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