In some ways clarifying a vision is easy. A more difficult challenge comes in facing current reality.

[Seeds Are Small.] Becoming a force of nature doesn't mean that all of our aspirations must be "grand." First steps are often small, and initial visions that focus energy effectively often address immediate problems. What matters is engagement in the service of a larger purpose rather than lofty aspirations that paralyze action. Indeed, it's a dangerous trap to believe that we can pursue onlhy "great visions."

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works...images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models - surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works - promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.

A learning organization is an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.

It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism.

The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.