Case Scenario:
Creating shared vision goes hand-in-hand with systems thinking. The latter enables people to understand what and how the organization has created. Vision portrays what people want to create. Because most managers don't experience that they are contributing to their current reality, they have great difficulty in seeing how they can contribute to changing it. They see their problems as being caused by the system or by external factors.
This attitude, as Senge explains, can be elusive to pin down because in many organizations the belief 'We cannot create our own future' is so threatening that it can never be acknowledged. To be a good leader means that you are in charge of your own future. A manager (or non-manager for that matter) who openly questions the organization's ability to accomplish what it's attempting is quickly labeled as being not on board or as rocking the boat. The underlying cause for this occurrence is that organizations tend to be dominated by linear thinkers instead of systems thinkers. The underlying cause for this occurrence is that organizations tend to be dominated by linear thinkers instead of systems thinkers.
How do you identify your linear thinkers from your system thinkers? Are there more linear thinkers than system thinkers? How would one develop more system thinkers?