1. Work at all levels must become
more ‘learningful’ (Peter Senge, 1990)
A brief introduction to Peter Senge’s Five Learning
Disciplines in the context of learning organizations
K. Muecher (2016)

2. The idea of learning organizations was popularized
by Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline (1990)
Senge identified five learning disciplines:
1. Personal mastery
2. Mental models
3. Shared vision
4. Team learning
5. Systems thinking
… what do they mean for you and for your organization??

3. 1. Learning for personal mastery
Personal mastery is about aspiration, concerning what you as an
individual want to achieve.
Good for you and your organization:
- Your personal aspiration supports, or initiates positive change
- Your need for achievement impacts your immediate environment,
stimulating potential growth of a culture of focusing energies,
developing patience, and being objective
- Your vision and aspiration motivates others to strive for positive
outcomes

4. 2. Learning for mental models
Mental models stimulate and support reflection and inquiry,
concerning the constant refinement of thinking and developing
awareness.
Good for you and your organization:
- You are free of opinions and judgement
- Your mental models are not ingrained in past experiences and beliefs
- You understand underlying causes and see connections and
interdependencies
- You take actions based on proven realities, not assumptions and
opinions

5. 3. Learning for a shared vision
Building a shared vision is a practice of unearthing commonly shared
pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment rather than
mere compliance.
Good for you and your organization:
- You support a collective commitment to a common sense of purpose
and actions to achieve that purpose
- You invite others to contribute and achieve, rather than enrol them
- You share your energy for a purpose and harness that of others
- You strive for systems thinking enabling people to understand what
and how the organization has created

6. 4. Learning for team learning
Team learning builds on the discipline of personal mastery. It is about
group interaction, concerning collective thinking and action to achieve
common goals.
Good for you and your organization:
- You stimulate dialogue and genuine thinking together
- You demolish assumptions and ingrained beliefs and past experiences
- You explore complex issues, draw on talents, knowledge, and
experiences of one another
- You build trust within your team and within the organization

7. 5. Learning for systems thinking
Systems thinking means to understand interdependency and
complexity, and the role of feedback in system development. It is about
seeing the big picture.
Good for you and your organization:
- You recognise interrelationships and patterns of change
- You are able to determine cause and effect that is never just
influenced in one direction
- You value the feedback process of reinforcing realistic expectations
and balancing realistic work outputs
- You recognise the needs for change and identify balancing processes

8. Summary
Senge’s five learning disciplines suggest a hierarchy of learning from
personal to the collective system, ultimately creating learning
organizations.
This presentation is a very brief introduction – further reading below:
The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization:
Second edition, Random House Business; 2nd Revised edition (6 April
2006)
https://changingwinds.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/the-five-learning-
disciplines.pdf