Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline is far more than what it's advertised as, a mere "business book". It's really a quick course in how to think more effectively, individually and in concert with others. Senge identifies what's important as:
- systems thinking --- understanding how complex nonlinear behavior arises from feedback loops (positive and negative), sources, sinks, delays, and perturbations ... in other words, developing gut-level intuition about sets of coupled differential equations (!)
- team learning --- understanding how people work together in groups to solve big problems
- mental modeling --- understanding how to build and use thought-experiments, and thereby how to gain knowledge from virtual experience
- shared vision --- understanding how to identify and focus with others on large-scale long-range goals
- personal mastery --- understanding how to think about what's genuinely important in one's own philosophy, and thereby how to live
So maybe The Fifth Discipline is a business book --- about the business of life.
See also ^zhurnal entries of 11 May 1999 ("TransientBehavior"), 29 April 1999 ("BennettOnStoicism"), and 30 May 1999 ("My Business").
Sunday, September 10, 2000 at 20:43:56 (EDT) = 2000-09-10
TopicThinking - TopicOrganizations
(correlates: WakeUpCall, AllSunsets, SeverePrivilege, ...)
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