Group items tagged

4. The ability to use open systems thinking The capacity to scan the external environment Able to foster participative democracy/collaboration decision-making and process Able to actively diffuse power Capacity to work in a team Ongoing internal and external analysis of effectiveness (continuous improvement)

If organizations are to develop a capacity to work with mental models then it will be necessary for people to learn new skills and develop new orientations, and for their to be institutional changes that foster such change. ‘Entrenched mental models… thwart changes that could come from systems thinking’ (ibid.: 203). Moving the organization in the right direction entails working to transcend the sorts of internal politics and game playing that dominate traditional organizations. In other words it means fostering openness (Senge 1990: 273-286). It also involves seeking to distribute business responsibly far more widely while retaining coordination and control. Learning organizations are localized organizations (ibid.: 287-301).

it’s the capacity to hold a share picture of the future we seek to create’ (1990: 9). Such a vision has the power to be uplifting – and to encourage experimentation and innovation. Crucially, it is argued, it can also foster a sense of the long-term, something that is fundamental to the ‘fifth discipline’.

When there is a genuine vision (as opposed to the all-to-familiar ‘vision statement’), people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to. But 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 vision into shared vision – not a ‘cookbook’ but a set of principles and guiding practices. The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared ‘pictures of the future’ that foster genuine commitment and enrolment rather than compliance. In mastering this discipline, leaders learn the counter-productiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt. (Senge 1990: 9)

People need to be able to act together. When teams learn together, Peter Senge suggests, not only can there be good results for the organization, members will grow more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise.

In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations were people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models – that is they are responsible for learning…. Learning organizations will remain a ‘good idea’… until people take a stand for building such organizations. Taking this stand is the first leadership act, the start of inspiring (literally ‘to breathe life into’) the vision of the learning organization. (Senge 1990: 340)

In essence, ‘the leaders’ task is designing the learning processes whereby people throughout the organization can deal productively with the critical issues they face, and develop their mastery in the learning disciplines’ (ibid.: 345).

One of the important things to grasp here is that stewardship involves a commitment to, and responsibility for the vision, but it does not mean that the leader owns it. It is not their possession. Leaders are stewards of the vision, their task is to manage it for the benefit of others (hence the subtitle of Block’s book – ‘Choosing service over self-interest’). Leaders learn to see their vision as part of something larger. Purpose stories evolve as they are being told, ‘in fact, they are as a result of being told’ (Senge 1990: 351). Leaders have to learn to listen to other people’s vision and to change their own where necessary. Telling the story in this way allows others to be involved and to help develop a vision that is both individual and shared.

By attending to purpose, leaders can cultivate an understanding of what the organization (and its members) are seeking to become. One of the issues here is that leaders often have strengths in one or two of the areas but are unable, for example, to develop systemic understanding. A key to success is being able to conceptualize insights so that they become public knowledge, ‘open to challenge and further improvement’ (ibid.: 356).

It is about fostering learning, for everyone. Such leaders help people throughout the organization develop systemic understandings. Accepting this responsibility is the antidote to one of the most common downfalls of otherwise gifted teachers – losing their commitment to the truth. (Senge 1990: 356)