Quotes from Peter M. Senge

We are not preparing children for the world we have lived in but for a future that we can barely imagine.

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.

They always say 'Oh yes, you have a Kan-Ban system, we do also. You have quality circles, we do also. Your people fill out standard work descriptions, ours do also.' They all see the parts and have copied the parts. What they do not see is the way all the parts work together.

If one member of a team sees a problem more systemically than others, that person's insight will get reliably discounted—if for no other reason than the intrinsic biases toward linear views in our normal everyday language.

building an environment of reflectiveness starts with our own willingness to open ourselves, to be vulnerable, to be "exposed," as Saillant put it. This is unlikely to happen in any organizational environment that does not have a deep commitment to helping people grow, and to creating the trust and spirit of mutuality this requires.

Shared visions emerge from personal visions. This is how they derive their energy and how they foster commitment. As

It turns out that people can live very well with the situation where they make their case and yet another view is implemented, so long as the learning process is open and everyone acts with integrity.

the essence of mastering systems thinking as a management discipline lies in seeing patterns where others see only events and forces to react to. Yet few are trained to see detail and dynamic complexity.

Just as the Boeing 247's engineers had to downsize their engine because it lacked wing flaps, systems thinking without the discipline of mental models loses much of its power. The two disciplines go naturally together because one focuses on exposing hidden assumptions and the other focuses on how to restructure assumptions to reveal causes of significant problems.

Without effective local line leaders, new ideas—no matter how compelling—do not get translated into action, and the intentions behind change initiatives from the top can easily be thwarted. Network

Selling" generally means getting someone to do something that she might not do if she were in full possession of all the facts.

Managers must learn to reflect on their current mental models—until prevailing assumptions are brought into the open, there is no reason to expect mental models to change, and there is little purpose in systems thinking. If managers "believe" their world views are facts rather than sets of assumptions, they will not be open to challenging those world views.

The fanatic is certain that he is right.

Today's problems come from yesterday's 'solutions'.

The more you learn, the more acutely aware you become of your ignorance

Ultimately, the payoff from integrating systems thinking and mental models will be not only improving our mental models (what we think) but altering our ways of thinking: shifting from mental models dominated by events to mental models that recognize longer-term patterns of change and the underlying structures producing those patterns.

In my view the greatest evil in the world today is ever-increasing power and wealth in ever-fewer hands," says Visa founder Dee Hock.

Fragmentation, or making learning an "add-on" to people's regular work, has probably limited more organizational learning initiatives than any other factor.

idea becomes an "innovation" only when it can be replicated reliably on a meaningful scale at practical costs.

Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.

Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past fifty years, to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively.

We are impatient for results.

The discipline of personal mastery starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us, of living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.

it is no surprise that extraordinary leaders, like Mieko Nishimizu and Roger Saillant, often have deep personal stories of moments of awakening, when some old part of them died and a new part emerged.