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Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Donella H. Meadows,

Diana Wright

4.22 · Rating details · 12,121 ratings · 1,128 reviews

Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking s ...more

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Paperback, 240 pages

Published December 3rd 2008 by Chelsea Green Publishing (first published 2008)

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Dec 10, 2017 Philippe rated it it was ok

Shelves: systems-thinking, management, ecology

As a collection of guidelines for understanding and intervening in problematic situations this book is quite useful. But I have never liked it because of two reasons, one internal to the book and one related to its effects in the outside world.

As a primer, it’s perfectly fine that a book skids over some of the finer points of the theory. But my feeling is that this informality hides a quite damaging conceptual incoherence. Epistemologically the book oscillates between a naive realism (there is As a collection of guidelines for understanding and intervening in problematic situations this book is quite useful. But I have never liked it because of two reasons, one internal to the book and one related to its effects in the outside world.

As a primer, it’s perfectly fine that a book skids over some of the finer points of the theory. But my feeling is that this informality hides a quite damaging conceptual incoherence. Epistemologically the book oscillates between a naive realism (there is complexity out there and we can model it more or less faithfully) and a muddled constructivism (we can’t really know what is out there but models are a useful construct to structure our interaction with the world with the aim to progressively learn about how to deal with the friction and problems in that world). Then the book is anchored in the normative perspective of an engineer who is interested in the dynamics of depletion of natural resources. It is inevitable that this professional perspective engenders a very distinctive (but always disputable) way of evaluating systems behavior. It is equally inevitable that it reflects a rather obvious position on the political spectrum. Finally the lack of conceptual clarity extends to some of the pivotal notions in the book. It remains, for instance, unclear how desirable systems behavior, resilience and self-organization are conceptually linked. Also, readers may be surprised by the progressively narrowing focus to how social systems may suffer from actors’ bounded rationality.

My other misgivings have to do with the way this book is at the root of some of the ‘systems traps’ that it wants to help defeat. Many people will read the book in the conviction that this is more or less what there is to say about systems thinking. In fact its scope is quite narrow. There is much more to be said about ‘systems thinking and doing’ than the MIT-centered school of system dynamics leads us to believe. By omitting references to other, ‘competing’ (or complementary) approaches the book puts the bar for aspiring learners rather low, leading to a premature sense of gratification of readers’ curiosity for systemic insights (the ‘eroding goals’ trap). Furthermore and related to the previous point, if readers’ attention is the stock that authors and publishers are competing for, then the net effect of this book’s ever-increasing popularity is that it crowds out other, contrasting accounts of systems thinking (the ’success to the successful’ trap). In other words, the success of the MIT brand of system dynamics is obscuring other valuable contributions in the systems domain to such an extent that it is becoming a liability rather than an asset (considered against the background of potential gains in intellectual capital that could be realized by other systems approaches).

So I'm giving two stars to underline my reservations. But I won't dispute that 'Thinking in Systems" contains quite a few useful ideas and from that point of view I could have granted it 3,5 stars too. ...more

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Jun 23, 2011 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: business-management-pm, thinking, 21st-century, society

This is a nice basic text about systems. The layout is clear. The diagrams are helpful. The volume is an introduction. Much of it overlaps with what is in The Limits to Growth The 30Year Update but without the specific focus. The opening chapters here I felt could have been boiled down, I found myself skipping and sliding over paragraphs, but if you completely new to systems thinking the slow pace is probably helpful.

In chapter four Meadows argues that one of the reasons why economic modelling i This is a nice basic text about systems. The layout is clear. The diagrams are helpful. The volume is an introduction. Much of it overlaps with what is in The Limits to Growth The 30Year Update but without the specific focus. The opening chapters here I felt could have been boiled down, I found myself skipping and sliding over paragraphs, but if you completely new to systems thinking the slow pace is probably helpful.

In chapter four Meadows argues that one of the reasons why economic modelling is flawed because it concentrates on flows not stocks (eg production rather than productive capacity) and doesn't consider the dynamic between them. There's a nice discussion of bounded rationality as opposed to the complete information assumed to be available to homo economicus due to the time delays inherent in information feedback and the absence of data which means that in real life we get tragedy of the commons type events occurring.

Chapter five on systems traps I thought was particularly good, with aninteresting comparison on population policy in post world war two Romania, Hungary and Sweden. Attempts in Romania to increase the birth rate by banning abortion led to an increase in deaths from back-street abortions and an increase of children abandoned at orphanages. While in Hungary there was a focus on building instead to counter people delaying having families due to a lack of housing - ie addressing a cause rather than a symptom of the problem.

There's a nice rehabilitation of President Carter who attempted to deal with the Oil Shock in the USA by introducing a tax on imported oil that would rise in proportion to the amount of oil imported and with illegal immigration by investing in development in Mexico instead. This rather sums up the difficulty that you face through thinking in systems. Because the results are counter-intuitive the feel good message of a President Reagan that addresses symptoms are more easily grasped than policies that address causes of problems be it addiction to oil or differing levels of development in North America having an effect like osmosis on populations. ...more

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Oct 17, 2014 KVG rated it it was amazing

Recommended to KVG by: Mark Tattersall

Shelves: favorites

Ever read a book that you're sad to finish because you borrowed it from the library, rather than bought it? Also, you were sad you couldn't write notes in the margins or highlight passages? Yeah, that's this right here.

This is essential reading for anyone, and I say that without hyperbole. You should do it especially if you're in business, technology, or policy (god, especially policy) but also just generally if you live on this planet and care about a thing. I think perhaps it puts a lot of pe ...more

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Aug 18, 2019 Kevin rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2-brilliant-intros-101, research-methodologies, 1-how-the-world-works, theory-systems

Seeing the Big Picture 101:

Preamble:
--How often do you get the sense that we are too consumed with surface-level micro issues to see the looming macro tidal waves that will wash away our elaborate sandcastles into oblivion?
--Prior to reading this book several years ago, I was semi-consciously learning and applying “systems thinking” as a survival mechanism while exploring the dismal realms of economics (esp. market externalites of social relations: global division of labour/violence/environment/ ...more

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Feb 19, 2012 Jonathan Yu rated it really liked it

The world is unspeakably complex and unfortunately our inferior lizard-evolved brains are nowhere near capable of comprehending this. The world is complex and that is why our Hollywood movies have sucky plots, our politicians say idiotic things that idiotic people believe, and the word "accurate economist" is an oxymoron.

So here is the progression/evolution of a man who learns about the complexity of the world. He starts by watching Hollywood movies and Fox News and thinks that the world is bla The world is unspeakably complex and unfortunately our inferior lizard-evolved brains are nowhere near capable of comprehending this. The world is complex and that is why our Hollywood movies have sucky plots, our politicians say idiotic things that idiotic people believe, and the word "accurate economist" is an oxymoron.

So here is the progression/evolution of a man who learns about the complexity of the world. He starts by watching Hollywood movies and Fox News and thinks that the world is black and white. There are good guys and there are bad guys. Good guys beat the bad guys. We win. Then, you go out in the real world and find out that things aren't that easy to pigeonhole. There are bad guys who do good things. There are good guys who do bad things. Good guys promise to do things for everyone but never do them, or even make things worse. The man lays out simple plans in his head and tries to execute on them in the real world but they inevitably fail. "Why don't things work out for me?" he thinks. And through years of failure, he comes to learn that the good guys are sometimes the bad guys and the bad guys are sometimes the good guys too. The rules that we believe to be real - "Good guys win" and "Working hard always leads to results" - are not so, and our efforts turn out so often to be naught because of the mysterious working processes of some Wizard of Oz behind the curtain screen. But the hard truth is that though the working processes are indeed mysterious, there is no single person to bash or blame. There are only the actions of everyone around us.

It could take years to learn this way of the world, but if you read this book you will learn this in hours. This book is not an engineering book and it is unfortunate that Donella gave it such a bland engineering-oriented name. This is a book of philosophy and life learnings. A book about complexity, written with Zen-style simplicity and brevity yet every word is packed with meaning. You read this book not because you want to learn about "systems" (who cares about that?!) but you want to learn about why things don't always work out the way you want them to. ...more

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Feb 15, 2018 Gavin rated it liked it

An attempt to make holism rigorous; given holism's deep intuitive appeal for people, the attempt is worthy. But I was hostile to this at first – mostly because her field helped breed a generation of pseuds who use ‘reductionism’ as an insult (rather than as a straightforward fact, or a useful way of thinking, instances of which denote the highest achievements of the species). Let's get clear:

“REDUCTIONISM” (to the pseud): The claim that complicated or immeasurable things do not exist.
“SYSTEMS

“REDUCTIONISM” (to the pseud): The claim that complicated or immeasurable things do not exist.
“SYSTEMS THEORY” (to the pseud): The only way of understanding things: as a whole. Everything else omits and so isn't full.

REDUCTIONISM (ontology): The claim that complicated things are made of simpler things. Only the simplest of them are physically real; the rest are mental models of their interactions.*
REDUCTIONISM (methodology): The attempt to isolate causes and treat phenomena in terms of their most basic units (whether quark, string, person, transaction).
SYSTEMS THEORY: When things get together, they exhibit features the individual things don’t.

So stated, there is no conflict between good old reduction and shiny systems thinking. But Meadows distils the juicy bits into <200pp here, and freely admits that systems theory has an intractable indeterminacy built into it, and says this, too:

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, Western society has benefited from science, logic, and reductionism over intuition and holism. Psychologically and politically we would much rather assume that the cause of a problem is “out there,” rather than “in here.” It’s almost irresistible to blame something or someone else, to shift responsibility away from ourselves, and to look for… the technical fix that will make a problem go away.

Serious problems have been solved by focusing on external agents — preventing smallpox, increasing food production, moving large weights and many people rapidly over long distances. Because they are embedded in larger systems, however, some of our “solutions” have created further problems… Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical ability and technical brilliance that have been directed toward eradicating them. No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless.

That is because they are intrinsically systems problems – undesirable behaviors characteristic of the system structures that produce them. They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame, see the system as the source of its own problems, and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it.

Can it resolve empirical questions the way physics does, though? In saying, probably rightly, that a flow could go either way, depending on the state of the rest of the system and neighbouring systems, you lose or sideline crucial power to find out a single cause's influence, and thereby know more or less exactly what to do to the system. In other places, knowledge comes from isolating causes. A reductionist can agree with all the clever diagrams in this, happily concede that they illustrate the gnarly problems of collective action and feedback and other ecosystems very clearly - and not give up their peerlessly successful method / ontological stance at all.

* Also
PHYSICALISM: Everything is made of physical things. (However, the physical may be stranger than you think.)

...more

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May 23, 2019 Sebastian Gebski rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It's not the first book on Systems Theory I've read, but even if this one is described as a "primer", it was not time wasted (definitely).

It starts very low-level (stacks & flows), but don't get discouraged by that - w/o some foundations it's really hard to get a proper grasp of the what ST is. All this stuff is supported with nice, simple examples expressed with stacks+flows notation. You learn about balancing, reinforcing, delays, corrective flows, feedback, renewable vs non-renewable stocks, ...more

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Apr 10, 2012 Francis Norton rated it it was amazing

Shelves: service-design, reviewed

I recommend Thinking in Systems because it has changed the way I understand and relate to my world. Published after Donella Meadow's death, it introduces Systems Thinking by way of definition, illustration and application.

In Part 1, System Structure and Behaviour, Meadows uses two graphical tools to analyse systems: stock and flow diagrams to show system structure; and charts mapping stock or flow levels over time to explore system behaviour for specific scenarios. The diagrams can be used to d I recommend Thinking in Systems because it has changed the way I understand and relate to my world. Published after Donella Meadow's death, it introduces Systems Thinking by way of definition, illustration and application.

In Part 1, System Structure and Behaviour, Meadows uses two graphical tools to analyse systems: stock and flow diagrams to show system structure; and charts mapping stock or flow levels over time to explore system behaviour for specific scenarios. The diagrams can be used to display "balancing" (aka "negative") and "reinforcing" (aka "positive") feedback loops, and the charts to explore how these might play out.

While some of the systems might seem simplistic, they build up understanding of a key Systems Thinking insight, that systems generate their own behaviour. And if you're ever wondered why the "heroes and villains" style of explanation only works in retrospect, this is a damn good explanation.

Chapter two, The Zoo, is a library of common system structures and their behaviour. Those of us from the software world will be reminded of a patterns library. Again, these patterns illustrate a deeper insight, that "systems with similar feedback structures produce similar dynamic behaviors, even if the outward appearance of these systems is completely dissimilar." (p 51)

In Part 2, Systems and Us, Meadows applies Systems Thinking to our world. Many of the examples are dated, but I found myself thinking how applicable these patterns and insights were to topics I was currently encountering - for example, I can't help thinking she would have loved the way that Kanban reflects a systems learning, that the ability of people and organisations to execute tasks degrades rapidly as the number of tasks rises beyond a critical limit.

Of course one natural and urgent interest in systems behaviour is how to change it. If worshipping heroes and lynching villains isn't going to reform systems that may exhibit non-linear, perverse or self-preserving behaviour, what is?

In Part 3, Creating Change in System and in our Philosophy, Meadows gives us a dozen leverage points for changing systems, starting with the simplest and ending with the most powerful. She finishes with a list of "systems wisdoms" - attitudes and values that she and others she respects have adopted to make them more effective at understanding and changing the systems we live in.

Like many of the other reviewers, I wish I'd read this book a long time ago. It has its limitations - I'd love to see more recent examples, and can't help wondering if there are any open-source Systems modelling resources. But for me this is a book of timeless value for anyone interested in a better understanding of their world and their options in it. ...more

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Jul 13, 2016 Mohamed Yehia rated it it was ok

Shelves: thinking-skills

This book was meant to grasp the basics of systems thinking, which it does but its writing style is not clear enough. Also some examples are clules and not accuratly relevant.

The number of pages could be reduced by at least 40%, without harming the content delivery. If it was will written, it would be an outstanding book, but unfortunately this is not the case.

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Aug 01, 2019 Adam Nowak rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019, audiobook

It'a a good book to get a general understanding of what Systems Thinking really is.

My key takeaways after reading this book:
* When you create some process/initiative - add a paragraph about the way your thing will evolve over time - what kind of feedback will make it better and what kind of feedback will make it worse. Make a thought experiment in each direction and think of how your system is going to learn over time.
* Most of the time systems are complex :)
* There are a lot of systems traps li ...more

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Jan 23, 2018 Kent Beck rated it it was amazing

This is an absolutely fundamental book if you want to understand and influence the world. I appreciate the simplicity of the language and the humility of the presentation. Just because you have a model, that doesn't mean that you know what to do. Or that what you do will have just the intended consequences. Or even the intended consequences at all. ...more

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Apr 07, 2017 Erin Weigel rated it it was amazing

Wow. This book was incredible. When I picked it up I honestly had no idea how much it'd end up pulling me in.

I love how Meadows approached a very complex scientific and mathematical subject and broke it down into easy-to-understand diagrams and concepts. Reading it at times was almost like reading poetry mixed with a text book, especially near the end.

What I enjoy most about her way of thinking is that it arms you with a practical lens for viewing the world. She also advocates for constantly q ...more

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Jan 07, 2016 Eivind rated it liked it

Recommends it for: People interested in, but very new to systems thinking.

Recommended to Eivind by: Vipassana

Shelves: abandoned, nonfiction

This book deserves a star more if the concepts and the ideas in it a completely new to you. For me, unfortunately, too much of this was too long-winded considering that it concluded with concepts that are extremely well-known to me.

The best part of this book is the first few chapters; where the basic concepts and vocabulary is explained. Stock. Flow. Balancing and Strengthening feedback-loops. After that it spends too many words for too simple concepts making it fairly boring in the latter parts ...more

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May 17, 2015 Jan rated it really liked it

Easy to read introduction into systems theory with several practical implementations which often goes against the naive way.

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Feb 20, 2022 Matthew Jordan rated it liked it

Some books argue theses or tell stories. Others encompass an entire worldview. Thinking in Systems is the latter. It almost doesn’t even make sense for this to be a book. It’s a way of looking at people and the world. It’s a ~ mindset ~. The idea is basically: nothing exists in isolation; everything in the world is being influenced by its environment, and exerting influence in turn. We can understand basically everything—governments, the natural environment, the body’s metabolism, corporations, Some books argue theses or tell stories. Others encompass an entire worldview. Thinking in Systems is the latter. It almost doesn’t even make sense for this to be a book. It’s a way of looking at people and the world. It’s a ~ mindset ~. The idea is basically: nothing exists in isolation; everything in the world is being influenced by its environment, and exerting influence in turn. We can understand basically everything—governments, the natural environment, the body’s metabolism, corporations, culture, all of human foible and folly—through the lens of systems, incentives, and feedback loops.

Here’s another way to express this mindset: people have pattern-seeking brains that enable them to pass down ideas through culture; culture shapes people’s beliefs and values; people’s beliefs and values cause them to create artifacts and participate in institutions; institutions are generated through the interactions of complex networks of people; people’s interactions are mediated by their social context, their psychology, and their culture; their culture in turn shapes their values and beliefs, and on and on.

Once you start looking at things this way, it’s hard to stop. In particular, you quickly realize that if you want to change the way the world works, you need to be very precise about where in the system you are intervening. Convincing an elected official to change their mind about something is a rather minor intervention. Electing a new official is bigger. Changing the entire structure of government is massive. Setting up educational and cultural institutions that universally imbue egalitarian values—now that’s a systems-level change.

A nice quote that stood out: “If you destroy a factory but don’t destroy the underlying thought patterns that created it, soon enough there will be a new factory to replace it.” Nice.

I also really liked that idea that reading the news is harmful because it provides an event-level, not systems-level, view. Theorizing about the world based on the news is like theorizing climate change based on each individual day’s weather report. If you really want to understand what’s going on, you need to look at the reasons people do what they do, not merely the descriptions of their behavior.

All that said: this type of book makes me uneasy. It makes me uneasy because I feel like this way of looking at the world has to be earned. I worry that there are a bunch of people who read a book like this then style themselves “systems thinkers”, without actually having a deep understanding of any particular thing. If you want to become a systems thinker, don’t read a book like this. Pick a system—the federal reserve, the climate, peat bogs, healthcare—and study how it works in immense depth. Historians don’t study “systems”, they study specific groups of people, cultures, or events. Donella Meadows herself did not study “systems”, she studied overpopulation and the environment.

It seems to me, then, that systems thinking is the “gift” you get to earn at the end of this work. After years or even decades of working with something in great detail, you can then generate abstractions like “systems thinking”. It reminds me a bit of the book The Lessons of History, by Will and Ariel Durant. It’s a short book that makes broad, sweeping claims about history, but it really only has any merit because the two authors spent their entire lifetime writing detailed, hyper-specific books about particular events and people. I would be very nervous if someone skipped the details and tried to get straight to the takeaway lessons. In other words: beware premature abstraction.

A final example: a lot of popular science/math content is about high-level theorems or big ideas in physics. These things have value, of course. But profound insights about algebraic geometry or quantum physics are the gift you get at the end of putting in the real work: calculations. Real mathematicians and physicists spend most of their time doing calculations, playing with toy examples, and wading through other details. Grant Sanderson talked about this in a recent video, in which he shows the “cleaned-up YouTube way” to prove a particular theorem (elegant, abstract), and the more “honest” way (lots of calculations).

My takeaway: If you want to be a good systems thinker like Donella Meadows, the best way is to be like Donella Meadows: find a field you are passionate about and go all-in on understanding its incentive structures, inner logic, and feedback loops in great detail. Maybe that’s what they mean by “do what I do, not what I say”: advice is the reward you get to dish out at the end. But you gotta put in the work first.
...more

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Dec 22, 2011 Keith Akers rated it really liked it

If you're interested in "limits to growth," climate change, peak oil, and things like that, you should at least take a look at this book. It is, as the title advertises, a "primer," so anyone can read it, and it is very readable. It isn't real technical (and technical people may find it not technical enough), but the results are important and often surprising.

Donella Meadows is one of the original authors of the "Limits to Growth" study in 1972, and she shows the kind of systems reasoning that If you're interested in "limits to growth," climate change, peak oil, and things like that, you should at least take a look at this book. It is, as the title advertises, a "primer," so anyone can read it, and it is very readable. It isn't real technical (and technical people may find it not technical enough), but the results are important and often surprising.

Donella Meadows is one of the original authors of the "Limits to Growth" study in 1972, and she shows the kind of systems reasoning that went into the study. It generally boosts my confidence that the authors were pretty well informed for an analysis of the whole issue of limits to growth for their day, and in fact even today.

The book does not cover specific issues, but uses issues as examples; it is really about method and approach to issues and problems in our society. She discusses what a system is, why systems surprise us, and some favorite patterns in systems that lead us astray, how to get systems to work better, and some practical advice on how to deal with systems and "systems thinking." She talks about the "tragedy of the Commons" which Garrett Hardin made famous. There's the trap of the "drift to low performance." Intervening to overcome problems may lead to something like "addiction," in the sense that we become totally dependent on the intervention.

Two interesting examples stand out. She discusses why sailboat races progressed from a way to have fun with normal sailboats, to a highly specialized competition in which boats are useless for any other purpose except competition in carefully-defined sailboat races. She also discusses why maintaining inventory in the face of a changing demand, may actually lead NOT to a more stable inventory level, but to an increasing oscillation in inventory -- a result which I couldn't argue with, but that I found totally non-intuitive.

Some people may find this all very obvious. Well, some of it is, and some of it isn't, and I think that Meadows knows this and is doing the best she can to explain this fact. Part of it is obvious. When you see the diagrams and the explanations, the flows and stocks and arrows, it all looks pretty simple. But part of it is not only NOT obvious, it's very hard to explain or even see in the first place. The problem is getting to the point where you HAVE flows and diagrams and arrows. The problem is figuring out how much of systems analysis is "art," and how much is "science," and getting the knack of knowing the difference and when you need one and not the other.

One key problem in analyzing systems, which she points out, is that we never quite know where they begin or where they end. Figuring out the "boundaries" is exactly a key problem in dealing with systems. So you can't just approach systems analysis by laying out the elements and definitions and drawing some general conclusions. You need to know when you've really identified all the elements in a system, and that, unfortunately, is an art and not a science, which her last chapter deals with in a whimsical way.
...more

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Sep 14, 2020 Ying Ying rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reference, non-fiction, favorites, for-re-read

"Thinking in systems" just became one of my favorite books of all time. Reading it can shift your perspective and change the way you think. Learning to think in systems expands your horizon, and we very much need it in a world where we are constantly looking at the immediate present and immediate surroundings.
The author illustrates her concepts marvelously with stories and graphs. The book is an immensely enjoyable read and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to better understand th ...more

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Sep 27, 2018 Sandro Mancuso rated it it was amazing

Although I had looked at Systems Thinking in the past, I did it very superficially. This book really helped me understand more about it and gave me knowledge I could apply immediately in my work environment.

As I’ve been told before reading the book, I would see systems everywhere. And that’s exactly what happened while going through the book and after I finished. Systems Thinking makes you look at things in a different way and gives you tools to better deal and influence the environment around ...more

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Jan 24, 2018 Katia N rated it really liked it

Shelves: economics-and-history

It is the one of the areas I’ve been interested for quite a while. But I could not find concise introductory book about system thinking for social science and/or policymaking. I think, in spite of its limitations, this book is as close as you could get. It is not technical. It explains the basics very clearly. It could be claimed, that the book is representing only one part of the rapidly developing and diverse field. But I would argue, that it does not go deep into the specifics of any field, w ...more

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Jun 07, 2020 Vicki rated it really liked it

This gets technical pretty quickly but I think the overall ideas and way of thinking make this a must-read for anyone working with large-scale systems today (I consider a large swathe of knowledge workers in this category.)

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Oct 27, 2013 Erika RS rated it it was amazing

Shelves: complexity, owned

This is one of those books that where it was almost useless to highlight valuable statements because I was highlighting multiple things every page. Meadows does not go into the mathematics of systems theory. As the title suggests, she focuses on the key ideas so that the reader learns to think about systems and their common properties.

One of the key takeaways from this book -- if I had to choose just one -- is that systems have common properties that apply regardless of their type. There are wa ...more

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Aug 21, 2018 Rahul rated it it was amazing

Shelves: complexity, non-fiction, books-that-shaped-my-life

This book should be made compulsory reading for pretty much everyone. Thinking in systems is one of the most powerful mental models to ingrain, the lack of which is the source of innumerable problems.

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May 07, 2020 Cooper rated it really liked it

A thought provoking read that introduces the "systems" lens to the world. Some of the concepts need a bit better explanations, but overall it was an enjoyable and compelling read. ...more

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Feb 24, 2017 Eliise Peelo rated it it was amazing

An eye-opener in every sense. An absolute essential for anyone aiming towards even the slightest understanding of this incredibly complex world we live in.

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Feb 02, 2021 Anu rated it it was amazing

Great primer for systems thinking. I was looking for a book that would make core concepts clear with a secondary focus on mathematical explanation. This is perfect. The author is a well known polymath that weaves multiple branches of study in a holistic picture of systems.

“If a factory is torn down but the rationality that produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce a new factory. If a revolution brings down a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that b ...more

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Apr 12, 2021 Piotr Kafel rated it it was amazing

"Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model."

I always wanted to read something about system thinking. I was not sure I wanted to take a deep dive but sure I needed to know more about it. The ability to take a step back and look at the system as a whole with all the powers at play is an important skill. This book looked for me as a good first step.

“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depe "Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model."

I always wanted to read something about system thinking. I was not sure I wanted to take a deep dive but sure I needed to know more about it. The ability to take a step back and look at the system as a whole with all the powers at play is an important skill. This book looked for me as a good first step.

“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.”

The book is divided into 3 sections.

First part covers the basics. The examples are simple so everybody can understand the idea of how we can model a system but not deep enough to give you something one could work with. After reading this part I dont think I would be able to start creating the diagrams that describe systems however at the end of the book there is reference for more advanced books. It is after all "A Primer" so no problem for me.

Second part describes the characteristics of a system, why systems surprise us and most common traps. I love this part. This is clearly a part that gives you the most applicable knowledge after the reading. I love the simplicity of explanation. Many ideas here (like bounded rationality) I was understanding intuitively but never thought about it in a more aware way. The traps in a system are something I can clearly start identifying in my personal as well professional life. I love it!

Last part for me is the weakest although I think it is very important - where to find leverage and how to change the system. Author lists all the points where people should look for leverage in order to change the system for better and avoid the pitfalls of pushing the system in the wrong direction. The general idea of changing the systems is still a bit vague for me therefore I won't write about it much.

"Let's face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That's what makes the world interesting, that's what makes it beautiful, and that's what makes it work."

I like this book. It's short, very concise and easy to read. Great first step into system thinking which got me even more curious. For sure I will grab more books from this space at some point. ...more

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Aug 08, 2020 Szymon Kulec rated it it was amazing

5 out of 5.

The book introduces a reader into world of systems, interconnected things. This is done in a very reader-friendly manner, starting with examples you can find in your daily life. Next, it builds up on top the already gathered knowledge introducing systems' archetypes, principles, traps. In this way you learn a lot about thinking in systems and perceiving reality in a system-aware way.

I'm amazed not only by the content of the book but also the way author conveyed the message. In less th ...more

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Jul 17, 2021 Andy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I don't get this book. It was published posthumously so maybe it's some thoughts that weren't supposed to be shared. Much of it, as the author admits up front, is just common sense along the lines of "you can't grow a forest overnight." A worldview based on “Feedback, non-linearity and systems responsible for their own behavior” I think would be pretty obvious to anyone with a background in biology, or public health or a number of other fields. Some of the book verges on mystical mumbo jumbo. My I don't get this book. It was published posthumously so maybe it's some thoughts that weren't supposed to be shared. Much of it, as the author admits up front, is just common sense along the lines of "you can't grow a forest overnight." A worldview based on “Feedback, non-linearity and systems responsible for their own behavior” I think would be pretty obvious to anyone with a background in biology, or public health or a number of other fields. Some of the book verges on mystical mumbo jumbo. My biggest problem though was that I kept waiting for the example where some country or company was all messed up and they called in the MIT Systems Thinkers who pointed out to them how their thinking was all wrong and they needed to think the other way and then things went on happily ever after. That example never came, let alone any rigorous evidence for some specific technique. On the other hand, I was happy to discover that a lot of the BS I've heard described as "systems thinking" is directly contradicted by what Meadows actually wrote (see quotes below).

Quotes: (may not be 100% accurate because I did audio.)
- “I know from bitter experience that because they are so counterintuitive, when I do discover a system’s leverage points, hardly anybody will believe me. Very frustrating. Especially for those who yearn … to make the world work better. …99% of our attention goes to parameters but there’s not a lot of leverage in them. It’s not that parameters aren’t important; they can be, especially in the short-term and to the individual who’s standing directly in the flow. … Spending more on police doesn’t make crime go away."

The take-home lessons are listed below.
1. Get the beat of the system. "… social system …Watch it work; get its history; ask people who have been around a long time to tell you what has happened. If possible, find or make a time graph of actual data from the system. People’s memories are not always reliable when it comes to timing. …you won’t believe how many wrong turns it helps you avoid… … Starting with the behavior of the system forces you to focus on facts, not theories. It keeps you from falling too quickly into your own beliefs or misconceptions or those of others. … People will swear that rainfall is decreasing, say, but when you look at the data, you find that what is really happening is that variability is increasing. … Watching what really happens instead of listening to people’s theories of what happens can explode many careless causal hypotheses. … One can ask what’s working well here. … Starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior but by the lack of our favorite solution. … The problem is we don’t have enough salesmen.” ..
2. Expose your mental models to the light of day. "Get your model out there where it can be viewed. .. Consider all [models] to be plausible until you find some evidence that allows you to rule one out. Getting models out into the light of day, making them as rigorous as possible, testing them against the evidence, and being willing to scuttle them if they are no longer supported is nothing more than practicing the scientific method, something that is done too seldom, even in science, and is done hardly at all in social science, or management, or government or everyday life."
3. Honor, respect, and distribute information. … "most of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of biased, late or missing information. If I could I would add an eleventh commandment to the first ten: thou shalt not distort, delay or withhold information. … Information is power. … It’s no wonder that our social systems so often run amok."
4. Use language with care and enrich it with systems concepts… "The first step in respecting language is keeping it as concrete, meaningful and truthful as possible."
5. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.
6. Make feedback policies for feedback systems. "The best policies contain feedback loops… These are policies that design learning into the management process. An example was the historic Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer of the stratosphere. In 1987, when that protocol was signed, there was no certainty about the danger to the ozone layer, about the rate at which it was degrading, or about the specific effect of different chemicals. … it also required monitoring the situation, and reconvening an international congress to change the phase-out schedule if the damage to the ozone layer turned out to be more or less than expected. Just three years later, in 1990, the schedule had to be hurried forward and more chemicals added to it because the damage was turning out to be much greater than what was foreseen in 1987. That was a feedback policy…."
7. Go for the good of the whole.
8. Listen to the wisdom of the system. "…Don’t be an unthinking intervener… Before you charge in to make things better, pay attention to the value of what’s already there."
9. Locate responsibility within the system.
10. Stay humble—stay a learner. "The thing to do when you don’t know is not to bluff, and not to freeze, but to learn. The way you learn is by experiment. … it means making mistakes and what’s worse, admitting them. .. It takes a lot of courage to embrace your errors."
11. Celebrate complexity.
12. Expand time horizons.
13. Defy the disciplines.
14. Expand the boundary of caring.
15. Don’t erode the goal of goodness. ...more

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Mar 25, 2021 Woody Rousseau rated it it was amazing

I’m not sure how « Thinking In systems” ranks in terms of books about systems but the idea of systems is really incredible.
It allows seeing and modeling the complexity of the world with something else than flows.
The most interesting learnings for me : defining a system, modeling its structure, understanding balancing and reinforcing feedback loops, looking at the evolution of a stock over time to understand mechanisms. The book also includes the most effective ways to “control” a system which a ...more

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Apr 15, 2021 Allison rated it it was ok

sorry, this girl's brain thinks in swag ...more

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About Donella H. Meadows

Donella H. Meadows

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Donella H. "Dana" Meadows was a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer. She was educated in science, receiving a B.A. in chemistry from Carleton College in 1963, and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard in 1968. After a year-long trip with her husband, Dennis Meadows, from England to Sri Lanka and back, she became, along with him, a research fellow at MIT, as a member of a ...more

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