The FIFTH DISCIPLINE FIELDBOOK Series |
For more about this
series please visit the Fifth Discipline's website at : www.fieldbook.com
You can purchase a copy of any of
these books through the secure site of our associates at the Resources
Connection
"This
is the book that educators have been waiting for!" says Doubleday. So far,
educators who have seen the book seem to agree. We aimed it at teachers, parents,
administrators, and students -- anyone who believes that institutions of learning
could be more like learning organizations.
Like all the Fieldbooks, we've tried to make this both a soulful and an intensely practical book, based on the experience of people in the field of education and organizational learning. I have learned a great deal from my coauthors on this book: Peter Senge (MIT, who built his contribution around a recognition of the obsolescence of the industrial model of schools); Nelda Cambron-McCabe (from Miami University, who understands how to create an ethical approach to education); Tim Lucas (New Jersey-based school administrator with a strong background in the "systems-thinking-in-the-classroom" community, who audaciously stretched his understanding of the developmental path for children for this book); Bryan Smith (Fieldbook administrative partner and expert on the bridge between shared vision and personal development); Janis Dutton (writer and gadfly who held fast to the vision of schools and communities as interwoven entities).
I had not thought seriously about education in many years (although I had read a lot about education during my student years, and I come from a family of educators). This was an opportunity to learn how much is going on in the field. It is a field that deserves more respect than it often gets; a field that blends cognitive science and practical design. I hope that Schools That Learn will contribute to a reframing of the field of education, with less B.S. and more -- well, more authenticity. The educators I met while putting this book together are among the most authentic people I have ever met. They are doing the thing they care most about. I hope that comes through in the finished version. -- Art Kleiner
Find out more about School That Learn
Purchase this book
______________________________________________
In
1996, I helped set up a meeting of 30-odd corporate and organizational people,
who had tried to put the ideas of the learning organization into practice. They
were all feeling frustrated; they had all come across challenges that they didn't
expect. Hence this book. It started as an effort to produce "another Fieldbook,"
but we quickly realized that the world was asking something else from us: A
guide to the long-term process of real change.
"Most change initiatives fail," said my coauthor, Peter Senge, "because organizations don't foresee the obstacles that arise naturally wherever growth and learning take place. Predictable and interconnected, these challenges go hand in hand with any step into the unknown, and must be anticipated and mastered in order for sustained growth to occur."
My partners in this book included the original Fieldbook coauthors -- Peter, Charlotte Roberts, Rick Ross, and Bryan Smith -- as well as "learning history" coinventor George Roth, who is now the director of the MIT-Ford Partnership. In my view, this is an exciting book because of the breadth of contributions from people who have sought to make a difference inside organizations. Sometimes they failed, sometimes they succeeded, but they always have something useful to say to the next wave of pioneers.
By the way, I've noticed that the ten challenges that frame this book -- Not Enough Time, No Help, Not Relevant, Walking the Talk, Fear and Anxiety, Assessment and Measurement, Believers and Non-Believers, Governance, Diffusion, and Strategy and Purpose -- make the basis of a very interesting talk. -- Art Kleiner
Find out more about The Dance of Change
Purchase this book
______________________________________________
Doubleday editor Harriet Rubin cornered Peter Senge
at a 1992 meeting, soon after it was clear that his book The Fifth Discipline
would be a significant bestseller. "When is your next book going to be
ready?" she asked. He said, "That one took twelve years!"
Then he thought about it... and realized that a different kind of book would be very useful to people who wanted to know, "What do I do Monday morning?" This would be a book of examples, exercises, and techniques, a practicum with "notes from the field."
I was a logical choice to help, since I had helped Peter assemble The Fifth Discipline. Moreover, my years of experience on the Whole Earth Catalog gave me a sense of what it would take to create a different kind of book. Peter brought in three of the consultants whom he considered most inventive and original at developing a learning organization practice: Charlotte Roberts, Rick Ross, and Bryan Smith.
This is the result. It's a soup-to-nuts entree into the disciplines of organizational learning -- Systems Thinking, Personal Mastery, Mental Models, Shared Vision, and Team Learning. (For definitions of those disciplines, click here.) It was an education for me to help design a way to describe the disciplines in the most concrete of ways: "If you take these steps, you will grow more capable." Testament to its success, perhaps, is the fact that the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook has been a bestseller almost since the day it came out; it has sold more than 300,000 copies worldwide, and continues to sell more than 2,000 copies per month. -- Art Kleiner
Find out more about The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook
Purchase this book.