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.

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.

You know how teachers tell you the magic word is 'please'? That's not true. The magic word is 'puke'. It will get you out of class faster than anything else.

We make our lives bigger or smaller, more expansive or more limited, according to the interpretation of life that is our story.

The problem with winter sports is that - follow me closely here - they generally take place in winter.

Interestingly, it's as though the gospel story of Jesus is the archetypal heroic journey, the embodiment of the very adventure that all people in every epoch have desired.

I don't ever want to be hugely famous because I had a little taste of it after 'East Is East' and 'Bend It.'

By the time the traditionally male lexicographers become interested in looking at fashion words, their origins are lost in the mists of time.

Everybody has to look at his or her own footprint and do the best they can. It's not about being perfect, it's about doing something. If we're looking for perfection, we'll never, ever get there.

There's this art form in songwriting that's incredibly difficult - to be really funny in a song and also really touching. I can't do that.

No one can go back, but everyone can go forward.

In Canada, what I find what people are afraid of or worried about is politicians who denigrate the importance of the resource sectors, which are the basis of our trading capacity.