In my overview post on this series, I used the term discipline, and still believe in that term. Some people commented that it may be confusing, since there are so many ways we think of and talk about discipline. The easiest way to explain it is with this awesome quote from The Fifth Discipline:
The way to begin developing a sense of personal mastery is to approach it as a discipline, as a series of practices and principles that must be applied to be useful1
Peter then goes on to talk about discipline being an activity we integrate into our lives. I think this captures the exact spirit of this series and of the research into this. The goal of this is not some checklist of practices that one can do a couple of times and feel good about themselves. Rather, this aims to be a list of embodied activities that we continually practice, learn and improve upon.
The katas we’ll be developing play a large role in this. In the book Scaling Lean and Agile, Craig and Bas say:
Many good American companies have respect for individuals, and practice kaizen and other tools. But what is important is having all the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner2
Practice. Consistency. Thinking of the whole instead of individual practices. These are what define the disciplines we’ll be exploring. Two more quotes from The Fifth Discipline sum it up:
To practice a discipline is to be a lifelong learner. You “never arrive”; you spend your life mastering disciplines3
Practicing a discipline is different from emulating “a model”. All too often, new management innovations are described in terms of the “best practices” of so-called leading firms…I do not believe great organizations have ever been built by trying to emulate one another, any more than individual greatness is achieved by trying to copy another “great person”3
- Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline p147
- Larman, Craig and Vodde, Bas. Scaling Lean and Agile Development p65
- Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline p11