Peter Senge Quotes

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Our behavior is driven by a fundamental core belief: the desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere; and to rapidly convert this learning into action is its ultimate competitive advantage.

Become a "learning organization". Shuck your arrogance - "if it isn't our idea, it can't be that good" - and become a determined copycat/ adapter/ enhancer.

In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models - that is, they are responsible for learning.

Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.

Learning organizations organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.

There are lots of lessons to learn from Amazon. Never stop innovating or questioning the fundamentals of your business. Disrupt yourself before others do. Continually motivate employees so that they never get too complacent - see Yahoo, AOL and many other Internet companies for evidence of what happens when they do.

An organization needs to be constantly refreshed.

Challenges need to be given to an organization.

Innovative cultures transparently document spending, admit mistakes, and ask how they can do better.

The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.

Learning has replaced control as the fundamental role of management.

Always, in your career and personal life, be evolving with technology.

To be successful in a knowledge economy firms need to create learning organizations.

I know that with most companies that have a lot of success, it tends to throw you off, and you can become more conservative. One of our questions is, How do we keep from being pulled into conservatism because we're afraid of not being successful again?

Success is a process of continually seeking answers to new questions.

Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice.

To stand still today is to go backwards...and quickly...!

We do not make changes for the sake of making them, but we never fail to make a change when once it is demonstrated that the new way is better than the old way.

In today's fast-changing world, it's not so much what you know anymore that counts, because often what you know is old. It is how fast you learn. That skill is priceless.

Leaders learn to leverage the problems that never go away in a way to create progress for the organization.

The virtue of small-to-midsize companies is that they tend to be more flexible and it is easier to experiment with new ways of working. So just try to tackle one problem you're really struggling with, together with your team. Get started and see what happens. Chances are you will be happy with the outcome.

You need to reinvent yourself every day when you are doing creative work. I always say that the moment I feel I'm at the top of the mountain and I cannot do more, I would be finished. So that's why I always feel the earth quake beneath my feet. I always feel myself on the fire. Because I think this is something that gives you the right adrenaline to work and go forward in your professional life. I have reinvented myself, believe me, many times in my life!

We have to build the capacity of our institutions, employees and workers.

I find that it's almost essential to fall in love with an idea to invest the time it takes to make it good and worth sharing. And then, the hard part: deleting that idea when it's just not what it could be. Too often, organizations are good at the first part, but struggle with the second. And so we defend expired business models, support the status quo and have a knee-jerk inclination to preserve what we've got.