Peter M Senge - Collected Quotes

"Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"In great teams, conflict becomes productive. The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking, for discovering new solutions no one individual would have come to on his own." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"Many leaders have personal visions that never get translated into shared visions that galvanize an organization. What has been lacking is a discipline for translating individual vision into shared vision." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change. That is, by seeing wholes we learn how to foster health. To do so, systems thinking offers a language that begins by restructuring how we think." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static 'snapshots'." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"Systems thinking is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns rather than static snapshots. It is a set of general principles spanning fields as diverse as physical and social sciences, engineering and management." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"The discipline of dialogue also involves learning how to recognize the patterns of interaction in teams that undermine learning. The patterns of defensiveness are often deeply engrained in how a team operates. If unrecognized, they undermine learning. If recognized and surfaced creatively, they can actually accelerate learning. Team learning is vital because teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. This where "the rubber meets the road"; unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"The real leverage in most management situations lies in understanding dynamic complexity, not detail complexity. […] Unfortunately, most 'systems analyses' focus on detail complexity not dynamic complexity. Simulations with thousands of variables and complex arrays of details can actually distract us from seeing patterns and major interrelationships. In fact, sadly, for most people 'systems thinking' means 'fighting complexity with complexity', devising increasingly 'complex' (we should really say 'detailed') solutions to increasingly 'complex' problems. In fact, this is the antithesis of real systems thinking." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)

"We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we forget why we are on that path in the first place. The result is that we only have a dim, or even inaccurate, view of what's really important to us." (Peter M Senge, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", 1990)