MIT Sloan Management Review

Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations, Leadership and Organizational Studies

The Leader’s New Work: Building Learning Organizations

By Peter M. Senge

October 15, 1990

OVER THE PAST two years, business academics and senior managers have begun talking about the notion of the learning organization. Ray Stata of Analog Devices put the idea succinctly in these pages last spring: “The rate at which organizations learn may become the only substantial source of competitive advantage.” And in late May of this year, at an MIT-sponsored conference entitled “Transforming Organizations,” two questions arose again and again: How can we build organizations in which continuous learning occurs? and, What kind of person can best lead the learning organization? This article, based on Senge’s recently published book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, begins to chart this new territory, describing new roles, skills, and tools for leaders who wish to develop learning organizations.

Buy article & permissions

HUMAN BEINGS are designed for learning. No one has to teach an infant to walk, or talk, or master the spatial relationships needed to stack eight building blocks that don’t topple. Children come fully equipped with an insatiable drive to explore and experiment. Unfortunately, the primary institutions of our society are oriented predominantly toward controlling rather than learning, rewarding individuals for performing for others rather than for cultivating their natural curiosity and impulse to learn. The young child entering school discovers quickly that the name of the game is getting the right answer and avoiding mistakes — a mandate no less compelling to the aspiring manager.

“Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people,” writes W. Edwards Deming, leader in the quality movement.1 “People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers — a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars, and on up through the university. On the job, people, teams, divisions are ranked — reward for the one at the top, punishment at the bottom. MBO quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.”

Ironically, by focusing on performing for someone else’s approval, corporations create the very conditions that predestine them to mediocre performance. Over... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

From The Magazine

Fall 2009

Special Report: Sustainability

8 Reasons That Sustainability Will Change Management

Michael S. Hopkins

Transparency, accidental innovation, trust, collaboration — as sustainability affects how the world works, so will it affect how business works in the world.

Intelligence: Management

Debunking Management Myths

Martha E. Mangelsdorf

In this interview, Henry Mintzberg questions some of the conventional wisdom about managerial work.