Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by Peter M. Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith ISBN: 0-553-45633-4 Publisher: Random House Audio Pub. Date: 05 January, 1999 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 5 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.81 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Fifth Discipline
Comment: This book is a collection of theoretical summaries, reports, analyses, and strategies all quite useful to anyone interested in generating some thinking and action around change. The team of five writers (Peter Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts, and Art Kleiner) provide some original work, but also serve as editors to a vast quantity of material drawn from practitioners, theorists, and writers in the field of organizational improvement. According to Senge, "great teams are learning organizations - groups of people who, over time, enhance their capacity to create what they truly desire to create." (p.18) This book is really about creating and building great teams. The learning organization develops its ability to reflect on, discuss, question, and change its current and past practices. To do this, people and groups in the organization need to meaningfully pursue the study and practice of the five disciplines - personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.
The learning organization - Senge's vision for the productive, competitive, and efficient institutions of the future - is in a continuous state of change. Four fundamental questions continuously serve to check and guide a group's learning and improvement (see page 49): (1) Do you continuously test your experiences? ("Are you willing to examine and challenge your sacred cows - not just during crises, but in good times?") (2) Are you producing knowledge? ("Knowledge, in this case, means the capacity for effective action.") (3) Is knowledge shared? ("Is it accessible to all of the organization's members?") (4) Is the learning relevant? ("Is this learning aimed at the organization's core purpose?") If these questions represent the organization's compass, the five disciplines are its map.
Each of the five disciplines is explained, and elaborated in its own lengthy section of the book. In the section on "Systems Thinking" (a set of practices and perspectives, which views all aspects of life as inter-related and playing a role in some larger system), the authors build on the idea of feedback loops (reinforcing and balancing) and introduce five systems archetypes. They are: "fixes that backfire", "limits to growth", "shifting the burden", "tragedy of the commons", and "accidental adversaries". In the section on "Personal Mastery", the authors argue that learning starts with each person. For organizations to learn and improve, people within the organization (perhaps starting with its core leadership) must learn to reflect on and become aware of their own core beliefs and visions. In "Mental Models", the authors argue that learning organizations need to explore the assumptions and attitudes, which guide their institutional directions, practices, and strategies. Articles on scenario planning, the ladder of inference, the left-hand column, and balancing inquiry and advocacy offer practical strategies to investigate our personal mental models as well as those of others in the organization. In "Shared Vision", the authors make the case for the stakeholders of an organization to continually adapt their vision ("an image of a desired future"), values ("how we get to travel to where we want to go"), purpose ("what the organization is here to do"), and goals ("milestones we expect to reach before too long"). The section offers many strategies and perspectives on how to move an organization toward continuous reflection. In "Team Learning", the authors rely mostly on the work of William Isaacs and others, and make a case for educating organization members in the processes and skills of dialogue and skillful discussion.
This book is enlightening and informative. It has already found a place on my shelf for essential reference books.
Rating: 5
Summary: Moves elegantly between concepts and every day reality.
Comment: Bridging the gap between text and context, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook offers everyone a deep and refreshing look at what work can be and should be. The authors ground their stories, examples, exercises in five conceptual touchstones--personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. And these disciplines accurately reveal three core tasks in leadership: looking at self, developing others, and seeing the larger picture in order to chart a meaningful course. Stories enliven the ideas while examples and exercises offer practical models to use in any organization. Generous side margins, different colored ink, and graphic icons are visual treats as well as immediate graphic guides. And the narrative references to related issues make reading the book more intuitive, more interesting.
In fact, these physical details model the whole point of the book--that learning is essential for sustainable growth, for organizational and personal development.
Rating: 5
Summary: A follow up to the legend
Comment: The Fieldbook attempts at making the esoteric concepts of the fifth discipline more down to earth and contains a treasure trove of strategies, tools, methods and explanations on how to make the learning organization into a reality.
Thus people who have read The fifth discipline will gain the most from this book. It's a must read for people who want to make their organizations transition into a 'learning organization'
 |
Title: The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge ISBN: 0385260954 Publisher: Currency Pub. Date: 01 October, 1994 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations by Peter M. Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, George Roth, Rick Ross, Bryan Smith ISBN: 0385493223 Publisher: Currency Pub. Date: 16 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
 |
Title: Ten Steps to a Learning Organization by Peter Kline, Bernard Saunders ISBN: 0915556324 Publisher: Great Ocean Pub Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education by Peter M. Senge, Nelda H. Cambron McCabe, Timothy Lucas, Art Kleiner, Janis Dutton, Bryan Smith ISBN: 0385493231 Publisher: Currency Pub. Date: 12 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
 |
Title: The Fifth Disipline by Peter M. Senge ISBN: 0553456342 Publisher: Random House Audio Pub. Date: 05 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
