The Fifth Discipline (Peter Senge)

Nearly everything we do or experience is part of a system. It is the very rare circumstance where we can attribute cause and effect to independent entities. Yet we do it all the time.

"The Fed/housing bubble/Lehman Brothers caused the financial break-down."
"A public option will fix healthcare."
"I'm eating because I'm hungry."

All these statements have truth in them, but they are incomplete. They are incomplete because they leave out the system. They leave out the history, the other players, the unintended consequences, the emotions, and all the other subtle, critical influences.

The 5th discipline of Senge's title attempts to capture all that other stuff through "systems thinking." Everything is connected, and only by broadening our view to encompass the whole system will we ever understand what's really going on. If not, unintended consequences will reign supreme.

The other four disciplines, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning, all feed into systems thinking, particularly as part of an organization. At one time, Shell excelled at this, but I'm no longer convinced it's part of the culture.

Although somewhat academic in style, the world today is too complex not to be moving toward thinking in terms of systems. If you're not doing it now, this classic is well worth reading.