Whew!

I’ve finally finished Peter Senge’s trilogy on learning organizations. After The fifth discipline and The fifth discipline fieldbook, comes The dance of change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in a Learning Organisation.

The first book lays the theoretical foundation, and introduces the five disciplines which Peter Senge believes are the key to creating learning organizations. They are personal mastery, systems thinking, shared vision, team learning and mental models. The second book contains practical tips on how to implement each of the five disciplines. By now we’re already past the 1000-page mark.

The dance of change brings the tally up another 550 pages, and deals with the challenges that all change initiatives in organizations meet. The link between change and learning permeates the book. You can’t turn an organization into a learning organization without changing. Conversely, any strategic change in a company, that doesn’t contain learning in some form is probably doomed. So change is learning and learning is change.
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