Systems theory is an amazingly important and influential way of viewing the world. It is highly productive, scientific, practical, rational, and sensible. This is part of a write-up I found years ago by someone named Donella H. Meadows called “Places to Intervene in a System” (1 is weakest, 10 is strongest place to intervene):
Numbers.
Numbers are last on the list of leverage points. Probably ninety-five percent of our attention goes to numbers But they RARELY CHANGE BEHAVIOR.
Material stocks and flows.
The plumbing structure, the stocks and flows and their physical arrangement, can have an enormous effect on how a system operates. But because physical building is a slow and expensive kind of change it’s often difficult.
Regulating negative feedback loops.
Moving from the physical part of the system to the information and control parts, where more leverage can be found. Negative feedback loops self-correct under different conditions and impacts. The strength of a negative feedback loop is important RELATIVE TO THE IMPACT IT IS DESIGNED TO CORRECT. Examples are preventive medicine, exercise, and good nutrition whistle blowers, impact fees, pollution taxes
Driving positive feedback loops.
A positive feedback loop is self-reinforcing. The more it works, the more it gains power to work some more. The more money you have in the bank, the more interest you earn, the more money you have in the bank. However, a system with an unchecked positive loop ultimately will destroy itself, so usually a negative loop kicks in sooner or later.
Information flows.
A NEW LOOP delivering feedback to a place where it wasn't going before. Missing feedback is a common cause of system malfunction. Adding or rerouting information can be a powerful intervention, usually easier and cheaper than rebuilding physical structure.
The rules of the system (incentives, punishments, constraints).
The rules of the system define its scope, boundaries, degrees of freedom. Constitutions are strong social rules. Physical laws such as the second law of thermodynamics are absolute rules. Laws, punishments, incentives, and informal social agreements are progressively weaker rules. Rules change behavior. Power over rules is real power.
The power of self-organization.
The most stunning thing living systems can do is to change themselves utterly by creating whole new structures and behaviors. In biological systems that power is called evolution. In human economies it's called technical advance or social revolution. In systems lingo it's called self-organization.
The goals of the system.
The big leverage points are the goals of entire systems. What is the point of the game? The goal of keeping the market competitive has to trump the goal of each corporation to eliminate its competitors. The goal of keeping populations in balance and evolving has to trump the goal of each population to commandeer all resources into its own.
The mindset or paradigm out of which the system arises.
The shared idea in the minds of society, the great unstated assumptions——unstated because unnecessary to state; everyone knows them... yet the paradigmatic assumptions of our culture may utterly dumbfound people of other cultures. Paradigms are the sources of systems. From them come goals, information flows, feedbacks, stocks, flows. Copernicus and Kepler showing that the earth is not the center of the universe, Einstein that matter and energy are interchangeable, or Adam Smith postulating selfish actions in markets accumulate to the common good. All it takes is a click in the mind, a new way of seeing. You work with active change agents and the middle ground of people who are open-minded (let us pray).
The power to transcend paradigms.
NO paradigm is "true," that even the one that sweetly shapes one's comfortable worldview is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe. This is the precarious and unfamiliar territory of disciplined thinking combined with strategically, profoundly, and madly letting go.
