First Discipline, FD, is the discipline of disciplines, the foundation to all other disciplines.

The self mediates in the transformation of data to information and knowledge, creating sense, meaning and structure. Thus FD is the study of the self in relation to the whole.

The concept of self holds good at the level of the person, family, groups, organizations, and society. Mastery of the process is critical to co-creating a more desirable future.

One of the imperatives to the approach has been to develop a meta framework that holds together different disciplines attenuating variety and reducing complexity. Though IT addresses a large part of the issue, the interface between technology and human mediation continues to pose daunting challenges to sustained high performance.

Growth is a process of resolving issues of identity and moving from dependence to independence and to interdependence. Individuals, teams, organisations and communities need to go through the process. Copying from less complex contexts will not suffice to stay ahead. It is essential to go far beyond imitation to create competitive advantages. FD offers an integration tool and methodology to address these challenges and disconnects. Through visual semiotics, it incorporates eco-literacy, the new spirituality of work, system thinking, cultural archetypes, continual renewal, mental maps, personal mastery and other unifiers to work together like an operating system of the self at different levels. Aligned with a proven methodology, transfer of learning is achieved and the competences acquired at a faster pace in comparison to any other approaches.

The FD framework is a collection of visual frames as a tool to provide inputs for discussion and convergence Reality is perceived as well as created by the mental models which have evolved over the history of humanity. If the world has turned out to be imperfect, it has more to do with these models of the world than the world outside. The visual semiotic tool points to a coherent whole leading to a new way of looking at reality, the new eyes and a new vision. A new vision is the first step to creating a more desirable future. As in the case of a terrestrial journey, the approach incorporates positioning, measurement, feedback and self correction, functions that are carried out by the compass, clock and the feedback system that enables the traveller to be on course.

FD is the study of self, the learner and the process of learning. FD is a lifelong discipline that is obsolescence proof. How and what we learn as individuals and community /communities will decide our common future. Targeted learning is context and problem specific and seeks to connect, reflect and catalyze- better, faster and deeper. The pace of learning is the differentiator in the race for market share. Technology and the internet have changed the paradigms of learning. The full impact is not felt since habits linger on. It is feasible now to leave rote learning to the memory devices freeing time and effort to more productive applications. Learning to meet the requirement at the time it is required is feasible. The self mediates in the process of transformation of data to information and knowledge creating sense, meaning and structure in turn leading to learning and improvement. Mastery of this process at the level of individuals, organisations, community and society at large is critical to the emergence of a more desirable future.

Icons and symbols, like road signs and traffic signals, can function like a compass. The Graphic User interface accelerated the emergence of a connected world. Within the networks is silicon which has the innate quality of connecting and forming very long chains. Digital and other deeper disconnects of multiple dimensions slow down the journey toward the higher evolutionary potential in us, individual or collective, creating serious threats to the very survival of the species. Marshall Goldsmith tells us ‘What Got You Here Won’t Get You There’. If we go by history we will not go very far.
The nature of the common journey is that we want to move towards our completeness and to greater completeness. Let us say that the journey begins now. I am in Bangalore and the time is 10 AM, 31 May 2008. We need a compass/map and the clock to do this. I would like to go to Mumbai. The direction too is fixed. As I take every step on my journey to Mumbai, I need to make sure that I am moving in the right direction and not away from it. This is reflecting looking back and forth to make sure that the process is in control. The three keywords are Position, Direction and Reflection the basic essentials to take on the physical world. Given the other requisites one is certain to reach Mumbai. Without the first three all the rest will not take me to Mumbai.
Mapping the physical world has become very precise in our times. Between Galileo’s telescope and more powerful ones like the Hubble and Ahmed Zeweil’s femtoscope, are the very large and the very small – farther and the deeper. The observer connects the two attempting to comprehend the whole. Yet we will never comprehend the whole in its totality. At best it will always remain an approximation and there will always be unknowables. What we can comprehend of the physical world is so vast that a system is required to navigate. The journey of life is much more than a journey through external space since we are much more than our physical selves. How does one position oneself for this journey? It is the self which fixes the position, direction and reflect on itself as to the progress of the process. The observer and the observed are parts of the same system. Mapping the whole system, physical, non physical, external and internal and evolving a navigational tool is one of the basic requisites for the journey on that less travelled road.
From 1981-to 1990, we worked towards evolving an integral visual semiotic tool, the self-management /first discipline framework, FDF, a road map for life’s journey that could connect across multiple dimensions. Eco-literacy, the new spirituality, system thinking, cultural archetypes, continual renewal, mental maps, personal mastery, and many more unifiers are embedded in the tool. The FDF is a navigational tool of the self – individual and or collective. The old road is the road by default and the new road is the road by design. The choice is between weapons of mass dialogue and weapons of mass destruction. But dialogue is not in our habit since Socrates. Politicians and priests preach, professionals prescribe, teachers lecture, parents advise. Dialogue needs adults, not leaders and followers or shepherds and the sheep.
Since 1990 we use the FDF as a tool for facilitating accelerated learning one to one or in groups of children, parents, teachers, managers, primary producers, self help groups and microfinance communities. The approach that continues to evolve is process and dialogue based, real time, stretches oneself/ the team and aligns with deeper levels of the self for sustained high performance eliminating burnout. Dream work, reframing of mental maps through storytelling/writing, envisioning, action learning in a simulated work environment are some aspects of the methodology

We started collecting the frames in 1980 and the First Discipline Framework fell in place during 1990. The framework and methodology continue to be used to facilitate accelerated community learning in schools, for coaching, enhancing employability and in corporate and developmental contexts. The details vary but the principles remain the same. These notes accumulated over the process and evolve as a living document which can at best be described as a half written book. The rest is left to the reader/viewer.