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As a leader, you have to inspire yourself and others to be the best you can be. Depending on where you are in your leadership journey, you could be getting started or you could be building momentum.

Your efforts will be easier if you can get your co-workers to carry some of that load. You need to build a learning organization, and the Fifth Discipline documents a roadmap and techniques for helping you do just that.

My favorite part of the book is the introduction to systems thinking. This is as good a framework for analyzing cause and effect as it gets. An important caveat: You cannot know or discover every cause for every effect. Once you embrace this fact, you will notice it becomes much easier for you to build a learning organization.

While the book is eye opening and you will be tempted to try every idea you get, you will gain maximum benefit if you understand the business goals of your organization and start from there. Simply adopting a technique because it sounds cool will be counter productive.