The Fifth Discipline contains many brilliant and yet simple concepts. It is a must read, but not a first read, for struggling managers.

Peter Senge’s book with the black cover and the big gold V on the front started appearing as a display item on the shelves in managers’ offices sometime around 1997.And there it sits, like most management texts, as does every book that is the latest trend or fad, for appearance’s sake, because nine times out of ten, a management book on a manager’s shelf has never been read before, much less studied.

I had seen this book regularly for years, and dismissed it as I had most other management texts as being full of new buzzwords for managers to throw around in their efforts to impress one another with their professionalism and big vocabularies. Often, managers are little better than Hollywood producers in that they focus almost entirely on image and despite having a gigantic lexicon of trendy, manager-sounding words coming out of their mouths, they sometimes have no idea what they are talking about.

Thus, I was suspicious that this book along with books about the moving of cheese and other corporate propaganda was masquerading as substance yet merely the latest fad book to sit on shelves unread.

This week, I finally broke down and read my copy which I purchased at the local junk store where I usually go to drop off my used belongings for my annual tax write-off for charitable donations. I often find good management and leadership books have been donated and are sitting on the shelves for less than a dollar.

I can report that the Fifth Discipline was entirely worth the 95 cents that I paid for it, although I look back at the many hours that were required for me to tear through this monstrosity of 390 pages of management speak and wish that I had many of them back, for Peter Senge, while clearly brilliant, has authored up a disorganized mish-mash of concepts which are sunk at the bottom of a swamp of repetitive preaching that drones on like a neighbor running a noisy pressure washer on his driveway filling the Saturday afternoon sky with noxious noise.

Senge’s book is about as far away from Peter Drucker as you can get in terms of writing style. Where Drucker literally blows your mind’s circuits with a fire hose blast of concentrated information, I found Senge’s book to test my patience. Several times I angrily threw the book down and walked away from it. I was entirely aware at all times that the man was making valid points, but he was so inefficient in his presentation that I felt like I was wading through waist deep water to get at them.

My strongest criticisms…

The book’s title should have been The Five Disciplines, because that is what it is about, even though Senge cannot bring himself to number them and identify them clearly at any point in his work. He merely refers to them off-hand and talks about a “fifth discipline” which he never identifies. Finally, at the very end of the book, the five disciplines are listed one at a time. Overall, the book is too long and the concepts within are a bit buried within verbose passages that could have benefited from liberal editing to reduce the word count.

Senge talks about the seven learning disabilities of organizations, and with these I must agree. His laws of the Fifth Discipline are also very powerful, and the concept of systems thinking is, while hardly revolutionary, very brilliant.

When Senge hits on something solid, it really shows, such as his 7 attitudes toward vision, a very powerful concept indeed.

Senge seems to express a hope that managers will read this book, revolutionize how they manage, and find themselves and their organizations more productive because of improved communication, problem solving, and a unifying vision which causes members of the organization to interact in a healthy, aligned fashion for the good of the organization.

Read this book, and forgive yourself for skimming. Make sure you read the last pages first, especially the text around the little pyramids, and then make notes on what the five disciplines are. That way, you will have a more focused approach as to how to read this book. Learn about the disabilities, the laws, and the attitudes towards vision.

Concepts you will learn in The Fifth Discipline:

• The Five Disciplines
• Seven Learning Disabilities
• The Laws of the Fifth Discipline
• Circles of causality
• Reinforcing vs. Balancing system feedback
• Creative tension
• Attitudes to Vision
• Behavior vs. Conclusions

If you are new to the world of reading about how to manage and lead, do not start with this book. This is advanced stuff, and you’ll need to have read some of the more basic books before you go here and find anything useful. The Seven Habits by Covey, The Effective Executive by Drucker, the Practice of Management by Drucker, and everything by Kevin Blanchard comes before this book. I’d also recommend Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power and some Machiavelli first, as well.

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization