the game!

In trying to correct the imbalances that result from "doing nothing," most players make matters worse, in many cases dramatically worse. On the other hand, about 25 percent of the players score better than the "no strategy" strategy, and about 10 percent score very much better.

In other words, success is possible. But it requires a shift of view for most players. It means getting to the heart of fundamental mismatches between common ways of thinking about the game—what we will later call our "mental model" of it—and the actual reality of how the game works. Most players see their job as "managing their position" in isolation from the rest of the system. What is required is to see how their position interacts with the larger system. Consider how you feel if you are a typical player at any position.

You pay close attention to your own inventory, costs, backlog, orders, and shipments. Incoming orders come from "outside"—most wholesalers and brewers, for instance, are shocked by the Likewise, you have only a fuzzy concept of what happens to the orders you place; you simply expect them to show up as new shipments after a reasonable delay.

Your perspective of the system looks something like this: Given this picture of the situation, if you need beer it makes sense to place more orders. If your beer doesn't arrive when expected, you place still more orders. Given this picture of the situation, your job is to "manage your position," reacting to changes in the "external imputs" of incoming orders, beer arrivals, and your supplier's delivery delay.

What the typical "manage your position" view misses is the ways that your orders interact with others' orders to influence the variables you perceive as "external. For example, if they place a large number of orders, they can wipe out their supplier's inventory, thereby causing their supplier's delivery delay to increase. If they, then, respond as many do by placing still more orders, they create a "vicious cycle" that increases problems throughout the system.

This vicious cycle can be set off by any player who panics, anywhere within the system—be he retailer, or wholesaler. Even factories can create the same effect, simply by failing to produce enough beer. Eventually, as one vicious circle influences other vicious circles, the resulting panic spreads up and down the entire production- distribution system.

Once the panic builds momentum, I have seen players generate orders that are twenty to fifty times what is actually needed to correct real inventory imbalances. To improve performance in the beer game players must redefine their scope of influence.

As a player in any position, your influence is broader than simply the limits of your own position. You don't simply place orders which go off into the ether and return as beer supplies; those orders influence your supplier's behavior. Which in turn might influence yet another supplier's behavior.

In turn, your success is not just influenced by your orders; it is influenced by the actions of everyone else in the system. For example, if the brewery runs out of beer, then pretty soon, everyone else will run out of beer. Either the larger system works, or your position will not work. Interestingly, in the beer game and in many other systems, in order for you to succeed others must succeed as well.

Moreover, each player must share this systems viewpoint—for, if any single player panics and places a large order, panics tend to reinforce throughout the system. First, keep in mind the beer that you have ordered but which, because of the delay, has not yet arrived. I call this the "Take two aspirin and wait" rule.

If you have a headache and need to take aspirin, you don't keep taking aspirin every five minutes until your headache goes away. You wait patiently for the aspirin to take effect because you know that aspirin operates with a delay.

Many players keep ordering beer every week until their inventory discrepancy goes away. Second, don't panic. When your supplier can't get you the beer you want as quickly as normal, the worst thing you can do is order more beer. Yet, that is exactly what many players do. It takes discipline to contain the overwhelming urge to order more when backlogs are building and your customers are screaming. But, without that discipline, you and everyone else will suffer.

These guidelines are consistently missed by most players because they are evident only if you understand the interactions that cross the boundaries between different positions. The "take two aspirin and wait" guideline comes from understanding the delay embedded in the response of your supplier's shipments to changes in your orders placed.

The "don't panic" guideline comes from understanding the vicious cycle created when your orders placed exacerbate your supplier's delivery delay. How well can players do if they follow these guidelines? It is possible to hold these instabilities to a very modest level, a small fraction of what occurred in Lover's Beer. It is possible to achieve total costs that are one fifth of the "do nothing" strategy, or about one tenth the typical costs achieved by teams.

In other words, substantial improvements are possible. For most, the overall experience of playing the game is deeply dissatisfying because it is purely reactive. Yet, most eventually realize that the source of the reactiveness lies in their own focus on week- by-week events.

Most of the players in the game get overwhelmed by the shortages of inventory, surges in incoming orders, disappointing arrivals of new beer.

When asked to explain their decisions, they give classic "event explanations. The systems perspective shows that there are multiple levels of explanation in any complex situation, as suggested by the diagram below.

In some sense, all are equally "true. Event explanations—"who did what to whom"— doom their holders to a reactive stance. As discussed earlier, event explanations are the most common in contemporary culture, and that is exactly why reactive management prevails.

Systemic Structure generative Patterns of Behavior responsive Events reactive Pattern of behavior explanations focus on seeing longer-term trends and assessing their implications. Therefore, sooner or later, severe crises are likely at the brewery. At least they suggest how, over a longer term, we can respond to shifting trends. It focuses on answering the question, "What causes the patterns of behavior? Though rare, structural explanations, when they are clear and widely understood, have considerable impact.

An exceptional example of a leader providing such insight was Franklin Roosevelt, when he went on the radio on March 12, , to explain the four-day "banking holiday. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels turning around. In so doing, he generated public support for a radical but necessary action, and began his reputation as a master of public communication.

Structure produces behavior, and changing underlying structures can produce different patterns of behavior. In this sense, structural explanations are inherently generative. Moreover, since structure in human systems includes the "operating policies" of the decision makers in the system, redesigning our own decision making redesigns the system structure. Generative learning cannot be sustained in an organization where event thinking predominates.

It requires a conceptual framework of "structural" or systemic thinking, the ability to discover structural causes of behavior.

Enthusiasm for "creating our future" is not enough. As the players in the beer game come to understand the structures that cause its behavior, they see more clearly their power to change that behavior, to adopt ordering policies that work in the larger system. They also discover a bit of timeless wisdom delivered years ago by Walt Kelly in his famous line from "Pogo": "We have met the enemy and he is us.

Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions. But the bump reappeared in a new spot not far away. He jumped on the bump again, and it disappeared —for a moment, until it emerged once more in a new place. Again and again he jumped, scuffing and mangling the rug in his frustration; until finally he lifted one corner of the carpet and an angry snake slithered out. Often we are puzzled by the causes of our problems; when we merely need to look at our own solutions to other problems in the past.

A well-established firm may find that this quarter's sales are off sharply. Because the highly successful rebate program last quarter led many customers to buy then rather than now. Or a new manager attacks chronically high inventory costs and "solves" the problem—except that the salesforce is now spending 20 percent more time responding to angry complaints from customers who are Or, even more insidiously, they learn that a new citywide outbreak of drug-related crime is the result of federal officials intercepting a large shipment of narcotics—which reduced the drug supply, drove up the price, and caused more crime by addicts desperate to maintain their habit.

Solutions that merely shift problems from one part of a system to another often go undetected because, unlike the rug merchant, those who "solved" the first problem are different from those who inherit the new problem. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. In George Orwell's Animal Farm, the horse Boxer always had the same answer to any difficulty: "I will work harder," he said. At first, his well-intentioned diligence inspired everyone, but gradually, his hard work began to backfire in subtle ways.

The harder he worked, the more work there was to do. What he didn't know was that the pigs who managed the farm were actually manipulating them all for their own profit. Boxer's diligence actually helped to keep the other animals from seeing what the pigs were doing.

We all know what it feels like to be facing compensating feedback—the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back; the more effort you expend trying to improve matters, the more effort seems to be required. Examples of compensating feedback are legion. Many of the best intentioned government interventions fall prey to compensating feedback. In the s there were massive programs to build low- income housing and improve job skills in decrepit inner cities in the United States.

Many of these cities were even worse off in the s despite the largesse of government aid. One reason was that low-income people migrated from other cities and from rural areas to those cities with the best aid programs. Eventually, the new housing units became overcrowded and the job training programs were All the while, the city's tax base continued to erode, leaving more people trapped in economically depressed areas. Similar compensating feedback processes have operated to thwart food and agricultural assistance to developing countries.

More food available has been "compensated for" by reduced deaths due to malnutrition, higher net population growth, and eventually more malnutrition. Similarly, efforts to correct the U. Efforts by foreign powers to suppress indig- enous guerrilla fighters often lead to further legitimacy for the guer- rillas' cause, thereby strengthening their resolve and support, and leading to still further resistance. Many companies experience compensating feedback when one of their products suddenly starts to lose its attractiveness in the market.

They push for more aggressive marketing; that's what always worked in the past, isn't it? They spend more on advertising, and drop the price; these methods may bring customers back temporarily, but they also draw money away from the company, so it cuts corners to compensate. The quality of its service say, its delivery speed or care in inspection starts to decline. In the long run, the more fervently the company markets, the more customers it loses. Nor is compensating feedback limited to "large systems"—there are plenty of personal examples.

Take the person who quits smoking only to find himself gaining weight and suffering such a loss in self- image that he takes up smoking again to relieve the stress. Or the protective mother who wants so much for her young son to get along with his schoolmates that she repeatedly steps in to resolve problems and ends up with a child who never learns to settle differences by himself.

Or the enthusiastic newcomer so eager to be liked that she never responds to subtle criticisms of her work and ends up embit- tered and labeled "a difficult person to work with. Yet, as individuals and organizations, we not only get drawn into compensating feedback, we often glorify the suffering that ensues.

When our initial efforts fail to produce lasting improvements, we "push harder"—faithful, as was Boxer, to the Behavior grows better before it grows worse. Low-leverage interventions would be much less alluring if it were not for the fact that many actually work, in the short term.

New houses get built. The unemployed are trained. Starving children are spared. Lagging orders turn upward. We stop smoking, relieve our child's stress, and avoid a confrontation with a new coworker.

Compensating feedback usually involves a "delay," a time lag between the short-term benefit and the long-term disbenefit. The New Yorker once published a cartoon in which a man sitting in an armchair pushes over a giant domino encroaching upon him from the left. Of course, he doesn't see that the domino is toppling another domino, which in turn is about to topple another, and another, and that the chain of dominoes behind him will eventually circle around his chair and strike him from the right.

The better before worse response to many management interven- tions is what makes political decision making so counterproductive.

By "political decision making," I mean situations where factors other than the intrinsic merits of alternative courses of action weigh in making decisions—factors such as building one's own power base, or "looking good," or "pleasing the boss. Only eventually does the compensating feedback come back to haunt you.

The key word is "eventually. Moreover, the answers they propose and fund often produce the opposite. Presence is an intimate look at the development of a new theory about change and learning.

In wide-ranging conversations held over a year and a half, organizational learning pioneers Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers explored the nature of transformational change—how it arises, and. Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. A world in which environmentally sound products. Finally in paperback, Senge's national bestseller The Fifth Discipline, which has turned the principles of the learning organization into a movement of snowballing size and strength.

The ability to respond to change is the crucial issue of the '90s, but management tools such as "reengineering" and "total quality" simply. What do you want me to do? This question is the enduring management issue, a perennial problem that Stephen Bungay shows has an old solution that is counter-intuitive and yet common sense. It features a new Foreword about the success Peter Senge has achieved with learning organizations since the book's inception, as well as new chapters on Impetus getting started , Strategies, Leaders' New Work, Systems Citizens, and Frontiers for the Future.

How do we sustain momentum? But companies that establish change initiatives discover, after initial success, that even the most promising efforts to transform or revitalize organizations—despite interest, resources, and compelling business results—can fail to sustain themselves over time.

That's because organizations have complex, well-developed immune systems, aimed at preserving the status quo. Now, drawing upon new theories about leadership and the long-term success of change initiatives, and based upon twenty-five years of experience building learning organizations, the authors of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook show how to accelerate success and avoid the obstacles that can stall momentum.

The Dance of Change, written for managers and executives at every level of an organization, reveals how business leaders can work together to anticipate the challenges that profound change will ultimately force the organization to face. Then, in a down-to-earth and compellingly clear format, readers will learn how to build the personal and organizational capabilities needed to meet those challenges.

These challenges are not imposed from the outside; they are the product of assumptions and practices that people take for granted—an inherent, natural part of the processes of change. And they can stop innovation cold, unless managers at all levels learn to anticipate them and recognize the hidden rewards in each challenge, and the potential to spur further growth. Within the frequently encountered challenge of "Not Enough Time," for example—the lack of control over time available for innovation and learning initiatives—lies a valuable opportunity t.

Schools that Learn Author : Peter M. Popular Books. But there are great nuggets of thought here, things which incite future action and discussion. It definitely serves more as a reference material than a book that should be read through from cover to cover.

Some nice nuggets and examples but not as fulfilling as I had hoped. Commitment vs compliance, enrolling vs being sold both excellent concepts. This book has been around for a long time but it seems that the main messages it contains My major take-aways : - cause and effect are about large numbers of interactions at many levels that are not necessarily proximate in time.

It's not the Human Genome Project, it's proteomics and the epi-genome how the genes express themselves It's one of those books that change your perspective of life. You start seeing everything around you in terms of loops.

The book takes its time to give you those lenses but at times it seems a little dragged. It has some great examples but could use some more cases. Deep down, people are learners. No one has to teach an infant to learn. In fact, no one has to teach infants anything. They are intrinsically inquisitive, masterful learners. Learning organizations are possible because at heart we all love to learn. Through learning we re-create ourselves and are I was impressed by certain parts of book - personal development and building shared vision.

There are some very good storytelling examples inside. I recommend to read it if you are looking for methods on how to see picture as whole and objectivism. This was my first exposure to the ideas of complexity and non-linear systems in the everyday world of business. My other readings to that point in time had been from the scientific perspective.

So I enjoyed reading how Mr. Senge applied those concepts to workshops where he had business people experience systems first hand. If you are interested in systems thinking, this is where you start. But don't start if you are prone to depression when you understand why organizations fail or worse, are designed to get what they are getting!

But if you have a calling to attempt something bigger, better, and redesigned from the start, courage! This book describes what I would hope most organizations aspire to be, particularly those that want to be known as 'Agile'.