The Fifth Discipline

“In the long run, the only sustainable source of competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than its competition.”

The Fifth Discipline

The book, seen as a ground-breaking work for other, is seen as a bit too schizophrenic for me. The problem being, Senge has a lot of ground to cover in too short of an amount of pages. As a reader, I can see the general goal, introduce the core concepts of “systems-thinking” then apply them to the multi-factored nature of different business domains.

But the pedagogical lucidity is simply lost in the flood of anecdotes and context-switching between separate business domains. What I wished for more in this book was more conceptual clarify around what Senge means by “systems-thinking” before going on to apply its principles. Though, this may be because the field has advanced since then.

7/10, made me review topics I haven’t thought of in a while.

Systems Thinking

Gestalt thinking, systems thinking, arrows/loopy diagrams, complexity science, or “big-picture” thinking; Whatever you call it, the core tenets backing this methodology are these supposed facts:

  1. The world is incomprehensibly complex.
  2. Time is linear, but processes are non-linear.
  3. Formal or “purely” mathematical logic can not express it.

Anyways, if you want to learn more, this lecture by the Santa Fe Institute is interesting.