Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline is a thought-provoking piece with the eleven laws that determine how business systems work and influence our decision-making. The rule that impacts my performance is the fifth one which states that the cure can be worse than the disease (Senge, 2006). This law describes the critical issue of selecting an incorrect solution, which would worsen the situation in the future (Senge, 2006). The non-systematic and non-evaluated decisions eventually force makers to waste more resources supporting the changed operations or developing a new approach.
The law that the cure is worse than a disease impacts my performance in cases where long-term thinking is difficult to apply. Moreover, some business and life decisions are urgent, and the lack of systematized evidence to evaluate enables me to select what seems the most convenient at a given moment. The law’s impact on my performance is that I face the inevitable consequences of these choices; they damage my productivity, limit my opportunities, and teach me the importance of systematized decisions the hard way (Senge, 2006). For example, buying software without identifying if it fulfills my business needs and can be integrated into my working system resulted in continuously re-synchronizing it and wasting energy on additional solutions.
Three actions can help me eliminate the “cure is worse than a disease” law from impacting my performance. Firstly, I must revise my decision-making patterns and identify what forces me to select incorrect solutions. For instance, overvalue of money invested in a specific product may result in buying an inefficient solution that would drain time in the future (Senge, 2006). Thus, understanding my priorities can assist in improving the business systems I create. Secondly, studying the previous experiences of large companies’ executives, governments, and other key decision-makers is useful. Indeed, learning from others’ mistakes can expand my worldview and improve my prediction of the long-term consequences of various solutions. Lastly, including a third-party opinion can help avoid damaging solutions because considering others’ independent evaluations eliminates personal biases that blind me from making systematized and optimal decisions.
Reference
Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday.