The Fifth Discipline

For today's blog, I will be discussing my view on a book I am required to read for a class: The Fifth Discipline. I was pleasantly surprised at how useful the information was, both for personal and professional use. I have to be honest and say that I've only read the first and ninth chapter, but I am finding it hard to put the book down. It is one that is well-worth your time, no matter your profession to check out; whether you are a grocery bagger or regional manager, this book provides useful insight. I am not one to do book reviews, so I will narrow the focus to how these chapters can apply to me.

For those of you who don't know, I am a Shift Leader at Northwood Pizza Hut. A Shift Leader is the first step in the management process, which I am currently working towards. This book can help me deal with how to motivate team members. It is easy for us to focus on the bottom-line as an ends, because if we control that, we then have a productive unit and there are rewards for the management. Even knowing there are financial rewards, it is still sometimes hard to focus on the bottom-line. I like to think of myself as one who isn't only concerned about money; therefore, I need something else, some other type of goal to strive for, a higher purpose. It seems to me that lately I've been focusing on getting through the day or week, and trying to manage levels of stress that encompass what I am doing at the moment, or my vision. Sometimes, I focus much too heavily on the vision, that I forget about my purpose. If it is this easy for me to lose track of my purpose, imagine how easy it is for team-members at work to lose that focus.

I think we do a good job of setting short term goals, or visions for the crew. For example, we are currently working on lowering our food cost so that we can compete in the top 10 out of Freeland's Pizza Huts. This may have a lot of meaning for the management, but I feel that the crew just doesn't care sometimes. This is because we missed the important part!! We haven't been keeping up on our reading of Senge as managers!! We could solve this problem by creating a purpose; something measurable, attainable, trackable, and agreed upon, that we can all be motivated to achieve. Sure, the crew wants us to make more money, but that isn't very relevant to them, or even us sometimes. I think we can learn a lot from reading Peter Senge, both for personal use and for professional use.