Peter Senge - The Next Discipline

Peter Senge - The Next Discipline

Abstract of an interview with Peter Senge by Mike Hanley. Published in AFR Boss Magazine August 2005.

Peter Senge wants to save the earth. Now, with the rise of sustainability and corporate social responsibility, Senge thinks it’s time for a global awakening of consciousness. unless companies understand the impact they have on the world, and use that understanding to create a deep and lasting sustainability, we are all, literally, doomed. Senge compares modern corporations to a cancer, expanding blindly, Businesses, he says, cannot afford the kind of narrow ideologies that have driven them in the past. They need to engage with other parts of society with a systems view in order to survive.

The idea is to create a world that is no longer “governed primarily by habit”. Senge argues that habit prevents people, companies and societies from making radical change. Systems thinking is a way of imposing a wider perspective on our everyday actions and he has developed a number of tools, one of which is the concept of a systems archetype – a way of viewing patterns of interdependence.

The art of conversation is something that people spend their lives developing. Fifty or a hundred years ago, what did people do at the end of the day? They talked, they sought out each other’s perspectives. In real conversation, we not only discover each other, we also discover ourselves. whereas when one person ‘tells’ another they are making a demand for obedience.

Senge’s research is based on the principle that fundamental change happens because people decide to make it happen, and organisations can inhibit or enable that change. He is convinced that real changes are created by maybe 5 to 10 per cent of people and organisations over time.

Read full article: http://www.afrboss.com.au/magarticle.asp?doc_id=24915&listed_months=1