It is a fantastic book that came out in the 90s and was updated in the 00s. It describes the need and practical solutions to systemic thinking for a learning / adaptive organization. It covers a lot of different areas:
- introduction to systemic thinking (via a very good example and then a formalised introduction to three often occuring systems)
- personal mastery (life long learning with a reflective attitude) as foundation for a learning organization (i.e. how can personal self improvement be scaled up to a similar process with many people involved while keeping everything together)
- practical examples at the end (I have not read that part yet, I am just inferring from the chapter titles)
Even that I have not read the book completely, it is now one of the books I always recommend when friends with interest in founding a startup ask me for advice. It is one of the very few "management" (loose category) books I have read that I actually found useful and actionable. Only problem is that it is quite big so it takes dedication to read through it.
Edited for formatting, title..