In today's fast-paced and complex environment, to effectively apply Senge's five disciplines to foster innovation and growth as a leader, I think it is key to understand their coexistence and the value of organizational learning. Often, we see the departments that make up an organization instead of an organization that needs various departments. This approach can often promote an autocratic management style versus a democratic or transformational style. In doing so, an organization can be limiting the innovations, conversations, and long-term problem-solving solutions that are formulated with collaborative work.

To foster innovation and growth as a leader an example needs to be set regarding what that looks like. For example, managers in sales might add more incentives to motivate people to reach quotas but they are missing the selling points the customer services representative might be hearing. They can also encourage more selling but is anything being done for sales representatives to get educated and trained on points that work.

From personal experience in the nonprofit world, issues are tackled in a "lets help everyone" versus discussing what is the common denominator or barriers we are all seeing and what can we do to better support individuals and families to decrease the band-aid use and obtain a long-term solution.

To wrap it up, leaders need to create a shared vision. This can be done various ways that involves team learning and mental models until the goals of an organization has been identified and the values for what the organization wants to be known for are set. Next, leaders need to work on becoming personal masters and promoting personal mastery among their subordinates. This can be done by sending trainings to everyone or having people send leaders trainings in which they can sent to all staff to distribute until a culture has been established of education and ongoing learning. In doing so, a team learning culture will be established to further expand the experience of those that lack prior learning.