Dr. Peter Senge

Interview by Lisa Sansom

Management guru Dr. Peter Senge is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and founder of the Society for Organizational Learning. He is perhaps best known for his 1990 best-selling book, The Fifth Discipline, which introduced the idea of the “learning organization”. Senge was a keynote speaker at the Your Workplace Conference 2009 in Ottawa.

YW: How can people in organizations overcome entrenched thinking and foster the kind of open environment that really enables the organization to move in new directions?

PS: Organizations are all different, and there are some things that are probably fairly universal and a lot of things that are very idiosyncratic. In short form, you have to really understand your organization.

YW: What do people need to understand about their organizations?

PS: There are certain things that are the heart and soul of the health and well-being of any enterprise. Any organization that lasts for a substantial period of time has certain things that are key to its ability to create and innovate. All organizations have to innovate to stay alive–to create new sources of value, to be able to change. Yet we talk about the things that don’t change and we miss what’s good. There is a deficit fixation that’s easy to get into.

On some level, people are connected to what we call generative DNA: that part of the organization that has a sense of purpose, that does something that really matters to people. You need that ability to discern what is organizationally healthy. If you’re unable to connect with that which is generative within your organization, all you can really do is try to superficially change people. And we can say with real confidence that leadership strategies that are the most sure to fail are those based on simply changing other people. You tend to see the problem as “them” and set about trying to make them do something they’re not doing now.

YW: Which is an exercise in frustration.

PS: Always, inevitably. All living systems maintain themselves. That’s one definition of a living system. Anything that you push on will tend to push back because its first instinct is to maintain what it’s doing. We call it “resistance to change” but it’s just characteristic of all living systems and human beings. All of us are very perceptive when we’re around somebody who’s trying to change us. We feel it in our gut, you know? We naturally move to a very defensive mode when we’re around someone who wants to change us.

So it’s kind of ironic then, that we develop these change strategies when we’re trying to change somebody else. Let’s assume the change is something that really does need to change. The question then is, “How do you get around that?” The subtlety of all of this is that you don’t “get around” it. Consider instead: what’s really new that’s trying to emerge? It has to be something that I and others care about. The real partners are people who share a vision. And then you continue to ask, “What is it that makes this meaningful for us? What is it that would make it meaningful for others?” That is the kind of question that starts to connect you back into that generative DNA.

And then you ask, “How does this something new relate in harmony with that which already exists?” That’s a question people often don’t ask and it’s a big missing lever.

When you’re encountering forces that are really in opposition you need to ask, “Where do those forces come from?” That seems like a simple question but it’s not actually the question that most people ask. Most people are busy trying to strategize how to overcome the forces without ever really asking where the forces are coming from. So [the attitude,] “these people they’re just resistant to change” - is totally useless.

YW: That’s a big block, right there.

PS: That’s a big block. And the block is in me. The block is in me having that attitude, because I’ve already started to label, categorize, and castigate others. Rather than saying, “Wait a second, maybe this person, this group, or this part of the organization is not completely nutty. Maybe they’re opposed to this change, maybe they’re not very enthusiastic or not doing anything for a good reason.” That’s what I mean by “what is the source?” of these opposing or status quo preserving forces.
If you ask that question, it puts you in more of a compassionate or empathetic mode.

YW: It sounds like you’re really encouraging people to get curious about what’s going on within their organization, and with people around them before changing in a new direction.

PS: Curiosity is one of the greatest allies of change leaders. In organizational learning, you see this word “inquiry”. But curiosity is an even a better word because it gets more to the spirit of it.

YW: You have mentioned that a change leader needs to have partners for motivation. For those bleak moments that a change leader may be experiencing, what do you suggest for his or her motivation and to keep that curiosity as opposed to giving up?

PS: That’s where you really need partners. Richard Beckhard, who was one of the founders of the organization development field and a mentor to many of us, used to say, “One person trying to change an organization will get killed–it doesn’t matter what position he’s in. Two people could commiserate, three could become a conspiracy.” You’re not turning to that partner just to commiserate–it’s to have a place to reflect. You might ask, “What happened? I have accidentally evoked a defensive response” or “What do we think is going on with that person: what are they trying to conserve or protect that I need to better understand?” You need these partners to have truly reflective and strategic conversations, and to be encouraging in tough times.

YW: Do you have any recommendations for individuals who really want to cultivate and grow that capacity for the introspection and for the learning so they can contribute to the organization or team?

PS: A lot of the tools and methods we’ve developed and have been trying to share for many years are responses to that question. For example, when you talk about reflectiveness, a tool that has become quite foundational in virtually every organization that’s been a member of the SoL network is the ladder of inference. It’s a very practical tool for individual and even group reflection when it’s used collectively. It basically points at the discipline of distinguishing between what actually is happening and what a person is thinking and feeling about what is happening. It sounds very simple but we get those confused all the time. It’s a tool that supports the discipline of trying to get more and more rigorous individually: really observing what’s actually happening, versus the inner chatter, the inner thoughts and feelings.

YW: What’s the most fun that you’re having with the work that you’re doing right now?

PS: One of the things that’s really meaningful for me right now is the “sustainability” issue–the need to get a different energy system, to have different cars, to live in a different way—to have really healthy food and water, energy as well as waste–these are the fundamental issues around the world. Water is arguably the most acute problem in the world today, even though there probably aren’t a lot of people in Canada for whom that’s at the top of their mind because most regions of Canada still have pretty adequate water. But there are a billion people in the world who don’t have clean drinking water. The thing that I’ve felt for a long time is the voice of young people will be really key to dealing with these issues. . . .

We have these problems in part because we really don’t pay attention to the future. We do a lot of things that we know, if we think about it, are pretty stupid. I mean, we all know it’s pretty stupid to depend on fossil fuels the way we do–whether it’s the dependency on foreign oil, or the need to dig holes or dig up more stuff. No other species on Earth gets their energy from digging deep holes in the ground.

We know that the energy system is at the end of its life, but we’re paralyzed in achieving the speed and scale of change that’s needed. We’ve got maybe a decade to start a process of major change. The kids know that. And when you listen to kids saying it, it’s pretty hard to say “Gee, we’re too busy”. The youth really get us grounded in a totally different way.

Photograph by Stephen Wild

Article originally published in Your Workplace issue 11-4