Book review 1a: Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

This book was recommended to me by a consultant in Singapore.
The core of the book is about 'Systems thinking'.
A popular terminology amongst people in mid to high level management.
It is basically to be able to see things at a big picture level and to see how things fit together and could work better.

To begin with i shall summarize the 'Personal Mastery' section, because i think thats where growth, corporate and individual growth can come from.

Personal mastery = discipline of personal growth and learning
Manager's fundamental task = 'providing the enabling conditions for people to lead the most enriching lives they can' - O' brien.

Interesting how Henry Ford talk about 'spiritual power'
'We rush too much with nervous hands and worried minds. We are impatient for results. What we need..is reinforcement of the soul by the invisible power waiting to be used.. I know there are reservoirs of spiritual strength from which we human beings thoughtlessly cut ourselves off..i firmly believe that mankind was once wiser about spiritual things than we are today. What we now only believe, they knew'.

Personal mastery becomes a discipline - an activity we integrate into our lives - embodies two underlying movements.
1) Continually clarifying what is important to us
2) Continually learning how to see current reality more clearly (i.e. know where you are now)

Creative tension = is the juxtaposition (=the act of putting side by side) of vision and current reality (what we want and where we are now)
Thus Personal mastery is learning how to generate and sustain creative tension in our lives.

Learning here refers the expanding the ability to achieve the desired result, and this should be a lifelong journey.

Here comes an interesting bit, whereby it sounds so 'Christian' instead.
For people with high level of personal mastery, they see the vision as a calling rather than simply a good idea. They see the current reality as an ally, not an enemy. They have learned how to perceive and work with forces of change rather than resist those forces...They feel connected to others and to life itself. They feel as if they are part of a larger creative process, which they can influence but cannot unilaterally control.

(Sounds pretty biblical stuff right! Interesting how some of these stuffs we could have learnt from God's word also!)

He later also noted that these people are in a CONTINUAL learning mode, never 'arrived' and that it is a process. These people are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. They are deeply self-confident. Because they see the journey as the reward.
These people also have the capacity for delayed gratification, which makes it possible for them to aspire to objectives which others would disregard, even considering 'the impact of their choices on succeeding generations'.

Argghhh!! This is only a small portion of that chapter.....won't go through all in this post.
But many things to digest on already.

-Danny