This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans (Create a Strategy to Elevate Your Career, Community & Life)

by Seth Godin

Donella Meadows outlined several systems traps that help us see how they persist and what our options are if we want to make change happen. From a user’s point of view, they seem like defects, but they’re actually built into the system from the start. • Policy resistance is the self-maintaining re-centering that feedback loops enable systems to achieve. We might try to fix the economy or end drug use or balance a budget, but the forces at work resist. Individuals in the system might not intentionally seek to sabotage a policy change, but the balanced system subverts it nonetheless. The status quo is the status quo because it’s good at sticking around. • The tragedy of the commons is the depletion of a shared resource because rational individuals believe they have no incentive to hold back. When all the farmers share a plot of land, each might as well let their sheep get fat, or someone else will. Things like clean air are hard to achieve because individuals acting in their self-interest often see no reason to invest to stop their own pollution. • Drift to low performance is the disappointing path of comparing our low performance to others’ even worse performance, and creating a feedback loop of lowering the bar. Once a neighborhood starts to be unkempt, it’s likely that someone might care less and make it a bit worse, which amplifies the downward spiral. • The race to the bottom is not the same as drift. This is the intentional effort of lower prices, worse service, mo...