If people don’t have their own vision, all they can do is ‘sign-up’ for someone else’s.
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.
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.
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.
In dialogue, individuals gain insights that simply could not be achieved individually.
The systems perspective tells us that we must look beyond individual mistakes or bad luck to understand important problems.
If you want to see the future of management education you should go to see Team Academy.
We need to be the authors of our own life.
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.
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.
Learning cannot be disassociated from action.
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.
When young people develop basic leadership and collaborative learning skills, they can be a formidable force for change.
We will never transform the prevailing system of management without transforming our prevailing system of education. They are the same system.
The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared “pictures of the future” that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance. In mastering this discipline, leaders learn the counterproductiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt.
When people who are actually creating a system start to see themselves as the source of their problems, they invariably discover a new capacity to create results they truly desire.
The committed person doesn’t play by the rules of the game. He is responsible for the game. If the rules of the game stand in the way of achieving the vision, he will find ways to change the rules.
The core leadership strategy is simple: be a model.
In Chapter 8, I argued that personal vision, by itself, is not the key to releasing the energy of the creative process. The key is “creative tension,” the tension between vision and reality. The most effective people are those who can “hold” their vision while remaining committed to seeing current reality clearly.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” said Victor Hugo.