Archive for November, 2006

The 5th Discipline

OVERVIEW
In his book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge details his model of a “learning organization,” which he defines as “an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.” A learning organization excels at both adaptive learning–also known as survival learning–and generative learning.
THE TOOL
Senge’s learning organization model consists of the following five disciplines:

Systems thinking–Senge attests that we must look at the patterns that connect the larger system. Systems thinkers cure headaches by removing the cause, rather than simply ingesting aspirin. They pay careful attention to how different tasks and functions interact. Systems thinkers believe that by examining these patterns of interplay, we can better pinpoint the important issues.

Personal mastery–Senge stresses the significance of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, focusing our energies, developing patience, and seeing reality objectively.

Shared vision–Senge defines this discipline as the “picture of the future.” A shared vision is intuitive and instinctive; it’s not something that’s learned by rote. A shared vision is also a collective experience–it’s the cumulative total of each participant’s personal vision.

Team learning–Senge’s fourth discipline states that any group’s collective IQ will always be much higher than an individual’s IQ. The only way to begin building group IQ is to open the channels of communication within the group and start talking to one another.

Mental models–Senge defines mental models as the deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, and even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world. Since how we act is based on our impressions of our surrounding environment, it’s imperative that we recognize and re-evaluate our mental models and preconceived assumptions.

Senge’s five components of a learning organization are all interrelated. Personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, and mental models make up the foundation of the organization. And systems thinking is the cement that holds it all together. In order for the learning organization to work, each of the five disciplines must be developed simultaneously and integrated with one another.

Applying Senge’s model to the typical corporate mission of “increasing shareholder value” is insightful. The Fifth Discipline calls this vision shortsighted, since it does not consider what leads up to the increase in shareholder value. The typical corporate mission limits the organization’s thinking to only one aspect of a problem. As an example, Senge states that a more “enlightened” corporate mission would include customer service and treatment of employees in its focus.

Senge further delineates his model of a learning organization through his 11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline:

Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions.
The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
Behavior grows better before it grows worse.
The easy way out usually leads back in.
The cure can be worse than the disease.
Faster is slower.
Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
Small changes can produce big results–but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
You can have your cake and eat it too–but not all at once.
Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
There is no blame.

SUMMARY
The Fifth Discipline is a tough book to get through–many people start it, but few finish. If you manage to make it to the end, you will gain ideas you can apply over and over again. It will probably take at least two readings for all the material covered to sink in. While the Senge doesn’t present any quick fixes, he provides new language and tools that can help turn your organization into a learning organization.

Practice the Power of Intention (by Wayne Dyer)
See the beauty in everything
Find your purpose
Grasp the essence if infinity
Be humble
Banish doubt
Transcend your circumstances
Respect yourself
Monitor your inner dialogue
Be kind
Take no offense
Extend love
Overcome ego’s hold
Express gratitude
Be at peace with everyone
Act of if
Feel abundant
Maintain an attitude of allowing
Create a stress-free life
Attract the right people
Be infinitely patient
Acknowledge your creativity and genius
Listen to your thoughts
Raise your energy vibration
Optimize your health
Convert hate into love
Be receptive
Practice unbending intent
Release others’ expectations
Avoid low-energy substances
Perform anonymous acts of kindness
Forgive everyone
Recognize how you view others
Feel good
Honor your body temple
Think from the end
Surround yourself with high-energy people
Feel superior to no one
Use your imagination
Be aware of your immortal self
Attract what you desire
Detach yourself from your stuff
Radiate serenity and peace
Meditate regularly
Expand your reality
Be a host to God
Let go of your need to have more
Affirm your good health
Appreciate everything and everyone
Change your perception

The Laws of Simplicity

design | business | technology | lifestyle
I wrote The Laws of Simplicity in late 2005 to early 2006 to get my thoughts down about simplicity. In the course of 100-pages, I outline the Ten Laws as used on this website.

laws, books (12) Jun 12, ’06

Law 1: Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
> Excerpted from Page 1 of my book, The Laws of Simplicity

The easiest way to simplify a system is to remove functionality. Today’s DVD, for instance, has too many buttons if all you want to do is play a movie. A solution could be to remove the buttons for Rewind, Forward, Eject, and so forth until only one button remains: Play.
But what if you want to replay a favorite scene? Or pause the movie while you take that all-important bathroom break? The fundamental question is, where’s the balance between simplicity and complexity?

How simple can
you make it?

How complex does
it have to be?

On the one hand, you want a product or service to be easy to use; on the other hand you want it to do everything that a person might want it to do.
The process of reaching an ideal state of simplicity can be truly complex, so allow me to simplify it for you. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. When in doubt, just remove. But be careful of what you remove.

laws, 1/ reduce (9) Jul 23, ’06

Law 2: Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
> Excerpted from Pages 11-12 of my book, The Laws of Simplicity

The home is usually the first battleground that comes to mind when facing the daily challenge of managing complexity. Stuff just seems to multiply. There are three consistent strategies for achieving simplicity in the living realm: 1) buy a bigger house, 2) put everything you don’t really need into storage, or 3) organize your existing assets in a systematic fashion.
These typical solutions have mixed results. At first, a larger home lowers the clutter to space ratio. But ultimately, the greater space enables more clutter. The storage route increases the amount of empty space, but it can be immediately filled in with more stuff that will need to go into storage. The final option of implementing a system takes the form of things like closet organizers, that help bring structure to the chaos as long as the organizing principles can be obeyed. I find it compelling that all three clutter-reducing industries—the real estate market, easy storage services such as Door to Door, and rational furnishing retailers like the Container Store—are booming.
Concealing the magnitude of clutter, either through spreading it out or hiding it, is an unnuanced approach that is guaranteed to work by the first Law of reduce. There are only two questions to ask in the de-complicating procedure: “What to hide?” and “Where to put it?” Without much thought and enough hands on deck, a messy room becomes free of clutter in no time, and remains so for at least a few days or a week.
However, in the long term an effective scheme for organization is necessary to achieve definitive success in taming complexity. In other words, the more challenging question of “What goes with what?” needs to be added to the list. For instance in a closet there can be groupings of like items such as neckties, shirts, slacks, jacket, socks, and shoes. A thousand-piece wardrobe can be organized into six categories, and be dealt with at the aggregate level and achieve greater manageability. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. Of course this will only hold if the number of groups is significantly less than the number of items to be organized.

laws, 2/ organize (1) Jul 23, ’06

Law 3: Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity.
> Excerpted from Pages 23-24 of my book, The Laws of Simplicity

The average person spends at least an hour a day waiting in line. Add to this the uncountable seconds, minutes, weeks spent waiting for something that might have no line at all.
Some of that waiting is subtle. We wait for water to come out of the faucet when we turn the knob. We wait for water on the stove to boil, and start to feel impatient. We wait for the seasons to change. Some of the waiting we do is less subtle, and can often be tense or annoying: waiting for a Web page to load, waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or waiting for the results of a dreaded medical test.
No one likes to suffer the frustration of waiting. Thus all of us, consumers and companies alike, often try to find ways to beat the ticking hand of time. We go out of our way to find the quickest option or any other means to reduce our frustration. When any interaction with products or service providers happens quickly, we attribute this efficiency to the perceived simplicity of experience.
Achieving notable efficiencies in speed are exemplified by overnight delivery services like FedEx and even the ordering process for a McDonald’s hamburger. When forced to wait, life seems unnecessarily complex. Savings in time feel like simplicity. And we are thankfully loyal when it happens, which is rare.

laws, 3/ time (1) Jul 23, ’06

Law 4: Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler.
> Excerpted from Pages 33-34 of my book, The Laws of Simplicity

Operating a screw is deceptively simple. Just mate the grooves atop the screw’s head to the appropriate tip—slotted or Phillips—of a screwdriver. What happens next is not as simple, as you may have noted while observing a child or a woefully sheltered adult turning the screwdriver in the wrong direction.
My children remember this rule through a mnemonic taught by my spouse, “righty tighty, lefty loosy.” Personally I use the analogy of a clock, and map the clockwise motion of the hands to the positive penetration curve of the screw. Both methods are subject to a second layer of knowledge: knowing right versus left, or knowing what direction the hands of a clock turn. Thus operating a screw is not as simple as it appears. And it’s such an apparently simple object!
So while the screw is a simple design, you need to know which way to turn it. Knowledge makes everything simpler . This is true for any object, no matter how difficult. The problem with taking time to learn a task is that you often feel you are wasting time, a violation of the third Law of time. We are well aware of the dive-in-head-first approach—“I don’t need the instructions, let me just do it.” But in fact this method often takes longer than following the directions in the manual.
Law 5: Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other.
> Excerpted from Pages 45-46 of my book, The Laws of Simplicity

Nobody wants to eat only dessert. Even a child that is allowed to eat ice cream three meals a day will eventually tire his sweet tooth. By the same token, nobody wants to have only simplicity. Without the counterpoint of complexity, we could not recognize simplicity when we see it. Our eyes and senses thrive, and sometimes recoil, whenever we experience differences.
Acknowledging contrast helps to identify qualities that we desire—which are often subject to change. I don’t personally prefer the color pink, but I do like it as a dash of brightness in a drab sea of olive green. The pink appears bold and vibrant as compared with its dark and muted surroundings. We know how to appreciate something better when we can compare it to something else.
Simplicity and complexity need each other. The more complexity there is in the market, the more that something simpler stands out. And because technology will only continue to grow in complexity, there is a clear economic benefit to adopting a strategy of simplicity that will help set your product

apart. That said, establishing a feeling of simplicity in design requires making complexity consciously available in some explicit form. This relationship can be manifest in either the same object or experience, or in contrast with other offerings in the same category—like the simplicity of the iPod in comparison to its more complex competitors in the MP3 player market.

laws, 5/differences Jul 23, ’06

Law 6: Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
laws, 6/context Jul 23, ’06

Law 7: Emotion
More emotions are better than less.
laws, 7/emotion (10) Jul 23, ’06

Law 8: Trust
In simplicity we trust.
laws, 8/trust (2) Jul 23, ’06

Law 9: Failure
Some things can never be made simple.

Law 10: The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.