Peter Senge quotes:

Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset. As people have been noting for years, the majority of strategic initiatives that are driven from the top are marginally effective - at best.

Business has a way of talking about how to create value, which is in some way isn't bad... We just need to start thinking about if the value we want to create is consistent with all social and environmental well being.

How do you know what people value? Well, you watch what they buy. How do we know what products to create? Well, it's based on what they value.

In great teams, conflict becomes productive. The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking, for discovering new solutions no one individual would have come to on his own.

[Seeds Are Small.] Becoming a force of nature doesn't mean that all of our aspirations must be "grand." First steps are often small, and initial visions that focus energy effectively often address immediate problems. What matters is engagement in the service of a larger purpose rather than lofty aspirations that paralyze action. Indeed, it's a dangerous trap to believe that we can pursue onlhy "great visions."

Like a pane of glass framing and subtly distorting our vision, mental models determine what we see.

All great things have small beginnings.

People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them-in effect, they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. The do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.

Governments, especially democratic ones, are short-term and nationalistic.

I'm really interested in how you create a whole new economy of recycling. It's literally the 'underground economy.' All this stuff that on the surface creates growth and profit, ends up with waste, junk, and CO2. So how do you make it economic to bring new players into the ball game?

When all is said and done, the only change that will make a difference is the transformation of the human heart.

The company-as-a-machine model fits how people think about and operate conventional companies. And, of course, it fits how people think about changing conventional companies: You have a broken company, and you need to change it, to fix it.

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.

The discipline of personal mastery...starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us (and) living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.

Learning organizations organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.

New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works...images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models - surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works - promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.

When you ask people what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It becomes quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest.

Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo.

Innovation requires resources to invest, and you can see many companies pulling back and going into an intense protective mode in a major extended period of financial distress.

A learning organization is an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.

Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.

Team learning is the Process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its members desire. It builds on the discipline of developing a shared vision. It also builds on personal mastery, for talented teams are made up of talented individuals.

One industrial age belief is that GDP or GNP is a measure of progress. I don't care if you're the President of China or the U.S., if your country doesn't grow, you're in trouble. But we all know that beyond a certain level of material need, further material acquisition doesn't make people happier.

If you are realistic about how our present society works, the economic clout - and a lot of the political clout, frankly - is in the business sector. And it's the locus of innovation.

In some ways clarifying a vision is easy. A more difficult challenge comes in facing current reality.

An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as important as a clear vision.

In our ordinary experiences with other people, we know that approaching each other in a machinelike way gets us into trouble.

Many in positions of authority lack the capabilities to truly lead. They are not credible. They do not command genuine respect. They are not committed to serve. They are not continually learning and growing. They are not wise.

Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset.

The most universal challenge that we face is the transition from seeing our human institutions as machines to seeing them as embodiments of nature.

A shared vision is not an idea...it is rather, a force in people's hearts...at its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question 'What do we want to create?

You cannot have a learning organisation without a shared vision...A shared vision provides a compass to keep learning on course when stress develops.

Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.

Business and human endeavors are systems...we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.

When executives lead as teachers, stewards, and designers, they fill roles that are much more subtle and long-term than those of power-wielding hierarchical leaders.

Over the long run, superior performance depends on superior learning.

Leadership exists when people are no longer victims of circumstances but participate in creating new circumstances. Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world. Ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities.

There's a lot of American kids think their food comes from the grocery store and the concept of seasonality has no meaning to them whatsoever.

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

You go to any MBA program, and you will be taught the theory of the firm, that the purpose of the firm is the maximization of return on invested capital. I always thought this was a kind of lunacy.

In the Machine Age, the company itself became a machine - a machine for making money.

The Industrial Age is not sustainable. It's not sustainable in ecological terms, and it's not sustainable in human terms.

A unique relationship develops among team members who enter into dialogue regularly. They develop a deep trust that cannot help but carry over to discussions. They develop a richer understanding of the uniqueness of each person's point of view.

Additional problems are the offspring of poor decisions. When inquiry and advocacy are combined, the goal is no longer 'to win the argument', but to find the best argument.

All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift.

Businesses and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved.

By using the systems archetypes we can learn how to â??structure? the details into a coherent picture of the forces at play.

Commitment to the truth...means a relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories of why things are the way they are. It means continually broadening our awareness. It also means continually deepening our understanding of the structures underlying current events.

Consider prejudice. Once a person begins to accept a stereotype of a particular group, that "thought" becomes an active agent, "participating" in shaping how he or she interacts with another person who falls in that stereotyped class. In turn, the tone of their interaction influences the other person's behaviour. The prejudiced person can't see how his prejudice shapes what he "sees" and how he acts. In some sense, if he did, he would no longer be prejudiced. To operate, the "thought" of prejudice must remain hidden to its holder

Courage is simply doing whatever is needed in pursuit of the vision

Dialogue starts with the willingness to challenge our own thinking, to recognize that any certainty we have is, at best, a hypothesis about the world.

Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.

Don't push growth; remove the factors limiting growth.

How has the world of the child changed in the last 150 years?" The answer is. "It's hard to imagine any way in which it hasn't changed.They're immersed in all kinds of stuff that was unheard of 150 years ago, and yet if you look at schools today versus 100 years ago, they are more similar than dissimilar.

I do not believe great organizations have ever been built by trying to emulate another, any more than individual greatness is achieved by trying to copy another 'great person'.

I often say that leadership is deeply personal and inherently collective. That's a paradox that effective leaders have to embrace.

I think the terminology I would use is 'a continuous process of reflection'. I've always thought of only two questions that have mattered to me personally. One is what is really needed in the world and the second is what's really important to me and how these two intersect. It's always been a reflective process - spiraling around these two poles.

If people don't have their own vision, all they can do is 'sign-up' for someone else's.

If there is genuine potential for growth, build capacity in advance of demand, as a strategy for creating demand. Hold the vision, especially as regards assessing key performance and evaluating whether capacity to meet potential demand is adequate.

If you want real, significant, sustainable change, you need talented, committed local line leaders. If the line manager is not innovating, then innovation is not going to occur.

If you want to see the future of management education you should go to see Team Academy.

In a sluggish system, aggressiveness produces instability. Either be patient or make the system more responsive.

In dialogue, individuals gain insights that simply could not be achieved individually.

In great teams conflict becomes productive.

In the absence of a great dream pettiness prevails. Shred visions foster risk taking, courage and innovation. Keeping the end in mind creates the confidence to make decisions even in moments of crisis.

It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism.

It takes courage and skill to be unambiguous and clear.

It's common to say that trees come from seeds. But how can a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources need to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or environment within which the tree grows. But the seed does provide something that is crucial : a place where the whole of the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges.

Knowledge is constructed, not transferred

Learning cannot be disassociated from action.

Learning is all about connections, and through our connections with unique people we are able to gain a true understanding of the world around us.

Learning to see the structures within which we operate begins a process of freeing ourselves from previously unseen forces and ultimately mastering the ability to work with them and change them.

Many children struggle in schools... because the way they are being taught is incompatible with the way they learn.

Mastery of creative tension brings out the capacity for perseverance and patience. Time is an ally.

Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.

Most of us at one time or another have been part of a great 'team', a group of people who functioned together in an extraordinary way-who trusted one another, who complemented each other's strengths and compensated for each other's limitations, who had common goals that were larger than an individual's goals, and who produced extraordinary results ... the team that became great didn't start off great-it learned how to produce extraordinary results.

People with high levels of personal mastery...cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg or see with one eye.

Perhaps for the first time in history, human-kind has the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb; to foster far greater interdependency than anyone can manage, and to accelerate change far faster than anyone's ability to keep pace.

Personal mastery teaches us to choose. Choosing is a courageous act: picking the results and actions which you will make into your destiny.

Reality is made up of circles but we see straight lines.

Small changes can produce big results - but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.

Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner.

Teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. This is where the "rubber stamp meets the road"; unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn.

The capacity of a human community to shape it's future.

The care leadership strategy is simple: be a model. Commit yourself to your own personal mastery. Talking about personal mastery may open people's minds somewhat, but actions always speak louder than words. There is nothing more powerful you can do to encourage others in their quest for personal mastery than to be serious in your own quest.

The difference between a healthy group or organization and an unhealthy one lies in its members' awareness and ability to acknowledge their felt needs to conform.

The easy way out usually leads back in.

The gap between vision and current reality is also a source of energy. If there were no gap, there would be no need for any action to move towards the vision. We call this gap creative tension.

The Industrial Age is not sustainable. Its not sustainable in ecological terms, and its not sustainable in human terms.

The key to success isn't just thinking about what we are doing but doing something about what we are thinking.

The most effective people are those who can "hold" their vision while remaining committed to seeing current reality clearly

The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.

The problems with willpower are many, but they may hardly be noticed by the person focused narrowly on success. First, there is little economy of means; in systems thinking terms, we act without leverage. We attain our goals, but the effort is enormous and we may find ourselves exhausted and wondering if it was worth it when we have succeeded. Ironically, people hooked on willpower may actually look for obstacles to overcome, dragons to slay, and enemies to vanquish--to remind themselves and others of their own prowess.

The rate at which organizations learn may soon become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.

The world is made of Circles And we think in straight Lines

Theres a lot of American kids think their food comes from the grocery store and the concept of seasonality has no meaning to them whatsoever.

Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life

Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we were never able to do.

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning.

Trusting people to be creative and constructive when given more freedom does not imply an overly optimistic belief in the perfectibility of human nature. It is, rather, belief that the inevitable errors and sins of the human condition are far better overcome by individuals working together in an environment of trust and freedom and mutual respect than by individuals working under a multitude of rules, regulations, and restraints imposed upon them by another group of imperfect individuals.

We need to be the authors of our own life.

We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we forget why we are on that path in the first place. The result is that we only have a dim, or even inaccurate, view of what's really important to us.

We tend to think that, in a traditional organisation, people are producing results because management wants results, but the essence of a high-quality organisation is people producing results because they want the results. It's puzzling we find that hard to understand, that if people are really enjoying, they'll innovate, they'll take risks, they'll have trust with one another because they are really committed to what they're doing and it's fun

When I look at efforts to create change in big companies over the past 10 years, I have to say that there's enough evidence of success to say that change is possible - and enough evidence of failure to say that it isn't likely. Both of those lessons are important.

When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.

When teams are truly learning, not only are they producing extraordinary results, but the individual members are growing more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise.

When there is genuine vision(as opposed to the all-too-familiar vision statement), people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to.

Willpower is so common among highly successful people that many see its characteristics as synonymous with success.

Yet, most every corporate effort to graft this truly innovative practices into their culture has failed because, again and again, people reduce the living practice of AAR's to a sterile technique.

We learn together in teams. This involves a shift from a spirit of advocacy to a spirit of enquiry.

Leadership is about creating new realities.

The faster we go, the slower we need to be.

The systems perspective tells us that we must look beyond individual mistakes or bad luck to understand important problems.