Peter Senge
In a sluggish system, aggressiveness produces instability. Either be patient or make the system more responsive.Collection: Patient
Willpower is so common among highly successful people that many see its characteristics as synonymous with success.Collection: Successful
Theres a lot of American kids think their food comes from the grocery store and the concept of seasonality has no meaning to them whatsoever.Collection: Kids
The Industrial Age is not sustainable. Its not sustainable in ecological terms, and its not sustainable in human terms.Collection: Age
Innovation requires resources to invest, and you can see many companies pulling back and going into an intense protective mode in a major extended period of financial distress.Collection: Innovation
By using the systems archetypes we can learn how to “structure” the details into a coherent picture of the forces at play.Collection: Play
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.Collection: Views
The company-as-a-machine model fits how people think about and operate conventional companies. And, of course, it fits how people think about changing conventional companies: You have a broken company, and you need to change it, to fix it.Collection: Thinking
When I look at efforts to create change in big companies over the past 10 years, I have to say that there's enough evidence of success to say that change is possible - and enough evidence of failure to say that it isn't likely. Both of those lessons are important.Collection: Past
People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them-in effect, they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. The do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.Collection: Inspirational
The discipline of personal mastery...starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us (and) living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.Collection: Personal Mastery
In some ways clarifying a vision is easy. A more difficult challenge comes in facing current reality.Collection: Reality
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.Collection: Reality
If you want real, significant, sustainable change, you need talented, committed local line leaders. If the line manager is not innovating, then innovation is not going to occur.Collection: Real
The care leadership strategy is simple: be a model. Commit yourself to your own personal mastery. Talking about personal mastery may open people's minds somewhat, but actions always speak louder than words. There is nothing more powerful you can do to encourage others in their quest for personal mastery than to be serious in your own quest.Collection: Leadership
We need to be the authors of our own life.Collection: Needs
Business and human endeavors are systems...we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.Collection: Appreciation
It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism.Collection: Thinking
All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift.Collection: Teaching
Learning cannot be disassociated from action.Collection: Action
Reality is made up of circles but we see straight lines.Collection: Reality
People with high levels of personal mastery...cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg or see with one eye.Collection: Heart
Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.Collection: Elephants
The easy way out usually leads back in.Collection: Risk
Mastery of creative tension brings out the capacity for perseverance and patience. Time is an ally.Collection: Perseverance
Businesses and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved.Collection: Years
Consider prejudice. Once a person begins to accept a stereotype of a particular group, that "thought" becomes an active agent, "participating" in shaping how he or she interacts with another person who falls in that stereotyped class. In turn, the tone of their interaction influences the other person's behaviour. The prejudiced person can't see how his prejudice shapes what he "sees" and how he acts. In some sense, if he did, he would no longer be prejudiced. To operate, the "thought" of prejudice must remain hidden to its holderCollection: Fall
If there is genuine potential for growth, build capacity in advance of demand, as a strategy for creating demand. Hold the vision, especially as regards assessing key performance and evaluating whether capacity to meet potential demand is adequate.Collection: Keys
Perhaps for the first time in history, human-kind has the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb; to foster far greater interdependency than anyone can manage, and to accelerate change far faster than anyone's ability to keep pace.Collection: Learning
Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.Collection: Powerful
Commitment to the truth...means a relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories of why things are the way they are. It means continually broadening our awareness. It also means continually deepening our understanding of the structures underlying current events.Collection: Commitment
A unique relationship develops among team members who enter into dialogue regularly. They develop a deep trust that cannot help but carry over to discussions. They develop a richer understanding of the uniqueness of each person's point of view.Collection: Motivational
If people don't have their own vision, all they can do is 'sign-up' for someone else's.Collection: People
The systems perspective tells us that we must look beyond individual mistakes or bad luck to understand important problems.Collection: Mistake
Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.Collection: Mistake
Knowledge is constructed, not transferredCollection: Knowledge
Leadership is about creating new realities.Collection: Reality
When there is genuine vision(as opposed to the all-too-familiar vision statement), people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to.Collection: People
Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we were never able to do.Collection: Teaching
When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.Collection: People
An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as important as a clear vision.Collection: Reality
Dialogue starts with the willingness to challenge our own thinking, to recognize that any certainty we have is, at best, a hypothesis about the world.Collection: Thinking
The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence .Collection: Interdependence
It takes courage and skill to be unambiguous and clear.Collection: Skills
In great teams conflict becomes productive.Collection: Team
We learn together in teams. This involves a shift from a spirit of advocacy to a spirit of enquiry.Collection: Inspiring
To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning.Collection: Art
The rate at which organizations learn may soon become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.Collection: Organization
Many in positions of authority lack the capabilities to truly lead. They are not credible. They do not command genuine respect. They are not committed to serve. They are not continually learning and growing. They are not wise.Collection: Wise