For this week, the Fifth discipline part five just summarized the book. 

For my reflections this week I am going to break down parts of the book and align it with the research that I did at Callaway for my final paper. 

The first discipline I want to reflect on is building a vision. In order for a team to effectively collaborate and be successful, the team must have a vision. A vision statement must satisfy the “why” that the team has. This vision must align well enough with the company objectives but also with each individual’s role in the company. The vision of Callaway golf is “To be a leader in total performance, premium golf equipment. To be a great place to work while simultaneously meeting our financial performance and strategic goals,” (Callaway Golf Website). After interviewing members of the marketing team, the vision from an outsider perspective that I crafted is: “Producing and performing nothing short of excellence while working in a team to create and innovate the future of golf entertainment and the perception of golf.” 

This vision that I created was created after reflection and observation of the members within the marketing team. Collectively, with a limited amount of team members, Callaway’s marketing team has transformed the way that consumers view golf. They have launched an entertainment era throughout while also ascending to the top rank within a golf consumer product industry. The marketing team is able to do this with the support of a shared vision that strives for excellence. 

The second discipline that the marketing team, specifically management, embodies is their systems thinking. Senge discusses how a team must understand the interconnectedness of the organization in which individuals work, thus meaning systems thinking. Callaway’s management team works to display and enforce a systems thinking approach by increasing team awareness. The most prevalent example of this is how Harry Arnett brings in David Berry to explore team dynamics. David Berry encourages the team members to (insert actual quote). Throughout Berry’s time of working with the marketing team, individuals realize that working on becoming a collaborative team allows for openness and clarity within each individual. By increasing their openness the team members have been able to create new trends throughout the golf industy together. The third discipline that the Callaway golf’s team members display is their team learning, these two disciplines go hand-in-hand at Callaway due to Berry’s work. Going off of Berry’s work, the team comes together to discuss and create new ways to capture attention in the golf space. 

The fourth and fifth discipline vary throughout each individual team member. Upon observation, personal mastery varied from one person to another. This varied between individuals from my perspective, throughout conversations, I believe that personal mastery is achieved and displayed through one’s ability to be open and reflect about team dynamics. Although, this may be a bias observation due to subjectivity. Members who were able to talk with an optimistic view of the team and the innovations taking place appeared to have more confidence not only in the team and the leadership but within themselves. The members of the team who had personal mastery were able to be vulnerable within the conversation and discuss the hardships they face while at their jobs. These people were also self-analytical and creators within their roles, they displayed leadership to own their positions and go out of their way to strive beyond their job title. To have personal mastery is not to be perfect but rather to continuously strive to become the best individual self you can be within a team dynamic. From observation, this discipline also allows for individuals to respect others and to learn from the past and calculate a plan rather than to react upon impulse.

Lastly, the fifth discipline of mental models and a teams ability to adapt in changing forecasts was the least clear from my observations. Callaway recently made multiple acquisitions and there is not a clear path the marketing team will be making. There are multiple unknowns that include: not knowing if they will have to bring in more team members, not knowing if leadership will change, and not knowing if individuals will have to take on more responsibilities. From conversations, the biggest challenges that the team faces is workload to employee ratio, the threat of new leadership, and the possibility that new employee hires will be required. All of these challenges boil down to changing environments and changing team dynamics. It appeared that there may be fear of the unknown to employees who are not in leadership positions. It also appeared that leadership has yet to determine what will be a good long-term solution to the recent transitions. The fifth discipline must really come into play when acquisitions begin taking place, team members must be able to apply mental models to accept changes that may result in a new image of the company. 

Most importantly, the Callaway marketing team is undergoing many changes. In a time of innovation, the company must use the five disciplines in order to succeed. All of the disciplines are interrelated and a team dynamic will not be as successful without all of them. 

Part four of the 5th Discipline is composed of stories of learning organizations and their successes. There are many stories and many ways that learning is broken down throughout part four, in this section they describe learning and show that learning can be done in a multitude of different ways. I want to touch on some of those ways and ask questions that sparked my curiosity.

They touch on reflective openness at the beginning and communication. I found this very applicable in my own experiences lately. Communication and reflective openness allow for an individual to hear and learn through another’s experiences and then analyze their own experiences against that. My question for this section is how does one not over compare experiences? It must be especially hard to compare experiences in a conversation without feeling criticized? As a leader and teacher how does one communicate and compare with effectiveness?

In the section “how the work gets done,” they talk about collaboration and how work cannot get done without it because knowledge is power and if you combine knowledge from more than one person you are more likely to have success. How does one allow for collaboration without having too many ideas? Sometimes in team’s there can be too many options… what is the best way to determine which is the best route to go?

After reading section four, I found a very common theme that the most successful teams and organizations “have managers always at the line of battle,” it makes sense that managers and leaders should be experiencing work from the lowest level to the top to see and observe what is going correctly and how well things are running. Unfortunately, this is almost never the case. Why don’t companies recognize this? As someone who is not in management how does one encourage this to happen? He later speaks about being bicultural, meaning allowing to jump back and forth from a management to non-management position. I think if more leaders were able to be bicultural their would be a genuine understanding and maybe less problems between management and non-management.

In the strategies chapter I found it really important to ask these questions “One, what are our aims? What are the fundamental areas of growth and innovation that define a learning culture and make it robust? Two, where do leaders focus their attention and efforts to create such a culture?” (Pg. 284) I believe that if all teams sat down and discussed goals for an organization and then brainstormed what type of culture do we need to do that, it would create an area for openness and give better chances of success. Teams collaborating on ideas allows for not just results but quality results.

In a story about Intel, Galloway says “Our aim is to build real shared understanding and commitment to what we say we will do. What felection says it that we hear everything. It does not say we’re going to attend to everyone’s needs.” (Pg. 289) I found this quote really interesting and I think I learned a lot from it. A teams purpose for open communication should be to understand what the vision is and to understand what each individual needs. Although it is almost impossible to satisfy every individuals needs, it is important to display listening and consideration in order to allow for that door to stay 0pen. If an individual’s ideas or needs are not listened to that person may feel closed off or not important.

AAR’s seem like they will be very helpful within reflection and bridging the gap between what what happened and what should be. I want to begin testing this in my own work place.

Senge also touched on learning in practice fields and how there must be room for trial and error for one to learn. Classroom education is not enough for one to actually learn. I agree that in order to actively learn one must have practice but I also believe that a textbook knowledge is still very important. For example, I am able to reflect my textbook knowledges into my everyday work. If one were to just be thrown into a field without that sort of knowledge I think they would waste more time learning by trial and error than if they had some textbook knowledge.

Lastly, I wanted to touch on the section that talked about finding out who we are and individuals troubles with aligning their job with their organizations. Senge says that “they do not go deeply enough into themselves to discover what is truly calling them, and they do not go deeply enough into the organization to discover what is stands for,” (Pg. 305) my question regarding this identity issue revolves around why? Why do individuals not dig deeply enough into their why to align it with an organizations why? What is the point in working for anything if you do not have a reason for doing so?

I believe Callaway’s marketing team vision from an outsider perspective is best defined as: “Producing and performing nothing short of excellence while working in a team to create and innovate the future of golf entertainment and the perception of golf.”

I chose to create this vision or statement because of the following observations of the marketing team. The objectives of the marketing team as a whole is to capture the attention of golfers or potential golfers. For example, no matter your role within Callaway’s marketing team, whether it be creating content or organizing and managing displays in pro shops, their jobs all must satisfy the need of maintaining their audiences focus on Callaway products.

Callaway has been the top golf consumer products brand for multiple years now. Their vision has changed from striving to be the one on top to maintain their position on top. Therefore, they must produce and perform marketing efforts that fall nothing short of excellence so that they can continue to be the leaders in the golf consumer products space.

Every member of Callaway golf’s marketing team works alongside at least one or more individual. They must collaborate and create together to continue to release successful marketing efforts. Multiple members of the team reflected that they must continuously create new ideas together in order to keep up with their marketing efforts. This vision has the word create and innovate because Callaway has been the first company to lead in the entertainment space within the golf world. They must continually innovate their own practices to stay on top of the competition.

Although I don’t think this is the perfect vision for each individual’s job title that I observed. This team vision collectively allows for everyone’s job to sit underneath this umbrella and applies to every job within the Callaway marketing team.

Harry:

• How do you motivative an individual who does not appear to be committed to the vision? 
• When you think an individual is underperforming what strategy do you take to helping the individual?
• How do you best communicate something that will potentially create tension in a team? How do you prevent conflicts between each contributor? 
• How do you make learning a top priority within each individual?
• How do you think the marketing team will create urgency to Callaway’s consumers? You said that the biggest challenge will be the continuation of being at the top, what does it mean to stay at the top?
• Do you believe that a company can persevere and maintain being at the top “forever” how would that happen?

AJ and Chad: 

• Social media is ever-changing, trends are huge, how do you continuously find new ways to satisfy the trends? 
• Do you feel as though you ever get stumped? How do you combat that? 
• How does management help you get out of those stumps?
• When you’re dealing with social media there is a fine line between what is good to post, how do you find that barrier? 
• Within the marketing team, who do you work the closest with? How do you all work together synonymously? 
• Because you are always dealing with the now, how do you know the long-term will always work out? Do you solely rely on management to handle that? 

Kirsten: 

• You wear a lot of hats within marketing and you deal with a lot of communication, what is your approach to dealing with the people who are on the outside of the organization? 
• How do you deal with communicating the outside messages to the internal of the company? 
• Do you ever receive lash back? What is your best way to cope with that? 
• How do you control the messages to the best of your ability? What has shown success within effectively communicating messages from the inside of the company to the outside of the company? 

Alexis: 

• When you face a challenge, how do you motivate yourself to perform to the best of your ability? How does management help enable you to do that?
• How does management give you job autonomy? 
• How did you decide to begin to make a new project for yourself? What were the challenges of that and how did you overcome those? 
• How did creating that new project and presentation help you to better pave your own way in Callaway? 
• What do you think the next steps of your career are?
• How will Callaway help you to achieve that?

Dave: 

• How do you create the urgency at the end of the story arc? What is the best way to do that? 
• What do you think makes the lifetime of the product successful even though most individuals would know that newer/better products will come out?
• How do you maintain a consistent and clear mindset when trying to finish out one product to the launch of the next product? 
• How do you best plan out that? Do you ever feel burnout of products? What do you do to combat that? 

Callaway Reflections: 

Harry: 

• Culture is best defined as how you manage change, specifically: how you come together under stress. 
• Culture is not defined when everything is smooth sailing. 
• Value-based innovation must be your culture in a marketing team. 
• Learning must be the gasoline of your operation. People must have curious minds when things are changing so dynamically. 
• Change: started at the top; Chip (CEO) set the agenda of what is important to Callaway and went with it. 
• It is always important to allow your employees to try new things. “Give them the freedom to fail”
• Individuals worst enemy is self-filters. 
• So when management gives people space and safety they thrive. 
• When someone has a new idea “Yes, and” is an important motto to manage by. It allows for ideas but also sets the agenda. 
• Paradigm of innovation
• When things aren’t going well or creatives have fun out: just start somewhere: similar to curing writer’s block. 
• Challenges: how do we get consumers excited about our products. Leading continuation of being on top. 
• Fear: Noncreativity
• Personal tip: try to find your happiness and maximize on it. 

With Harry, I feel like he is really committed to the vision of each individual. I think that he continuously approaches individuals with a challenge to make each person better. Ultimately, I think he wants people to love what they do because they are passionate about it. He does not force individuals to love Callaway or working but rather encourages his employees to find what they are passionate about and incorperate it into their work. My next questions for Harry will be more geared toward how he has come to understand awareness and leading a team with these mindsets. 

AJ and Chad: 

• These two never work in long-form. Always short term operatives. Short term mindset allows them to work on a whim… 
• Things that they love most about Callaway: allowing for creative freedom. A Long kept promise from Harry and has stayed true to it forever. 
• Their biggest challenge: expectations and pressures. The workload is immense. Although the work is a ton they are both highly ambitious individuals and value efficiency. They must be efficient though or nothing would ever get done. 
• Most important team skills: communication and awareness of others. Everyone on the team is a major contributor and you must acknowledge that. 
• Challenges: small/nimble team and they must always be fast paced. 
• Something they didn’t use to like: stopping for meetings or team check-ins. 
  • But now realize it is critically important to stop and regroup because you can collectively identify weaknesses and connect through group work. 
• Phobia: surrounded by people who aren’t interested in learning. Learning must be a continuous mindset for the whole team. 
• Good things about Callaway: they are set up to find their problems themselves. Building a team around high performance. 
• 12-month challenge: the expansion and need to hire new people and adapting to those new people and new changes. Not taking change personally or to heart because they have been so tight-knit. 
• AJ: Past five years was easy to root for us. But now how do we keep people on our side.
• Short-term vs. long-term: when you satisfy those short-term needs in their roles you gain a bigger and better result. Upper management deals with the long-term path. 
• The real-time social world is all they deal with.  
• Finding the content to post on social, they must stay aware. 

My observations with AJ and Chad is that they are both really focused on their individual roles rather than the group objectives, maybe because in their jobs their landscape is constantly changing. I want to ask them questions about the ever changing landscapes and how to deal with it. I also want to someone probe about how they feel about teams and how they work in teams.

Kirsten:

• Sales and marketing: dealing with their relationship. 
• This position is ever changing. We don’t directly control the message. So we deal with the communication between the outside and the inside. 
• Accountability, sizabliity, turn-over 
• Culture: sales-led organization: you get results and change business directly because of that. Reactionary environment. A lot of trickle down results. Interesting dynamic but you must lead the change. 
• A small group who wears a lot of hats. 
• You must own that and know it at the end of the day. 
• Role of learning: learning must come from within 
• Trial by fire
• Online space is a challenge
• 12 months: sociability/ focus 
• So much to do what do we focus on? Takes a lot of planning. Setting time aside to focus on the future is crucial. Holding people accountable. 
• Permanent fixturing
• Push yourself 

Kirsten deals mostly with the communication with the outside of Callaway. She seems to be the middleman and it appears to be one of the hardest jobs. She also seems like she has to take the repercussions of any lash back that Callaway receives. I want to ask her questions about dealing with repercussions and controlling the messages. 

Alexis: 

• Culture: valued work environment
• Corporate landscape: people who are just as excited to work on a product/team as you are. 
• Beauracracy has changed a lot which can cause major growing pains. But communication can fix this issue. 
• Learning: learning about co-workers, humanizing each other, can help you manage the changes. 
• Some self-sufficiency is crucial. 
• Feedback must be handled and given well. 
  • Probably didn’t do the best job that I could have the mindset
• I talk to people to solve problems. Communication. 
• Don’t beat around the bush. A lot more talk about maintaining their current position, make sure they don’t begin declining. 
• Starting to create a new role for herself. 
• It is always clear you’ve had a future here at Callaway. 
• Job autonomy
• You could waste a lot of time doing a shit job and you don’t have to. 
• Leaders are essential in this journey. 
• Being vulnerable within your team.

Alexis seems like she has a leadership mindset, although she works as an individual she has created her own team and her own initiatives within the company. Because she is paving her own way, I want to ask her questions about taking charge of your position within a corporation. 

Dave:

• Help the organization set straight its message. 
• Create his own set of values. 
• We have a doer philosophy. 
• A very clear strategy, no shooting from the hip.
• How you react when things change. Not being afraid to do something even at the last minute. 
• A public company runs risk with board of directors being unsatisfied even in results to sales.
• Short term: market share, allocating time 
• Connecting with others
• Getting out of comfort zone. 
• Sustaining vs. launching products. 
• Story arcs: bridging the gap 
• Learning: a lot of social media emphasis. 

Dave appears to be in a senior position but must face the challenge of sustaining a product past its launch until the next product launches while also working on successfully planning the next launch. Because he is constantly being pulled in two different directions I want to ask him more questions about dealing with consistency and continuation without burnout. 

“Organizations learn only through individuals who learn” (Senge 129). Must all individuals learn who is apart of a learning organization? How does one work with individuals who do not learn? 

What does an individual’s spiritual welfare have to do with working in a corporate setting? How can a corporation or workplace help one feel spacious yet safe?

“The first is continually clarifying what is important to us” (Senge 131). How does a corporation continually clarify what is important to contributors? How do you align those objectives with personal objectives? 

In the book, it states that many people can work until the age of 80 without feeling “burn out”… people work until this age because “they have an accurate view of human nature, of our potential and limitations.” (Senge 135). How does one individual find their limitations without falling short or pushing those human limitations? Do they vary per individual? Do they vary throughout the span of one’s lifetime? 

If one must have a true vision rather than a purpose, because a purpose is just a directional aspect, encouraging you to follow a set of rules or checkboxes… why don’t schools or educational groups teach this from a young age? Imagine if every young individual created their vision (which I feel I haven’t even done yet), from the beginning of their college or technical career, wouldn’t every individual have a clear reason for their living experience? 

* This next week, I want to create a vision that is clear and outlined, that way I can clearly outline my 5-year plan accordingly. 

How does one determine the difference between creative tension and emotional tension? For example, I have a multitude of different creatives or goals I want to achieve but the thought of having that many objectives does seem unrealistic or unattainable. Do I tell myself that it is unrealistic because it is, or because society has told me that the norm is just getting by doing less, like the majority of humans do? 

Moreover, how do I begin to expand my ability to juggle this many goals? I constantly feel myself being “stretched too thin” but is there a way to solve that? 

In the third generic strategy of will power, psyching yourself up to overpower all forms of resistance to achieve goals, Senge claims that people who display this form of will power often wonder if it was worth it after following through to achieve something… I feel like this is the strategy I most often align with. I believe I most often align with this one because I struggle with “stopping to smell the roses,” how does one begin to take away that mindset and feel mindful or thankful for the personal efforts? 

When attempting to master the discipline of balancing inquiry and advocacy, it seems to me that in real life this practice must be an ever-changing discipline. For example, most people handle certain amounts of feedback differently than their other co-workers. So one must learn openness to getting to know each individual’s threshold for inquiry and advocacy. When you inquire with an individual who expects more direct feedback, they may not understand or comprehend feedback that is too “soft”. Does one just have to spend time with each individual finding that threshold? Is it just trial and error? I feel like there must be a better way to approach this issue… 

I think that one of the most important parts of this whole book is in the chapter team learning. There are three basic conditions that are necessary for dialogue… I think that within a team there is almost always one of these missing unless the group has set an agenda about what the expectations of the conversation are. I think almost always in groups you have individuals who are not willing to be open to conversation. I believe it is crucial for management to set the agenda and reiterate it throughout the time spent together that the conversation and the meeting is an open space for people to feel comfortable and welcome to express their opinions, ideas, or concerns. 

Lastly, I think that practicing these disciplines always begins with self-awareness and vulnerability to others. If one individual begins with being vulnerable and remaining open then all other individuals will also begin to feel open to the idea, no matter their previous experiences. 

5 insights and 5 questions

Insights

After this week’s readings I had a multitude of observations specifically regarding the laws of the 5th discipline. For example, there are a total of 10 “laws” that explain why corporations manage to get or to keep themselves in problems. My first though revolved around rule number 2, “The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.” In this scenario, Senge uses the analogy of Boxer, the horse from Animal farm. Boxer works tirelessly and is being used and taken advantage of by the pigs. In this analogy, I was thinking about the pigs like a corporation and Boxer like an employee of the firm, it appears that all too often this is a very familiar and normal workplace behavior… Boxer goes to work everyday and works tirelessly, seeing little in return and not capturing value in return…

My question following this is: What causes people like Boxer to stay within their workplace environments where they are not valued? How does one put up with/feel fulfilled by staying submerged into an environment?

Continuing on with the laws of discipline and observations from rule number 2, I remember when Harry Arnett came to speak to the management course I took with you. He spoke about how Callaway was attempting to help their falling profits by just doing the same thing they were doing before but with more intensity. Ultimately, this tactic was unsuccessful.

When companies decide they need to make a change because of solid decline in a company, who decides it’s time for a change and how do you motivate people to do that?

Moreover, if you aren’t in management and you want to create a change and urgency, what is the best way to do that?

After reading chapter 5: A Shift of Mind, I have a few specific reflections to the discussion of long-term goals and short-term goals. I have the questions specifically because of my own personal life experiences right now. In the book it states that the U.S. was focusing on their short-term goals and therefore was making their long-term outcomes worse off.

How does one find the balance of working on a short-term basis to accomplish things but also work toward achieving correct long-term goals?

Also, what is the best approach to navigating short and long term goals? Sitting out to write out a monthly plan, yearly plan seems like maybe a good solution but how does one hold himself accountable for it?

Senge claims this has to do with Dynamic Complexity, how does one switch to being more of a dynamic thinker than a linear thinker?

After reading chapter 6: Nature’s Templates, I wanted to focus on Archetype 2: Shifting the Burden… when someone shifts the burden of a problem, the true problem or burden never gets solved. How does one actually do a good job at uncovering the true burden? Obviously within oneself the answer to this would be self reflection and analyzing yourself. But, within an organization how does the blame not continuously get shifted from one person to another or one problem to another?

Clearly, there will always be organizational challenges but how do you completely resolve one challenge before the next one arrives?

Lastly, in Chapter 7 he speaks about a company called WonderTech. They had a problem with delivery time that never got resolved and eventually could have been the reason the company failed. They use a term called “growth and underinvestment,” companies frequently do not hire or problem solve as they scale to size, therefore one minor challenge could be why they fail.

How does a growing company create and find a balance of good investment vs under or over investment? For example, I am working for a start-up company and we are scaling to size rapidly… It seems there is always more work to do and constantly needing more hands on deck… are these just growing pains?

This is something I want to look into for the purpose of management and understanding company structure.