I pulled out my almost-twenty-year-old copy of The Fifth Discipline, to reread. It's still very relevant after all these years. Companies have only gotten larger, more global, and more complex, since its writing. In his book, Senge writes about the five core disciplines of a learning organization; they include personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and - the fifth discipline - systems thinking, which he considers the cornerstone discipline, and the one that integrates together the other four. Personal mastery isn't just about mastering skills; it's about mastering oneself in sustaining creative tension by maintaining one's vision, while understanding clearly the present realities. Mental models build greater self-awareness and make tacit assumptions explicit. Shared vision - real shared vision - results in an organization that's aligned and committed towards a common goal. Team learning is about creating an atmosphere of inquiry and dialogue, instead of just advocacy and abstraction wars. And systems thinking is all about having an integrated view of the world, removing the walls between "internal" and "external", between "us" and "them." It's about understanding at a higher level.

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