The fifth discipline 2006 pdf

A Diagram And 1 Page Single Space Summary

Could Your Organization Have a “Learning Disability”?

Weekly Briefing Welcome to Week 2. Last week, you began to explore the basics of systems thinking and how the elements of Senge’s “fifth discipline” can help us begin to model and understand complex organizations. This week, you will continue your MBA journey and will:

• Generate an improvement plan to a corporation’s ethics policies using a moral imagination systems framework

• Analyze the impact of “learning disabilities” on organizations and systems in meeting intended purposes and goals

• Formulate strategies for preventing “learning disabilities” within organizations or systems

• Perform simple gap analyses

Organizational Disabilities One of the important challenges that you will observe as you begin to think about applying systems thinking solutions within an organization is that it is important to understand the “broad landscape” of an organization’s culture and abilities (or disabilities). Although systems thinking tools are potentially effective in and of themselves, we must always remember that they are deployed within complex organizations that, as systems, have their own idiosyncrasies and quirks—or what Senge (2006) calls “learning disabilities.” Senge observes, “These learning disabilities operate despite the best efforts of bright, committed people. Often the harder they try to solve problems, the worse the results” (p. 18). One of the primary objectives of this week is to sensitize you to becoming aware of these general organizational disabilities, and to think about ways to neutralize their effects. Problem Identification—Simple Gap Analysis Unfortunately, systemic learning disabilities are all around us. This week, you will discuss and analyze two examples of systems and will apply simple gap analysis techniques to identify potential learning disabilities and violations of the laws of the fifth discipline. Gap analysis is exactly what it sounds like—it is part of problem identification, and it addresses your identifying gaps in how a system is performing relative to how you think it could or should perform. The “5-Whys” quality management technique was developed initially by Sakichi Toyoda for the Toyota Motor Corporation as a simple way to teach everyone in the company to perform what we can call effect-cause-effect (E-C-E) reasoning. The goals of both the simple (5-Whys) and complex (theory of constraints) forms of E-C-E reasoning are the same—to link specific, measurable outcomes (usually undesirable), with suggested causes, and to build long causal chains that identify “root causes” of multiple symptoms.

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The essence of both techniques is to continue to ask penetrating questions until you’ve reached a saturation—or core root causes. The 5-Whys Technique in Action The 5-Whys gap analysis technique is very simple, which is both its strength and its limitation. Start with the Opportunity Consultants, Inc. case, for example. Read the case and note what you think are the major “outcomes” (both good and bad) that OCI creates as a system. Then, in Excel, Word, Visio, or another chart/diagram software program (or beginning by hand with a pencil and eraser, which is a very good starting point too!), place what you think are the fundamental “outcome variables” at the top of your chart. (Note: Be sure that the high-level outcomes are “orthogonal” with respect to one another. That means you should make sure that the outcomes themselves are relatively independent of one another as concepts and are not “shades of a theme.”) Then, for each of the major outcome variables, ask yourself, “Why does this outcome occur?” (This is the first level of “why?”) Try to think systemically and rigorously—and identify as many “causal variables” as you can that you think you have evidence (or you think is a reasonable inference) to explain the outcome. Do some of these “first order” variables link to multiple high-level outcomes? That is okay; show the links by drawing lines between and among the two levels of analysis. Now, repeat this cycle for the first-order variables. They are now outcomes. Why do they occur? (This is the second level of “why?”) Again, link these “second-order” variables within your emerging E-C-E diagram. Repeat to identify “third-order” variables. Repeat to identify “fourth-order” variables. Note that you should begin to see larger “causes” that link to multiple outcomes and that the diagram should begin to look like a “tree” in shape—i.e., it bulges in the middle and begins to taper as you get to “root causes.” Drive one more level to identify fifth-order, or “potential root cause” variables. You should now have a relatively simple set of effect-cause-effect relationships! Congratulations; you’ve now completed your first simple gap analysis, which also is a form of systems diagram! Now for the fun part: Go post your diagram (you can convert to a JPEG image) and discuss how similar or different your analysis is to your peers’ analyses—and see if you can reach some consensus as a group.

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Can Systems Thinking Help Our Moral Imagination? Finally, one of the important benefits of extending the way you think about problems, through integrated systems thinking, is that it also provides a way to begin to “re-think” how you frame and understand important “big-picture” mental models such as the role of business as corporate citizens. Patricia Werhane (2008), in “Mental Models, Moral Imagination and System Thinking in the Age of Globalization,” argues that one can deploy systemic thinking to re-frame and focus one’s moral imagination about the responsibilities and appropriate actions of large-scale global organizations in our interconnected, multicultural world. References Landel, R., & Reynolds, W. (2007). Opportunity Consultants, Inc., 2007 [Case study]. HBS Case UV0833. Charlottesville, VA: Darden Business Publishing. Retrieved from http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/pl/17476859/17477266/9aa9f4103d08a463c44c953c1b1d6a20 Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art & practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday. Werhane, P. H. (2008). Mental models, moral imagination and system thinking in the age of globalization. Journal of Business Ethics, 78(3), 463–474. Wheatley, M. J. (2008). Self-organized networks: What are the leadership lessons? Leadership Excellence, 25(2), 7–8.