【第143回】“The Fifth Discipline”, Peter M. Senge

What is ‘discipline’? The author says it doesn’t mean ‘enforced order’ or ‘means of punishment’, but ‘a body of theory and technique that must be studied and mastered to be put into practice’. Because learning organization consists of discipline, we can never be a perfect learning organization. To practice a discipline is to be a lifelong learner.

This attitude to discipline is deeply related to that to ‘truth’. He suggests that it is important for us to make learning organization through having commitment to the truth. But he also says that commitment to the truth doesn’t mean seeking the absolute final word or ultimate cause, say the truth. On the contrary, it means a relentless willingness to find out the ways we limit ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our continually broadening our awareness, like discipline. This attitude makes us deepen our understanding of the structures underlying current events.

What we believe discipline or truth is made from our mental models. If we don’t care about our mental models, they remain unexamined. If they are unexamined for a long time, they remain unchanged. But as the world around us changes, the gap between our mental models and reality becomes wider and wider. Then it tends to lead to counterproductive actions. So it is important for us to be aware of our mental models.

Though learning organization is an organizational issue, to seek for learning organization depends on people in it. In a learning organization, there should be people with a high level of personal mastery. When they attain to be  this level, they are deeply self-confident. 

『インテグラル・シンキング』（鈴木規夫、コスモス・ライブラリー、2011年）
『インテグラル理論入門Ⅰ』（青木聡ら、春秋社、2011年）