More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
John Kenneth Galbraith recognized that corporate goal—to engulf everything—long ago.
I said a while back that changing the players in the system is a low-level intervention, as long as the players fit into the same old system. The exception to that rule is at the top, where a single player can have the power to change the system’s goal.
Paradigms are the sources of systems. From them, from shared social agreements about the nature of reality, come system goals and information flows, feedbacks, stocks, flows, and everything else about systems.
Systems modelers say that we change paradigms by building a model of the system, which takes us outside the system and forces us to see it whole.
The higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it—that’s why societies often rub out truly enlightened beings.
Self-organizing, nonlinear, feedback systems are inherently unpredictable. They are not controllable. They are understandable only in the most general way.
Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned.
We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!
Get the Beat of the System
Starting with the behavior of the system directs one’s thoughts to dynamic, not static, analysis—not only to “What’s wrong?” but also to “How did we get there?” “What other behavior modes are possible?” “If we don’t change direction, where are we going to end up?” And looking to the strengths of the system, one can ask “What’s working well here?” Starting with the history of several variables plotted together begins to suggest not only what elements are in the system, but how they might be interconnected.
Expose Your Mental Models to the Light of Day
Mental flexibility—the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure—is a necessity when you live in a world of flexible systems.
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.
Honor, Respect, and Distribute Information
Use Language with Care and Enrich It with Systems Concepts
Language … as articulation of reality is more primordial than strategy, structure, or … culture.
The first step in respecting language is keeping it as concrete, meaningful, and truthful as possible—part of the job of keeping information streams clear.
Pay Attention to What Is Important, Not Just What Is Quantifiable
Pretending that something doesn’t exist if it’s hard to quantify leads to faulty models.
Make Feedback Policies for Feedback Systems
Go for the Good of the Whole
Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability—whether they are easily measured or not.
Listen to the Wisdom of the System
Locate Responsibility in the System
“Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision makers.
Stay Humble—Stay a Learner
The very act of acknowledging uncertainty could help greatly to reverse this worsening trend.
We can, and some of us do, celebrate and encourage self-organization, disorder, variety, and diversity.
Systems are always coupling and uncoupling the large and the small, the fast and the slow.
Living successfully in a world of complex systems means expanding not only time horizons and thought horizons; above all, it means expanding the horizons of caring.
Don’t Erode the Goal of Goodness
The gap between desired behavior and actual behavior narrows.
Don’t weigh the bad news more heavily than the good. And keep standards absolute.
