In the Machine Age, the company itself became a machine – a machine for making money.
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.
Governments, especially democratic ones, are short-term and nationalistic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We learn together in teams. This involves a shift from a spirit of advocacy to a spirit of enquiry.
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.
The easy way out usually leads back in.
In great teams conflict becomes productive.
When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.
The capacity of a human community to shape it’s future.
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.
All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift.
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.
In some ways clarifying a vision is easy. A more difficult challenge comes in facing current reality.
Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.
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.
Don’t push growth; remove the factors limiting growth.