Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley

I want to discuss two specific passages that stuck out to me for their similarities and direction:

"Organizations break down, despite individual brilliance and innovative products, because they are unable to pull their diverse functions and talents into a productive whole" ("A Shift of Mind," Peter Senge, 69).

"When our initial efforts fail to produce lasting improvements, we push harder...all the while blinding ourselves to how we are contributing to the obstacles ourselves" ("The Laws of the Fifth Discipline," Peter Senge, 59-60).

In retrospect, I should have read Senge's Chapter 4 before I read Chapter 5, but for some reason I flip-flopped them. His discussion of thinking of people as individual reactors instead of as parts of a whole is elaborated by the second quote; if, unlike the horse Boxer, we work as a whole or as a team, we are more able to see problems, to view future effects, and to gain new insights on what we are doing. When, like Boxer, we work alone and incessantly at one objective we are blinded by that objective. The step-by-step action plan disintegrates and the objective becomes overwhelming. The "individual brilliance" of the first quote becomes destructive.

This relates directly to Margaret Wheatley's discussion of "self-organization." Working as individuals, we are in the realm that resists change because we are blinded; as a team, we are able to identify the changes and those opportunities that are so created.