Next I will introduce you to a systems zoo—a collection of some common and interesting types of systems. You’ll see how a few of these creatures behave and why and where they can be found. You’ll recognize them; they’re all around you and even within you. With a few of the zoo “animals”—a set of specific examples—as a foundation, I’ll step back and talk about how and why systems work so beautifully and the reasons why they so often surprise and confound us.
I’ll talk about:
• why everyone or everything in a system can act dutifully and rationally, yet all these well-meaning actions too often add up to a perfectly terrible result
• why things so often happen much faster or slower than everyone thinks they will
• why you can be doing something that has always worked and suddenly discover, to your great disappointment, that your action no longer works
• why a system might suddenly, and without warning, jump into a kind of behavior you’ve never seen before.
