Review of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization

Go to start of home page or Go to list of reviews

The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization
Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard B. Ross, Bryan J. Smith, 1994, 593 p., ISBN 0-385-47256-0

A Currency Book Published by Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

Generally, emphasized passages are direct quotations from The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook.

In describing the kind of book this is, an early passage from the Fieldbook says, a collection of notes, reflections, and exercises "from the field." This volume, the first in what we hope will be an ongoing series, contains 172 pieces of writing by 67 authors, describing tools and methods, stories and reflections, guiding ideas, and exercises and resources which people are using effectively. Many of the pieces are intensely pragmatic, geared toward helping you solve particular problems. Many are deeply reflective, aimed at helping you productively change the ways you think and interact.

There are nine sections within the book.

The Fieldbook is most notable for providing viewpoints for implementation and development of ideas presented in The Fifth Discipline. Additionally, exercises are described that promote development of each of the disciplines - systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. For example, there are exercises for defining and designing a learning organization, working with system archetypes, defining personal vision, and examining the left-hand column that includes thoughts that are not expressed in conversation. There are many personal experiences with efforts toward developing a learning organization and, perhaps, efforts at simply building the better organization. Much of the personal experience works together with the general recommendation of original developers through having consulted with the developers during the improvement process.

When reviewing The Fifth Discipline, I said that there didn't seem to be enough practical information about systems thinking to make the effort certain. In that review, I quote from the Fieldbook to show that others also question the sufficiency of modeling complicated systems with only the use of the archetypes. The Fieldbook adds useful information about using the archetypes, ways of creating the model of the system, and computer modeling of business cycles. Even with the additional information, systems thinking seems less exact than object-oriented design, using the software design methodology as an example again.

For anyone who plans to work within the corporate world in creating a learning organization, the Fieldbook provides recommendations of techniques, tools, and methods, including information about other authors' work that should make the work more successful.

JPF