ntial cornerstone of the learning organisation - the learning organisation's spiritual foundation. an organisation's commitment to and capacity for
learning can be no greater than that of its members. the roots of this discipline lie in both eastern and western spiritual traditions, and in secular traditions as well.

but surprisingly few organisations encourage the growth of their people in this manner. this results in vast untapped resources: "people enter business as bright, well-educated,
high-energy people, full of energy and desire to make a difference," says hanover's o'brien. "by the time they are 30, a few are on the 'fast track' and the rest 'put in their time' to do what matters to them on the weekend. they loss the commitment, the sense of mission, and the excitement with which they started their careers. we get damn little of their energy and almost none of their spirit."

and surprisingly few adults wor

k to rigorously develop their own personal mastery. when you ask most adults what they want from their lives, they often talk first about what they'd like
to get rid of: "i'd like my mother-in-law to move out," they say, or "i'd like my back problems to clear up." the discipline of personal mastery, by contrast, starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us, of living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.

here, i am most interested in the connections between personal learning and organisational learning, in the reciprocal commitments between individual and organisation, and in the special spirit of an enterprise made up of learners.

mental models
"mental models" are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalisations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behaviour. for example, we may notice that a co-worker dresses elegantly, and say to ourselves, "she's a country club person." about someone who dresses shabbily, we may feel, "he doesn't care about what others think." mental models of what can or cannot be done in different management settings are no less deeply entrenched. many insights into new markets or outmoded organisational practices fail to get put into practice because they conflict with powerful, tacit mental models.

royal dutch/shell, one of the first large organisations to understand the advantages of

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