Peter Senge Quotes

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

You cannot force commitment, what you can do…You nudge a little here, inspire a little there, and provide a role model. Your primary influence is the environment you create.

All great things have small beginnings.

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 world is made of Circles And we think in straight Lines

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing ‘patterns of change’ rather than static ‘snapshots.’

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Knowledge is constructed, not transferred

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.

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

Leadership is about creating new realities.

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

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

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

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.

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.

Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner.

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

The easy way out usually leads back in.

Learning cannot be disassociated from action.

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

It takes courage and skill to be unambiguous and clear.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.