Peter Senge is a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Founding Chair of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), a global community of corporations, researchers, and consultants committed to increase our capacity to collectively realize our highest aspirations and productively resolve our differences” through the mutual development of people and institutions. The Journal of Business Strategy named him a Strategist of the Century,” one of twenty-four men and women who have had the greatest impact on the way we conduct business today” (September/October 1999). His special interest is on decentralizing the role of leadership in organizations so as to enhance the capacity of all people to work productively toward common goals. Senge's work places human values at the cornerstone of the workplace, proposing that vision, purpose, reflectiveness, and systems thinking are essential for organizations to realize their potentials.
Senge is the author of several books, including the widely acclaimed, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990). This book, which provides the knowledge for organizations to transform rigid hierarchies into more fluid and responsive systems, is widely credited with creating a revolution in the business world. Since its publication, more than a million copies have been sold, and in 1997, Harvard Business Review identified it as one of the seminal management books of the past 75 years. His most recent book, Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (SoL 2004), co-authored with C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers, documents the authors' development of a new theory about change and learning. Their journey of discovery articulates a new way of seeing the world and of understanding our part in creating it—as it is and as it might be.
Senge has lectured extensively throughout the world, translating the abstract ideas of systems theory into tools to create economic and organizational change. He has worked with leaders in business, education, healthcare and government. He lives with his wife and children in eastern Massachusetts.