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Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Donella H. Meadows,

Diana Wright

4.27 · Rating details · 8,892 ratings · 864 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: ecology, systems-thinking, management

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

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 Kent rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Kent 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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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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Apr 10, 2012 Francis Norton rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, service-design

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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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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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 18, 2019 Kevin is currently reading it

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

How to see the the big picture 101: how often do you get the sense that we are too consumed with micro issues to see the looming macro tidal waves that will wash away our elaborate sand castles into oblivion?

Preamble:
--I have been semi-consciously learning and applying “systems thinking” as a survival mechanism while exploring the dismal realms of economics and geopolitics (in particular: global division of labor and market externalities i.e. environment, cheap labor, reproductive labor, violenc ...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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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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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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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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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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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: nonfiction, abandoned

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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Sep 14, 2020 Ying Ying rated it it was amazing

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

"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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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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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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Aug 21, 2018 Rahul rated it it was amazing

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

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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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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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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Mar 08, 2019 Carl Rannaberg rated it really liked it

The first step to better systems thinking is acknowledging the fact that humans are never able to perfectly grasp and model the real world in their heads. The real world is just way too complex and non-linear for our simple and biased minds.
A system in it's essence is more than sum of it's parts. It's an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. Otherwise it would be just random collection of things.
As systems are usually quite complex and hav ...more

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May 05, 2018 Jan Martinek rated it it was amazing

I had big expectations and oh wow, this book is so much better than I expected in every imaginable way!

I love how every page shows how theory and practice, quality and quantity or any other methodological dichotomy needs to be bridged to arrive at clear understanding of a situation. Closing chapters add a welcome and sober reflection.

Wow. Recommended to anybody, really. I'm really sorry that I left on my shelf for almost three years. (And that I did not meet it already in my studies years befo ...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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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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Oct 08, 2019 Sven Kirsimäe rated it it was amazing

Shelves: at-audible

For anyone interested to look a the world through the systems paradigm. Book uses a great set of examples of how systems theory is applied by different players from governments to companies, and why not by individuals on their personal lives. It is not a book on how to apply the theory, but more about what it consists of and how to look at things through the systems theory prism, find out how they work, and why they don’t.

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Jul 27, 2019 Otto Lehto rated it really liked it

It is human instinct to recoil from complexity and uncertainty. But there is no avoiding them, especially in a world of interconnected and emergent complexity. This is why we need systems thinking, and Meadows has written a concise and powerful introduction to the subject. Her expertise guides the reader as she distills a ton of accumulated wisdom into strident prose. Humanity is lost in the labyrinth of complex systems, and this book is like an Ariadne's thread that can help the reader navigate It is human instinct to recoil from complexity and uncertainty. But there is no avoiding them, especially in a world of interconnected and emergent complexity. This is why we need systems thinking, and Meadows has written a concise and powerful introduction to the subject. Her expertise guides the reader as she distills a ton of accumulated wisdom into strident prose. Humanity is lost in the labyrinth of complex systems, and this book is like an Ariadne's thread that can help the reader navigate and survive the Minotaur's labyrinth.

Meadows's own specialty is an understanding of the limits of ecological systems. She was the primary author of The Limits to Growth. This primer echoes many of the themes of that book, and of later sustainability literature, but the book's lessons are just as fruitfully applied outside of the ecological domain. Some of the best applied sections deal with governmental, industrial, infrastructural, financial, and educational systems. A lot of those insights 1) challenge mainstream thinking in useful ways and 2) are broadly applicable into many disciplines.

This primer is a mixture of theory and practice. The more theoretical sections might sound dry, but they are just as useful as the more applied sections. They offer tools to think about old problems and come up with new solutions in a manner that is admirably well structured and easy to understand. Without excessive obfuscation or quantitative overload, the author explains the introductory central themes of the MIT complex systems approach, such as feedback mechanisms, stocks & flows, system growth, carrying capacity, sustainability, diversity, etc.

The book does not waste your time and it is jam-packed full of keen observations. Towards the end, the author engages in some surprisingly potent and provocative musings that fire up the imagination. Her engineering discipline is fused with a holistic and humanistic spirit. Perhaps the most powerful lessons are contained in the later chapters that teach double lessons on when and how to successfully act on leverage points that can transform systems, but also when and how to learn to live with uncertainty. The practical ability to discern what lies within our power, and what does not, is the key insight of the book, and indeed of complex systems thinking more broadly.

As a primer on complex systems, Meadows's book is fantastic. However, as an introduction to how to think about economics, the book succeeds only partially. She gives a good introduction to the ecological limits of resource use, but her models are based on rather simplistic engineering analysis. Compared to some other schools of complex systems thinking, the MIT school discussion of markets, governments, and the commons relies on rather mechanistic, thermodynamic, and engineering-based metaphors. As a result, she fails to appreciate the holistic complex adaptive systems models of market behaviour and cultural self-organization of, say, Hayek, Burke, Schumpeter, or the Ostroms. These would have brought important insights to the debate. She fails to appreciate the full extent of the evolutionary, self-organizing nature of market societies. She seems ignorant of the long history of complex systems thinking in political economy, from Smith to Marshall, before Herbert Simon. Simon's contribution to the subject, of course, cannot be ignored, but Meadows's calumny against economic thinking is very narrow-minded.

While the book fails as a primer on evolutionary thinking in economics, it wholly succeeds as a general primer on systems thinking more broadly. Its focus on ecological thinking and sustainability makes it very timely, but its lessons carry into a far range of human and social problems. The special importance of general systems thinking should be recognized in relation to the global climate crisis, the financial crisis, the immigration crisis, the crisis of the welfare state sustainability, the economic crisis caused by technological development, etc.... Meadows has done the intellectual community a service by providing a readable introduction to the topic. ...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Tyson Titensor added it

Shelves: lean-systems-management

TLDR of my review: Reading this book doesn't make one an expert on complex systems. In fact it probably makes one dangerously hubristic when it comes to systems thinking. It's a decent primer but it only scratches the surface. And it is flawed in a number of ways.

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I first became interested in Systems Thinking a little over 5 years ago and this book was one that I used to kick start my study. It was interesting re-read it after a few years as I now have a much more comple TLDR of my review: Reading this book doesn't make one an expert on complex systems. In fact it probably makes one dangerously hubristic when it comes to systems thinking. It's a decent primer but it only scratches the surface. And it is flawed in a number of ways.

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I first became interested in Systems Thinking a little over 5 years ago and this book was one that I used to kick start my study. It was interesting re-read it after a few years as I now have a much more complex view on systems thinking and thus stronger opinions about this book.

Perhaps one day I will write a more cohesive and thorough review, but for now, here are some random thoughts:

+Fundamental friction between trying to make systems understandable and repeatedly clarifying that complex systems are unpredictable.

+The book is at it's best when it is discussing the inherent challenge of systems modeling as well as typical mistakes made by systems modelers.

+While Meadows presents some nice examples of simplified systems as a way of presenting concepts the author ultimately does her readers a disservice by making inferences from those those models to make points about topics as diverse as macroeconomics, and foreign policy. At best her simplistic models would be useful to understand a relatively small, relatively un-complex system. Many of the huge global systems she is trying to comment on are uber-complicated (arguably too complicated to be modeled by even the most cutting edge experts in the world), and certainly inappropriate for a primer. Perhaps dangerously inappropriate as it could give one a false sense that by understanding these very basic systems models they can now understand macroeconomics.

+The frequent political soap-boxes detract from the book's credibility as impartial and serious. In places it feels like she is using her systems framework to justify her pre-existing beliefs. (If all you have is a hammer....)

+I think the power of incremental, continuous, small changes to a system (e.g. Lean) is one of the most important tools at our disposal to change systems. This important concept is largely overlooked in the book.

+Another very powerful concept overlooked in the book is the idea of Black Swans (in Meadows' defense this is a relatively new idea that wasn't really around when she wrote this book). I think some of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books are arguably more valuable mental models for living in a world of complex systems.

+Lack of discussion regarding the impact of time scales. If we pull a lever in a complex system today, it's likely we can assess what it will do tomorrow, but seeing far into the future of a system is nearly impossible.

...more

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Sep 26, 2016 Jo rated it really liked it

Shelves: learning

Nice introduction to systems thinking.

Warning: after reading this book you'll start noticing feedback loops all around you.

It touches on system thinking fundamentals like stocks, flows & feedback loops.
I love how it provides real-life examples (fish population, economic failure modes,...) and offers pointers on how to intervene in failing systems.
I read this work through the eyes of a consultant/software developer and a lot of the advice offered translates directly to my day job. Highly recommen ...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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