THE LEADER'S NEW WORK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP98-00412R000300090007-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Content Type: MISC

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THE LEADER'S
NEW WORK
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO
"I talk with people all over the country about learning organizations
and 'metanoia,' and the response is always very positive," says
b~ m Hanover's Bill O'Brien."If this type of organization is so widely
preferred, why don't people create such organizations? I think the
answer is leadership. People have no real comprehension of the type
of commitment it requires to build such an organization."
Learning organizations demand a new view of leadership. My col-
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working with a product development team whose members became
committed to a shared vision of a dramatic new product, which they
-- - - - - ---- -- - -
"Once the vision of the product and how they would develop it
began to crystallize," says Kiefer, "the team began to work in an
extraordinary way. The energy and enthusiasm were palpable. Each
individual felt a genuine sense of responsibility for how the team as a
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whole functioned, not just for `doing his part.' Openness to new
ideas shifted dramatically and technical problems that had been
blocking their progress began to get solved.
"But a new problem emerged. The prevailing leadership style in
the organization was the traditional style-clear directions and well-
intentioned manipulation to get people to work together toward com-
mon goals. The team leader recognized that the skills and behaviors
that had made him an effective leader in the past would now be
counterproductive. People with a sense of their own vision and com-
mitment would naturally reject efforts of a leader to `get them com-
He literally did not know what to do, now that he had a self-
mitted.'
directed team with a clear vision, that was learning how to learn
together. "
Our traditional views of leaders-as special people who set the
direction, make the key decisions, and energize the troops-are
deeply rooted in an individualistic and nonsystemic worldview.
Especially in the West, leaders are heroes-great men (and oc-
casionally women) who "rise to the fore" in times of crises. Our
prevailing leadership myths are still captured by the image of the
captain of the cavalry leading the charge to rescue the settlers from
the attacking Indians. So long as such myths prevail, they rein-
force a focus on short-term events and charismatic heroes rather
than on systemic forces and collective learning. At its heart, the
traditional view of leadership is based on assumptions of people's
powerlessness, their lack of personal vision and inability to master
the forces of change, deficits which can be remedied only by a few
great leaders.
The new view of leadership in learning organizations centers on
subtler and more important tasks. In a learning organization, leaders
are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for
building organizations where people continually expand their capa-
bilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared
mental models-that is, they are responsible for learning.
This new view is vital. When all is said and done, learning organi-
zations will remain a "good idea," an intriguing but distant vision
until people take a stand for building such organizations. Taking this
stand is the first leadership act, the start of inspiring (literally "to
breathe life into") the vision of learning organizations. In the ab-
sence of this stand, the learning disciplines remain mere collections
of tools and technique-means of solving problems rather than cre-
ating something genuinely new.
Imagine that your organization is an ocean liner, and that you are
"the leader." What is your role?
I have asked this question of groups of managers many times. The
most common answer, not surprisingly, is "the captain." Others
say, "The navigator, setting the direction." Still others say, "The
helmsman, actually controlling the direction," or "the engineer
down there stoking the fire, providing energy," or, "the social direc-
tor, making sure everybody's enrolled, involved, and communicat-
ing." While these are legitimate leadership roles, there is another
which, in many ways, eclipses them all in importance. Yet, rarely
does anyone think of it.
The neglected leadership role is the designer of the ship. No one
has a more sweeping influence than the designer. What good does it
do for the captain to say, "Turn starboard thirty degrees," when the
designer has built a rudder that will turn only to port, or which takes
six hours to turn to starboard? It's fruitless to be the leader in an
organization that is poorly designed. Isn't it interesting that so few
managers think of the ship's designer when they think of the leader's
role?
Although "leader as designer" is neglected today, it touches a
chord that goes back thousands of years. To paraphrase Lao-tzu,
the bad leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he
who the people praise. The great leader is he who the people say,
"We did it ourselves."
Lao-tzu also illuminates part of the reason why design is a ne-
glected dimension of leadership: little credit goes to the designer.
The functions of design are rarely visible; they take place behind the
scenes. The consequences that appear today are the result of work
done long in the past, and work today will show its benefits far in the
future. Those who aspire to lead out of a desire to control, or gain
fame, or simply to be "at the center of the action" will find little to
attract them to the quiet design work of leadership. Not that this
type of leadership is without its rewards. Those who practice it find
deep satisfaction in empowering others and being part of an organi-
zation capable of producing results that people truly care about. In
'fact, they find these rewards more enduring than the power and
praise granted to traditional leaders.
For example, consider the role of systems thinking in a leader's
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work. Joanne, the president of a new division that is growing rapidly,
recognizes a limits to growth structure that could undermine continu-
ing growth: as the number of managers in the new division grows,
the diversity of management styles will increase, undermining the
coherence of vision and operating values that has made the division
a success to date. The "limiting factor" will be the division's capac-
ity to assimilate new managers. Rather than waiting for the problem
to arise and then dealing with it, Joanne develops a selection and
self-assessment process that helps new managers understand the
current vision and values and see if their own style is compatible;
and she allocates a significant portion of her own time to working
with new managers. The result is continuing growth of the division.
Given our normal "leader as hero" viewpoint, this is not leadership:
There is no crisis-in fact, there isn't even a problem that gets
solved. The "problem" of inconsistency in values and vision simply
never develops; it wasn't "solved," it was "dissolved." This is the
hallmark of effective design.
As this story illustrates, the design work of leaders includes de-
signing an organization's policies, strategies, and "systems." But it
goes beyond that. Designing policies and strategies that no one can
implement because they don't understand or agree with the thinking
behind them has little effect. To appreciate the new view of "leader
as designer," let's return to the DC-3.
The critical design function, without which the DC-3 would never
have succeeded, involved integrating the five component technolo-
gies. For example, designing the engine specifications required un-
derstanding the effects of the variable pitch propellers, the wing
flaps, the retractable landing gear, as well as the stress characteris-
tics of the new monocoque body. So, too, did the wing and body
design depend on the engine's thrust. The task of integrating the
component technologies was more critical to the success of the DC-
3 than the task of designing any single component.
Design is, by its nature, an integrative science because design
requires making something work in practice. "We would not con-
sider a car well designed," says Herman Miller's Ed Simon, "if it
had the best transmission, the best seats, and the best engine, but
was terrible to ride in and impossible to control on wet roads.; The
essence of design is seeing how the parts fit together to perform as a
whole."
So too does the crucial design work for leaders of learning organi-
zations concern integration. As background for this chapter I inter-
viewed three leaders who have been part of our MIT research
program for several years, Simon, Bill O'Brien of Hanover Insur-
ance, and Ray Stata of Analog Devices. Each pointed to design as a
critical function of leadership and each saw design as an integrative
task. "The new job description of leaders," according to Stata, "will
involve design of the organization and its policies. This will require
seeing the company as a system in which the parts are not only
internally connected, but also connected to the external environ-
ment, and clarifying how the whole system can work better." Or as
Simon put it, "We need a new generation of organizational archi-
tects. But to get there we must first correct basic misunderstandings
about the nature of business design. It's not just rearranging the
organization structure. We have to get away from the P&L statement
and design for the long term-based on understanding interdepen-
dencies. Most changes in organization structure are piecemeal reac-
tions to problems. Real designers are continually trying to
understand wholes."
Just as the DC-3 designers had to integrate the five component
technologies, crucial design work for leaders of learning organization
concerns integrating vision, values, and purpose, systems thinking,
and mental models-or more broadly, integrating all the learning
disciplines. It is the synergy of the disciplines that can propel an
organization to major breakthroughs in learning. As best we can tell
so far, all the disciplines are critical and must be developed. Leaders
must guard against slipping into a comfortable "groove" of relying
on particular disciplines, each of which, in isolation, will prove self-
limiting. This is why organizations that get fired up by vision can
become "vision junkies," just as organizations that come to "be-
lieve in" systems thinking as the answer to life's problems will reach
diminishing returns in their ongoing systems analyses.
This does not mean that all the disciplines must be developed
simultaneously. Though all are important, there are crucial questions
concerning sequencing and interactions among the disciplines. What
disciplines should be developed first? How can understanding in one
area lead to mastery in another? How do we sustain movement along
all critical dimensions and not become self-satisfied with our accom-
plishments in one area? These are the types of design questions that
leaders must ponder.
Most of the leaders with whom I have worked agree that the first
leadership design task concerns developing vision, values, and pur-
pose or mission. "Organization design is widely misconstrued as
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moving around boxes and lines," says Bill O'Brien. "The first task
...Of organizational design concerns designing the governing ideas-
the. purpose, vision, and core values by which people will live."
"Designing the organization as a whole," says Stata, "includes the
intangibles of even the more subtle values that knit things together.'"
Building shared vision is important early on because it fosters a
longer-term orientation and an imperative for learning. Systems
thinking is also important early on because managers are inherently
pragmatic and need insights into "current reality" as well as a pic-
ture of the future toward which they are moving. Some understand-
ing of mental models and the basics of bringing underlying
assumptions to the surface is also important early on. Introducing
conceptual- tools such as systems thinking in isolation from learning
how to work with mental models, both individually and in teams,
often proves disappointing. Managers believe that the purpose is to
.figure out the "system out there," not to discover inconsistencies in
their own ways of thinking.
because managers are often, justifiably, cautious in overemphasizing
personal growth. Freedom of individual choice is critical in any or-
ganization effort to foster personal mastery. As already discussed,
what matters most is the visible behavior of people in leadership
positions in sharing their own personal visions and demonstrating
their commitment to the truth.
These statements are broad guidelines at best. The art of leader
ship involves sizing up the players and needs in each situation and
crafting strategies suitable to the time and setting. For example,
some organizations have a high ethic of collaboration, which makes
them especially receptive to team learning and shared vision. Yet, in
the same organization, people might have difficulties with systems
thinking, which they might see as confronting established mental
models and operating policies. In a large organization, different com-
binations of learning disciplines will be developing in different oper-
ating units; and leadership is operating at many levels, from local
leaders who are bringing the disciplines to bear on current problems,
to central leaders who are addressing global issues and organization-
wide learning processes.
Even the criteria that you'd bring to bear in making these choices
are not yet certain. Do you start with the "easiest disciplines," that
is; the disciplines where there is the greatest readiness and least
resistance? In general, I find people eager to master new learning
disciplines so long as they can connect those skills to important
problems and personal learning needs. But if there is resistance to
certain disciplines, do you push or do you hold off until you have
built up momentum in another area?
Generally, I would counsel against pushing. Usually it is more
effective to look for the source of the resistance, either in perceived
lack of relevance, fear. of failure (i.e., "I won't be competent in the
new discipline"-remember we were all schoolchildren once), or
perceived threat to the status quo. The leaders who fare best are
those who continually see themselves as designers not crusaders.
Many of the best intentioned efforts to foster new learning disci-
plines founder because those leading the charge forget the first rule
of learning: people learn what they need to learn, not what someone
else thinks they need to learn.
In essence, the leaders' task is designing the learning processes
whereby people throughout the organization can deal productively
with the critical issues they face, and develop their mastery in the
learning disciplines. This is new work for most experienced man-
agers, many of whom rose to the top because of their decision-
making and problem-solving skills, not their skills in mentoring,
coaching, and helping others learn. But, as Ed Simon says, this is no
reason to turn back: "There is much that we do not know about
what will be required to build learning organizations, but one thing
is certain-there is new work here, and we must be willing to aban-
don our whole paradigm of who we are as managers to master this
new work."
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The -first responsibility of a leader," wntes''retired eenan Miller
CEO Max-'de Pree, "is defining reality.'!' While it is clear that lead.-
ers draw their inspiration and spiritual .reserves from-their'sense-of:
l.' NF ?. w 2:. .
stewardship, much of the leveraged leaders cam actually, -exert lies in
helping people achieve more accurate,: more;; insightful, and: more.
empowering views of reality
.
"Reality" as perceived by most people in most organizations
means pressures that must be born, crises that must ?0.'f
eacted to
and limitations that must be accepted .Given such ways of defining
reality, vision is an Idle dream at best and a?cynical delusiontat worst
-but not an'achievable end By contrast, for:painters,,,composers;' -:
or sculptors, :creating involves working within constraints or ex '
ample,"- the constraints imposed by, their media If one had but to
snap one's fingers and the vision became reality; there` would be no,
creative process How,theno leaders help people achieve a view
of reality, such as the artist s, as "a medium for creating rather*than'?
as a source of limitation?'Thisis'tlie'task of the "leader'as,teacher .'r':
} Building4on the hierarchX~of explanation first in
.ter 3 leaders",'can4:1nfit h'o`e
eo
le 4n'Jnvi .an17
p
p
eve s: events, patterns of behavior, systemic structures an
pose storyThey key question tiecomesr where pre
they focus their and thelr~organizatton's attention?,
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tance, the level of systemic structure is not enough. By itself, it lacks
a sense of purpose. It deals with the how, not the why.
By focusing on the "purpose story"-the larger explanation of
why the organization exists and where it is trying to head-leaders
add an additional dimension of meaning. They provide what philos-
ophy calls a "teleological explanation" (from the Greek telos, mean-
ing "end" or "purpose")-an understanding of what we are trying
to become. When people throughout an organization come to share
in a larger sense of purpose, they are united in a common destiny.
They have a sense of continuity and identity not achievable in any
other way.
Leaders talented at integrating story and systemic structure are
rare in my experience. Undoubtedly, this is one of the main reasons
that learning organizations are still rare.
One person who had the gift was Bill Gore, the founder and long-
time CEO of W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-tex and
other synthetic fiber products). Bill Gore was not an especially char-
ismatic speaker. But he was adept at a particular story-telling art:
stories that integrated the organization's core values and purpose
and its operating policies and structures. Bill was very proud of his
highly egalitarian organization, in which there were (and are still) no
"employees," only "associates," all of whom own shares in the
company and participate in its management. At one talk, he ex-
plained the company's policy of controlled growth:
Our limitation is not financial resources. Our limitation is the rate
at which we can bring in new associates. Our experience has been
that if we try to bring in more than 25% per year increase, we
begin to bog down. 25% per year growth is a real limitation; you
can do much better than that with an authoritarian organization.
However, one of the associates, Esther Baum, went home to her
husband and reported the limitation to him. Well, Professor Baum
was an astronomer and a mathematician; he worked at Lowell
Observatory, and he said, "That is indeed a very interesting fig-
ure." He took out a pencil and paper and calculated and said, "Do
you realize that in only 571/2 years, everyone in the world will be
working for Gore?" 6
Through this simple story, Gore explains the rationale behind a
key policy, limited growth rate, a policy that undoubtedly caused a
lot of stress in the organization. He reaffirms the organization's com-
mitment to creating a unique environment for its "associates" and
illustrates the types of sacrifices that the firm is prepared to make in
order to remain true to its vision: "You can do much better [in
growth rate] than that with an authoritarian organization." (Recall
that one of the failings of People Express was the very absence of
policies that controlled growth to a rate commensurate with assimi-
lating new people into its innovative work system.) The last part of
the story shows that, despite the self-imposed limit, the company is
still very much a "growth company," another aspect of its vision.
Unfortunately, much more common are leaders who have a sense
of purpose and genuine vision but little ability to foster systemic
understanding. Many great "charismatic" leaders, despite having a
deep sense of purpose and vision, manage almost exclusively at the
level of events. Such leaders deal in visions and crises, and little in
between. They foster a lofty sense of purpose and mission. They
create tremendous energy and enthusiasm. But, under their leader-
ship, an organization caroms from crisis to crisis. Eventually, the
worldview of people in the organization becomes dominated by
events and reactiveness. People experience being jerked continually
from one crisis to another; they have no control over their time, let
alone their destiny. Eventually, this will breed deep cynicism about
the vision, and about visions in general. The soil within which a
vision must take root-the belief that we can influence our future-
becomes poisoned.
Such "visionary crisis managers" often become tragic figures.
Their tragedy stems from the depth and genuineness of their vision.
They often are truly committed to noble aspirations. But noble aspi-
rations are not enough to overcome systemic forces contrary to the
vision. As the ecologists say, "Nature bats last." Systemic forces
will win out over the most noble vision if we do not learn how to
recognize, work with, and gently mold those forces.
Similar problems arise with the "visionary strategist," the leader
with a sense of vision who operates at the levels of patterns of
change as well as events. This leader is better prepared to manage
change, but still teaches people only to see trends not underlying
structures. He imparts a responsive orientation, not a generative
orientation. Ironically, leaders with a sense of vision and an under-
standing of major business trends are often held out as models of
effective leadership. This is because they are so much more effective
than leaders with no vision whatsoever, or leaders who deal only
with vision and events.
But leaders of learning organizations must do more than just for-
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mulate strategies to exploit emerging trends. They must be able to
help people understand the systemic forces that shape change. It is
not enough to intuitively grasp these forces. Many "visionary strat-
egists" have rich intuitions about the causes of change, intuitions
that they cannot explain. They end up being authoritarian leaders,
imposing their strategies and policies or continually intervening in
decisions. They fall into this fate even if their values are contrary to
authoritarian leadership-because only they see the decisions that
need to be made. Leaders in learning organizations have the ability
to conceptualize their strategic insights so that they become public
knowledge, open to challenge and further improvement.
"Leader as teacher" is not about "teaching" people how to
achieve their vision. It is about fostering learning, for everyone.
Such leaders help people throughout the organization develop sys-
temic understandings. Accepting this responsibility is the antidote to
one of the most common downfalls of otherwise gifted leaders-
losing their commitment to the truth.
When Lyndon Johnson first became President, his "Great Soci-
ety" inspired full-hearted support throughout the country, despite
the tragedy which brought him into office. Johnson was a master
enroller, with the patience to take Congress through his proposed
legislation one bill at a time, with stunning results; out of ninety-one
proposals, Congress only rejected two. His enrollment of the public
was no less stunning: "His goals had been the country's goals,"
wrote historian William Manchester. But the results of Johnson's
leadership eventually proved disappointing, in part, because John-
son could not keep his commitment to the truth. When he was told
that the United States could not afford the Great Society and the
Vietnam War at the same time, he began systematically lying about
the costs of the war. "If I [tell Congress] about the cost of the war,"
he told his advisers, according to Manchester, "old [Senator] Wilbur
Mills will sit down there and he'll thank me kindly and send me back
my Great Society." Gradually Johnson began to isolate himself from
criticism, even from his advisers; soon, many of the members of his
Cabinet resigned. Eventually, Johnson's chain of lies found its way
to public attention and became the "credibility gap"-so christened
by the New York Herald Tribune in 1965. His leadership was effec-
tively over-to the point where he could not run for reelection in
1968.7
History, mythology, and business lore abound with examples,
from Oedipus to present times, of leaders who fail because they lack
commitment to the truth.
As my colleague, organization consultant Bryan Smith puts it, "I
have met many leaders who have been destroyed by their vision."
This happens, almost always, because the leaders lose their capacity
to see current reality. They collude in their and their organization's
desire to assuage uneasiness and avoid uncertainty by pretending
everything is going fine. They become speech makers rather than
leaders. They become "true believers" rather than learners.
Leaders who are designers, stewards, and teachers come to see their
core task very simply. "Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to
create a tension in the mind," said Martin Luther King, Jr., "so that
individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths ...
so must we ... create the kind of tension in society that will help
men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism."8 The ten-
sion
of which King spoke is the creative tension of personal mastery.,
This tension is generated by holding a vision and concurrently telling
the truth about current reality relative to that vision-"to dramatize
the issue so that it can no longer be ignored," as King put it.
The leader's creative tension is not anxiety: that is psychological
tension. A leader's story, sense of purpose, values and vision estab-
lish the direction and target. His relentless commitment to the truth
and to inquiry into the forces underlying current reality continually
highlight the gaps between reality and the vision. Leaders generate
and manage this creative tension-not just in themselves but in an
entire organization. This is how they energize an organization. That
is their basic job. That is why they exist.
Mastering creative tension throughout an organization leads to a
profoundly different view of reality. People literally start to see more
and more aspects of reality as something they, collectively, can influ-
ence. This is no hollow "belief," which people say in an effort to
convince themselves that they are powerful. It is a quiet realization,
rooted in understanding that all aspects of current reality-the
events, the patterns of change, and even the systemic structures
themselves-are subject to being influenced through creative ten-
sion. This shift of view, or metanoia, was expressed beautifully by
the Hebrew existentialist philosopher Martin Buber:'
Our thinking of today has established a more tenacious and op-
pressive belief in fate than has ever before existed. No matter how
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much is said about the laws we hold to be true of life ... at the
basis of them all lies possession by process, that is by unlimited
causality. But the dogma of process leaves no room for freedom,
whose calm strength changes the face of the earth. This dogma
does not know the man who surmounts the universal struggle,
tears to pieces the web of habitual instincts, and stirs, rejuvenates
and transforms the stable structures of history.
The only thing that can become fate for man is belief in fate.
The free man is he who wills .,without arbitrary self-will. He be-
lieves in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him. It does
not keep him in leading strings, it awaits him, he must go to it, yet
does not know where it is to be found. But he knows that he must
go out with his whole being. The matter will not turn out according
to his decision; but what is to come will come only when he de-
cides on what he is able to will. He must sacrifice his puny, unfree
will, that is controlled by things and instincts, to his grand will,
which quits defined for destined being.
Then, he intervenes no more, but at the same time he does not
let things merely happen. He listens to what is emerging from
himself, to the course of being in the world; not in order to be
supported by it but to bring it to reality as it desires.
HOW CAN SUCH LEADERS
BE DEVELOPED?
In February 1990, when President De Klerk of South Africa an-
nounced the lifting of bans on black political groups and the freeing
of political prisoners, I was in the country as part of an initiative to
foster a cadre of black and white leaders capable of building learning
organizations and learning communities. With the impending release
of Nelson Mandela (which came one week later), we shared the
following statement from Corazon Aquino of the Philippines. When
her husband, Benigno Aquino, left prison, she said:
It seemed clear to those who knew him that much had changed
in him. The superb political animal-shrewd, fast, eloquent, and
brave-who had placed his immense talents in the service of the
Republic in the hope of public honors had evolved into a man for
whom love of country was only the other face of his love for God.
And I think this is the truest and best kind of patriotism. It is only
on this plane that patriotism ceases to be, as they say, the refuge
of scoundrels and becomes, instead, the obligation of a Chris-
tian .. .
We cannot, of course, just place an order for such men and
women to be or to lead the opposition. Such people are not made
to order. They make themselves that way.
If you share, therefore, my growing conviction that it is only by
such people that the changes we want will be brought about, then
you must also share the conclusion I have come to: the changes
will come and victory will be attained-a victory that will mean
more than a change of faces-only when there are enough of us
who have become like that.'?
One of the most striking aspects of this statement is that "such
people are not made to order. They make themselves that way."
Most of the outstanding leaders I have worked with are neither tall
nor especially handsome; they are often mediocre public speakers;
they do not stand out in a crowd; and.they do not mesmerize an
attending audience with their brilliance or eloquence. Rather, what
distinguishes them is the clarity and persuasiveness of their ideas,
the depth of their commitment, and their openness to continually
learning more. They do not "have the answer." But they do instill
confidence in those around them that, together, "we can learn what-
ever we need to learn in order to achieve the results we truly desire."
The ability of such people to be natural leaders, as near as I can
tell, is the by-product of a lifetime of effort-effort to develop con-
ceptual and communication skills, to reflect on personal values and
to align personal behavior with values, to learn how to listen and to
appreciate others and others' ideas. In the absence of such effort,
personal charisma is style without substance. It leaves those affected
less able to think for themselves and less able to make wise choices.
It can devastate an organization or a society.
That is why the five learning disciplines developed in Parts II and
III are so important to those who would lead. They provide a frame-
work for focusing the effort to develop the capacity to lead. Systems
thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision,
and team learning-these might just as well be called the leadership
disciplines as the learning disciplines. Those who excel in these areas
will be the natural leaders of learning organizations.
In our own work to help people develop their leadership capaci-
ties, we stress the "individual disciplines" of systems thinking,
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working with mental and personal mastery. These disciplines span
the range of conceptual, interpersonal, and creative capacities vital
to leadership. But most of all, they underscore the deeply personal
nature of leadership. It is impossible to reduce natural leadership to
a set of skills or competencies. Ultimately, people follow people who
believe in something and have the abilities to achieve results in the
service of those beliefs. Or, to put it another way, who are the
natural leaders of learning organizations? They are the learners.
TIME TO CHOOSE
One of the paradoxes of leadership in learning organizations is that
it is both collective and highly individual. Although the responsibili-
ties of leadership are diffused among men and women throughout
the organization, the responsibilities come only as a result of individ-
ual choice.
Choice is different from desire. Try an experiment. Say, "I want."
Now, say, "I choose." What is the difference? For most people, "I
want" is passive; "I choose" is active. For most, wanting is a state
of deficiency-we want what we do not have. Choosing is a state of
sufficiency-electing to have what we truly want. For most of us, as
we look back over our life, we can see that certain choices we made
played a pivotal role in how our life developed. So, too, will the
choices we make in the future be pivotal.
The choice to be part of a learning organization is no different.
Whether it is an "organization" of three or three thousand matters
not. Only through choice does an individual come to be the steward
of a larger vision. Only through choice does an individual come to
practice the learning disciplines. Being in a supportive environment
can help, but it does not obviate the need for choice. Learning orga-
nizations can be built only by individuals who put their life spirit into
the task. It is our choices that focus that spirit.
It is not the purpose of this book to convince people that they
should choose to build learning organizations. Rather, I have tried
to paint the picture of what such an organization would be like and
how it might be built-so that people can see the choice that exists.
The choice, as is always the case, is yours.
P A R T V
Coda
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