2012-02-24-Conversations with Monjoronson 43

Session

• Moderator: Michael McCray

Opening

Prayer: This is kind of a Psalms prayer: Creator in the heavens is so far away, yet so near, You are like sunlight upon our hearts, who brings light upon our souls and shows us the way in our lives when we come to trust in You and know that we are one with You. We give thanks.

MONJORONSON: Good morning, this is Monjoronson.

Group: Good morning, Monjoronson and welcome.

MONJORONSON: Thank you. And what do we have on the agenda today?

MMc: I was wondering if there is anything you’d like to speak to us about first?

Dialogue

Learning

• Life is all about learning

MONJORONSON: Yes, yes I would. I would like to begin today’s session by telling you about life, life as a learning experience, for this is truly what it is all about. There are many things in life that say, “not this way,” because they are unproductive or they are painful, or the repercussions from them are too negative, too detrimental to proceed with them, even if they are in the far distant future. What many of you do not realize is that every day is an opportunity to learn more, to learn more about yourselves, where you came from, your family and how to provide a wonderful learning experience for your children and grandchildren. If all people were to do this, your world would be changed significantly in one or two generations.

There is a pernicious “me-ism,” the selfish ego-centrism most individuals have in life, seeing that they are blind to their narcissism. They are blind, seeing the world is at their doorstep for them to use, that “the world is their oyster.” This is not so, for you are an agent of change yourself, an agent to change for yourself and for others. You are an agent of change for yourself because you are conscious of yourself; you are aware of yourself; you are aware that some of your actions are unproductive and in fact, destructive. When you go deeper you learn that some of your attitudes are likewise as detrimental to your progress, to learn to love yourself and to learn to love others. And when you dig further, you will discover in your unconscious thinking those worldviews, mental images of how your world as you think it should be are operating. You make assumptions about this world that are inappropriate. Many of you, however, have learned positively; you have learned that this world is a place of learning, a place to come to know yourself and to know and to trust in God when you ask for that guidance, when you ask for opportunities to reveal to you the way ahead in your life.

We would advise you to examine all that you do. It begins first by being conscious of yourself, aware of yourself, aware of your strengths, aware of your weaknesses and attending to those. This is all in preparation for the afterlife, for when you arrive on the mansion worlds. You will not know where you are to begin with in the resurrection halls. Soon you will become acquainted and slowly you will regain your memory, much like a person who has been in a coma, who has been unconscious for a period of time. There, you will reconstruct your life and find out where you are, how you got there, what your surroundings are and what is in store for you. This part of your life now is the awakening, the awakening of your consciousness, to be aware of yourself as a child of God. And as a child of God, God has provided you with a school to learn how to become a spiritual adult. And, as was mentioned earlier a few weeks ago, you are going to learn how to become a Citizen of the Universe. This is quite an accomplishment; it is very much a part of becoming fused with the God presence within you, your Thought Adjuster. You will come to know that as a Citizen of the Universe you have learned the lessons, that you know the way, and that you have achieved a significant stage in an evolved process of becoming perfect—and that means becoming a creator.

MMc: Thank you. A lot to do; a lot to look forward to.

Organization

• Processes within our organizational structures

First, I have a couple of questions about your initial comment in our last session. You said, “The case for Urantia is that we are seeking to develop processes within your organizational structures that provide feed-back to its long-term goals.” What did you mean by, “processes within your organizational structures”?

MONJORONSON: One of the processes I wish you to understand is that your organizations need to have within processes to act as a “learning organization.” Much has been shared with you about learning organizations by this one and his mention of The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge. This is a wonderful book that has many discussions in it that are useful to you as individuals, as well as to organizations. Your world will not improve until you see your world and all of your organizations as learning environments, and that for them to become truly productive to individuals, they must develop their internal processes to learn from their own experiences. Now, this is a much more evolved concept of organizations than many of you have had heretofore. Good corporations learn from their experiences and have within them internal processes for weighing and evaluating their successes and their failures, then installing written productive procedures to assist that organization to have further successes.

This has been mentioned by numerous contemporary writers but it still remains out of the mainstream of your societies. These learning processes are particularly adapted to democratic societies. Democratic societies accept that the organization can be amended by those who participate in them, those who are citizens, or shareholders, or subscribers. You know from your own experience that feedback from clients, feedback from patients, feedback from subscribers and service receivers can provide a wonderful way of accessing the learning curve for an organization to become more effective, efficient and profitable.

We are in the early beginnings of trying to help you establish in your non-profit organizations, those governmental organizations which assist in the large-scale organization of your societies to become learning organizations. Your democracy will not survive unless it begins to learn from its mistakes. To isolate the learning process as invested in only a few people at the top, whether it is in your state governments or your federal governments, is a mistake. That leaves your whole organization too vulnerable to so few individuals who may be are unreliable, who can be highly influenced by the fads, fashions and changes of culture that occur. To rely upon the guidance of 535 individuals in congress, and to their memories and their wisdom, and to make right decisions for the future, is a gross mistake.

Acceleration, Correcting Time

The vicissitudes and fragility of the mortal mind is too susceptible to wrong influence. Organizations must have within them processes that are wisdom-gathering, where they learn from successes and from failures, and then instill those lessons in their policies and procedures so they can proceed ahead successfully. All nations in the world at this time are particularly susceptible to rapid social change. There is also the factor that your world will soon undergo even more rapid, but destructive changes [such] that many nations will not survive. Governments must have in place ahead of time processes for assisting communities to survive.

This is what we are working on at this time. Our attempts in the Correcting Time are to assist [you] to be prepared for those tremendous societal changes, so that before, during and afterwards you can begin the process of reconstituting your societies and social organizations so that they are positive, constructive and lead towards an enlightened society, not just for those who believe, but for everyone. It is by this means that your world will come into the days of light and life, even for those people who do not believe, for the best societal policies are those that are good for everyone, not just the select and the few, those who think they are chosen.

Cycle, Process

• What is meant by “not cyclical but circular?”

MMc: You also said, “Everything feeds to another process, it repeats itself. This is not cyclical but circular, and so we need to have a feedback system installed in your organizations.” What did you mean, “this is not cyclical but circular?”

MONJORONSON: Cyclical is much like a sine wave on a graph, that you see the ups and the downs, you see the cyclical nature of your economy as you go from prosperity to recessions and repeats itself and repeats itself. A good learning system—even in an economy of national scale—has a process in which it learns from that cyclical nature, so that there is feedback from the peaks and there is feedback from lows that inform the economists what policies are needed to maintain a steady era of growth and improvement. Many investors in your nations are very pleased to see this cyclical nature because they understand that it allows them to “buy low and sell high,” and so they repeat that process, and they feed upon that. Yet, for the vast majority of your populations, this is a very detrimental process, where individuals during prosperous times buy houses, cars and accrue indebtedness. When the cycle goes down into a recession, they are unable to pay for these and lose their homes and cars. This is highly destructive to the moral and emotional fiber of a society.

A circular process feeds itself, it is a spiral upwards. Looking down upon this process you would see the circularity of it as that spiral goes round and round. But from the side you see it going around and up, and this is as it should be in all your social organizations. Doing so, there is continuing improvement in a steady state, rather than the cyclical nature of ups and downs, which are as destructive as they are positive and constructive.

MMc: Okay, I think I understand now.

Feedback

MONJORONSON: It is a process as you say, where you incorporate the learning processes within an organization so that rather than having its ups and downs, it continues to improve in a steady state, by learning from its successes and its failures. At the same time, organizations cannot experience failures and successes without taking risks. Risk is inherent in improvement. Risk is the possibility that leads to a steady state. Risk is what is necessary to develop intimate, loving relationships, where you are vulnerable to the trust situation with another. You get to know the other and so you reveal yourself to the other and you risk doing so, for the other individual could use that information in a harmful way. But when they use it in the positive understanding way, you feel safe and are willing to risk some more, and therefore the relationship improves over time. This too, is a simple example of a very small, two-person organization, and you can see the same phenomena occurring in even a multi-national corporation, or a large organization of some sort.

I’d go further and say that feedback requires that the feedback process becomes institutionalized in the organization, meaning that it is formalized, and that it is accepted and recognized as not just as an accoutrement to the organization, but a highly important internal process that leads to greater profitability and success, or a service to individuals in a more highly effective way.

MMc: Certainly, I can see that would be a positive.

I’d like to ask you some questions about politics, and perhaps get your viewpoint on where our politics should be taking us. From your viewpoint, Monjoronson, what is politics?

Politics, Competition

• Monjoronson’s viewpoint of politics

MONJORONSON: Politics is simply “position-taking.”

MMc: Oh! That’s a very curt viewpoint!

MONJORONSON: Would you like me to explain that further?

MMc: Certainly, yes.

MONJORONSON: Politics is simply a matter of taking positions on public issues. Even private issues, when people are in the public view. We are not political in our work, we are interest-based. We pay far more attention to the interests of our enlightened position, as you might say. There is only one position in the universe and that is God’s position. This is the position of enlightenment; this is a position of discovery; this is a position of growth; this is a position of ascension; and lastly, it is a position of service.

When you have only a singular position, then your interests are all united. When you take the interest of ascension, for example, then all efforts must apply towards that. You may take the position of a mortal, who dismisses this as unimportant in their personal life. Another mortal individual may say this is vital to their life, their happiness and their eventual accomplishment of being embraced by God in Paradise. Therefore, you see the interests of all who are in the ascension plan are similar: they are God-centered and they are in service and learning. Those who are not in this interest-base, do otherwise, of course.

We do not argue about this in the morontial or spiritual or eternal realms. It is not an arguable thing. The argument or position-taking, or politics, as you are so familiar with, are extremely wasteful processes. They lead to adversity; they lead to competitiveness, and competitiveness leads to separation and isolation, which is the opposite of everything that the universe and all of us strive to accomplish. It is highly useful, however, in our sessions of speculation, as I have witnessed among my junior staff, to speculate about this or speculate about that, and they will advocate one position or advocate another position, or maybe four or five advocated positions.

You see, in your political situation, you have taken competition to an extreme, where it is highly unproductive to the good of your society. We would rather see your interests become advocacy-based, which would lead to inquiry. If you advocate one position or one outcome, or one way of proceeding ahead, then it offers the other person in discussion the opportunity to inquire. You will find if you search for “advocacy and inquiry,” you will come up with some very wonderful managerial developments that will be useful to you in your own organizations. Politics is not a useful social process as democracies evolve and mature; it becomes highly wasteful of human and material resources and oftentimes takes the course of a nation or community in the wrong direction. We would caution you of evolved and maturing democracies to look askance at that process and to see your way clear to adopt a new method.

You will see in the coming months and years, a change of this whole process as becoming more and more unproductive and more and more divisive with continuing internal struggles within your nation. You have seen this before and you must learn the lessons of history that internal political struggles can be highly destructive, can be highly deadly to large portions of the society. You have seen this so clearly, even within the last decade in other nations, where tribes of individuals wantonly slaughter members of other tribes, who they think are different. This is not where we want your societies to go. If you note within these United States that there has become more embittered position-taking by the political parties, which is leading your country into a nation which has become inattentive to the hazards around you because it is obsessed with its own internal political struggles.

I appreciate your question and I have taken you far, far afield from what I think you have intended in asking it. I hope it is helpful and profitable to you.

MMc: Yes, there was a light that went on while you were speaking. I have been looking at this from the viewpoint of the rest of my kind, the rest of the people in the United States, and I thought I had some short step-up on that viewpoint, but I find that I am very far off from where I’d like to be.

MONJORONSON: Let us discover together where you would like to be.

• Position-taking is going in the wrong direction

MMc: Well, the political process is a wasteful process. Personally, I’ve always tried to get away from it, thinking that it was unnecessarily important. Certainly, I have missed out on a great deal of things because I am not a political person; I’m not willing to jump through the hoops and take the positions that other people would take, in order to better themselves in our society. So, what you are telling me is that in the future, rather than a two-party system or an adversarial system, we will be looking at a multiple party system? Or,…

MONJORONSON: You will be looking first at common interest. When you look at position-taking, then you are going in the wrong direction immediately. If you look at common interest and common vision, collective vision, those two factors will lead you into the future and you will devise your organizational systems, as you need to. You, in fact, do not need political parties to elect competent individuals to office. That is simply an old archaic method devised from arm wrestling, for instance, or from jousting, or from ring-tossing, as has been done in centuries and millennia before. You see that this is an archaic process of selection. It is very much like the old “tug-of-war,” where you have an incredibly strong rope with hundreds of people on each side, pulling in opposite directions, pulling in their direction, and so you pull people over to your side. This is majority-making in its most primitive form, but you have only organized that in a much more civilized fashion. Yet, for an emerging and maturing civilization and nation—or even community—this process of majority-making is very archaic. It is far more interesting, but more challenging, to have a verbal jousting of meaningful topics that candidates—whether it is one person or a dozen people—that this is a process of, not debate, but of presentation of argument from one person’s position, and then finally honing the numbers down as those less capable fall out of this competition, and the most competent individual can lead their community forward. This is simply just one example of many that could be drawn. We are trying to help you rework the old molds of your thinking, so that you think in different ways for leading your communities, states and nation forward.

Focus

• What is missing is a focusing element

Let me add, what is missing for most all of your social processes and institutions and organizations is a focusing element. Your focusing element heretofore in centuries past has been survival. Then once survival has been achieved you want to exist past the immediate day into the future and next year, and so forth, so that you can leave your progeny able to survive and exist. Of recent decades, it has become the profit-motive for your nation; everything seems to be focused on money, focused on the bottom line, focused on profitability. However, this is far too narrow a perspective and it helps those few people who are capable in this realm, and the vast majority is left behind. In the future, you must take a much more egalitarian perspective on the issues you discuss. We have offered you the discussion point, the focusing point, of social sustainability. This will become a much more profitable focus for all social processes in the future. This will provide a far more rational means for discussing how to lead a nation or a small community forward, and the commonality will be sustainability, not just existing from year-to-year, or a generation. Societies must provide a learning process whereby a generation’s quality of life is improved from one generation to another. This will be of great benefit to everyone. The truths that you discover in a local, small town sustainability design team—let’s say in a small town in Missouri—would have the same applicability to a small town in Birmingham, England, or in Mumbai, or in Johannesburg. The universalities of human beings are known, but they have not been used for political or social purposes for discussion [or] improvement of your societies. It is time to do this.

We are using the events that are forthcoming in the world, the great difficulties that you will have as, not of a lesson, but as an opportunity for you to learn from. Again, when these calamities come to your world, and they are already present, these were not brought to you by God. They are simply outcomes and developments of a world that has too many people in it, that has difficulties supplying the necessities of life and survival. Only those who understand the principles of sustainability will survive, and this will come to the attention of billions of people as they face the awesome fact of their survival at that time.

Sustainability

• When politics can become useful

I might add that when you have a topic as sustainability, which is a common interest of all human beings on your planet, then the politics become a much more useful process in themselves. Today, you can see that many of the issues being discussed in your political processes being extremely superficial and meaningless, and that in many ways, your political process is very naïve and does not take into account the life and death dramas that are being played out on your world by nations that are less capable than this one, and even the life and death dramas that are going on within a prosperous nation. Sustainability is a focusing factor and will become more important as the months and years progress.

Morality

• Using the moral compass to evaluate policies

MMc: Thank you. This question has a long lead-in. Back in one of our past sessions, #34, you spoke of the “moral compass,” and the three core values as they operate in the schematic of sustainability saying, “It will be most difficult to use in politics and political governance because there is so much position-taking within and among those groups.” You then go on to say, “… it will also assist in the process of governance to show and demonstrate to legislators how the policies and laws they propose are position-taking, rather than interest-centered.” Now, my question: Can the moral compass be used to evaluate the policies of the various politicians and their parties, prior to an election?

MONJORONSON: Yes, most certainly, and I do understand your questions and you present two factors there. The schematic, which uses the three core values, is the moral compass: It can be used to validate existing social policies; it can be used to validate the rhetoric, the position-taking of politicians, the candidates who are running for office. But first, one important dynamic must be invoked, and that is there must be some ingenious politician, some risk-taking candidate, who is willing to completely reframe all political issues in terms of social sustainability. If you take the sport lacrosse as a metaphor for political campaigning and discussion of issues, you can see how competitive and combative it is and how destructive it is to the participants, that in the end, there is a winner and there is a loser. And if someone comes along and says, “Well, this is all very good, but why don’t we string a net across and give everybody a badminton racket and a birdie and let’s see how we do then?” This is reframing competition.

• Reframing competition

This is reframing it in a way that is less destructive, less hostile, less detrimental and no less significant. The process we are asking some courageous candidate to do is to completely reframe the competitive environment of political campaigning into one that has significance to the survival, existence and sustainability of your societies. In other words, the political issues that they discuss become meaningful to everyone, not just to the parties and who can out-joust each other within their parties. Do you see this “reframing,” sir?

MMc: Yes, I do. Suddenly the whole thing just falls into place. The wastefulness goes away because we are looking at a united goal, sustainability.

• Prioritizing by importance to sustainability

MONJORONSON: Exactly! Now, if you extend this campaign to local community social issues, to states, to regions, to nations and to the community of nations, to begin discussing all of their topics in terms of social sustainability, then a lot of the issues that they are talking about become superficial, and in fact, become prioritized when you examine them in the importance of their contribution to sustainability of any one society, or any one family. This is a significant suggestion that we are making to you, to everyone. This is our first foray, so to speak, in making a direct recommendation to your political process this year. We are not interventionists directly, but only indirectly. Any candidate who says, “Well, Monjoronson told us to do this,” will be hooted out of office, and they will no longer be credible. So, anyone who is interested in reframing their campaigns must do so completely from the perspective of it being good for everyone without name-dropping, which would be highly detrimental in your very competitive society. Do you see that point?

MMc: Yes, sir.

• Using the moral compass in the political arena

MONJORONSON: To answer your question then, candidates who want to be credible would then begin to have their campaign staff, or their support staff, begin using the moral compass of the schematic and three values to begin validating the designs that they are employing in their positions, or in what they are advocating in their candidacy. Would it not be quite ironic that your political process would be the first social institution to begin using this moral compass? That is almost a “giggle,” thinking about that prospect!

Further, I advise you that this device can be used independently of its author, and reference to any of these materials, in order to aid their use by those who are in political candidacy. It is not necessary that these devices be attributed to any mortal or to us. These are useful tools, much like an adjustable wrench, that you can put any name on it and it still works the same. Our interest in this is to develop and initiate thinking of social sustainability, rather than who gets credit for what, at this point. Eventually, credit will be attributed to those who earn it, and who are deserving of it. It is not our concern now, nor as we assess this one, is it a concern of his either.

MMc: Very good. I’ve had a couple epiphanies as you were talking to me. I don’t have any more questions that are appropriate at this point in time. I wondered if you wanted to continue speaking on this particular topic, or would you like me to go on to the questions that I have that are off topic?

MONJORONSON: I would like to hear about your epiphanies, first.

MMc: Well, first that politics is a wasteful thing. It is position-taking, and as I’ve said, I’ve stayed far afield of it; I haven’t been a great political worker in trying to get my point across by taking positions and working within systems. The second is that by utilizing a goal of sustainability, most of the position-taking of politics, all of the extras that benefit a few and do not benefit the majority become superficial. The epiphany is that essentially, by focusing on the goal of sustainability, the vast majority of humankind is served.

Leadership

• Three hopes of our mentors toward politics

MONJORONSON: You had a good epiphany! Exactly the epiphany that we hope millions of other people will have. We will know that we have been successful in this endeavor when first, a candidate begins using this reframing in this topic to reorient social and political issue-taking. Secondly, when other candidates begin to feel the need to be competitive and begin to learn how to use this moral compass as well. Thirdly, it will be a sense of greater success when material sustainability is seen as a support for social sustainability.

You will find that 99.9% of your national population do not understand social sustainability, but it is that 1/10 of 1% who will lead your nation into the future, where your societies and all societies of democratic nations do understand this priority, that it gives new ways of understanding social issues, that it prioritizes those thorny political/religious issues that are under discussion now in your nation and communities. When the interest of all, worldwide, is common to every nation, then you will see the right order and priorities and appropriate resolutions of social problems that have been cast in religious terms.

• Understanding the theology of God

If you spin this further in your thinking, you will then realize that there must come an eventuality of a much more correct understanding of God, the theology of God, and the right thinking in the minds of believers about who God is and how the events of your world are initiated or not initiated by God. This scheme of Michael, Christ Michael, the Correcting Time, has more wonderful, positive constructive convolutions to it than you could imagine. The greatest playwrights that you have, who present nuances and double-entendres and flashbacks and flash-forwards and insights and Ah-Ha’s and hallelujahs and epiphanies, pale in comparison to what your Creator, Christ Michael, has now begun to unfold in your world. We hope that you appreciate this, and we hope that you who hear this have a correct understanding of God’s processes in your world, physically, spiritually and socially. It is important for those in new generations coming along to have a much more rational and intuitive understanding of their personal relationship to God and God’s relationship to all of you. You will see these knotty, thorny problems being resolved, as they must be resolved, that contribute to sustainability and enlightenment of all your people.

Roxie: May I ask a question, please? (Monjoronson: Most certainly.)

Politics

How do we transition from this political system, which is obviously not working, into one of say, a statesmanship system?

• How do we transition politics into a better system?

MONJORONSON: This is one of those developmental, social situations which must evolve. We do know that we are here to initiate the reframing that will occur, and that we will be working with individuals and with teams as they use the moral compass, and that they will devise new ways of seeing what they are doing in more productive, less adversarial, competitive ways, and that they will be engaged in a very intense process of inquiry, of asking cogent, competent, insightful, intuitive questions that seem to unlock the answers that are needed in the future. We also know the outcome, and that the outcome is positive, and that the processes that lead from this initiation to the positive outcome will be developmental, which will provide tremendous learning environments to individuals and to organizations, and that those organizations which have an internal feedback process for learning from mistakes and successes will be the ones that survive.

What your world is all about is figuring out how to move ahead positively and constructively, making right decisions by individuals, choosing right courses of actions by organizations. In the scheme of things this will develop and evolve. It will become too costly to the process of survival and existence, let alone sustainability, to pursue processes which are so expensive in terms of waste of time and lack of direction, and that the demands for survival, existence and sustainability will become so high that individuals must use effective means to come to right answers that lead your communities and nations forward positively and constructively in times of intense difficulty. It is very much the same system that is involved in the evolution of species that the life carriers bring to your world, that there is an initiation of a new species, a new variety, and that old varieties and species die away, and those who are more effective survive. There are improvements in all of this, and where you learn, you will learn to survive and you will learn about sustainability. The learning process will be most difficult, but you will learn, or you will die. (Roxie: Thank you.) (Long pause.)

Closing

This is Monjoronson. My staff is signaling me that this would be a good time to take a break from our session and leave it as incomplete, and to allow listeners and readers to respond with questions, if they have any. As this is an election year for this nation, we hope that it is highly productive in question asking, so that those who ask questions would receive insights about how to proceed. Do you have any immediate questions that need to be answered at this time?

MMc: No. Roxanne?

Roxie: No, I have a lot to chew on here. I have enjoyed this session tremendously.

MONJORONSON: Keep your pads of paper and pencils beside you as you work this material and as you have questions that come up, please write them down. Our greatest interest in these times of tremendous change is that you get it right, so to speak, and that your organizations can move ahead constructively, for it is through social organizations that the Most Highs are most effective, and that this is the realm where they operate. They can begin to have a tremendous influence in organizations that are open to change. The reframing process is one which we hope will be shared far and wide with many social organizations to consider this possibility. When minds are open to considerations of other possibilities is when our midwayers go to work to assist those minds with options that move them in right directions. We thank you and wish you a good week. We look forward to our next session, as I am sure you will have many more epiphanies along the way. Good day.

Group: Thank you very much!

Note

Monjoronson obviously felt this topic was timely and very needed, as his delivery was very fast and deliberate, and he would relish further questions on this topic. If you have any, please email them to Michael McCray: momccray12348@gmail.com . Thank you.]

The book Monjoronson referred to is:

The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge, ISBN 0-385-26095-4

From the front and back inside cover: “In the long run, the only sustainable source of competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than its competitors.

Founder and Director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, which boasts such members as Intel, Ford, Herman Miller, and Harley Davidson, author Peter M. Senge has found a means of creating a “learning organization.” In THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE, he draws the blueprints for an organization where people 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. THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE fuses these features into a coherent body of theory and practice, making the whole of an organization more effective than the sum of its parts.

Company after company, from Intel to AT&T to Procter & Gamble to Coopers and Lybrand, have adopted the disciplines of the learning organization to rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” embedded in how we think and work together. Mastering the disciplines will:

• reignite the spark of genuine learning driven by people focused on what truly matters to them
• bridge teamwork into macro-creativity
• free you of confining assumptions and mindsets
• teach you to see the forest and the trees
• end the struggle between work and family time.”