Notes on 'Thinking in Systems: A Primer'
Author: Donella H. Meadows
External dependence leads to ruin
If you care about the capacity of the original corrective feedback process, you must avoid shifting the burden to an intervenor. Taking medication as a knee-jerk reaction to a headache ensures you'll never investigate the cause of the headaches — they won't go away. Remember to always drink a glass of wine after work to keep your corrective feedback loops from ever going off. The solution to this reliance is a shift back to the natural correction mechanisms — removing obstacles to their success, and making them more effective. If an intervenor is necessary, they should concentrate on helping the system help itself (at the long-term benefit of both parties).
Addiction is finding a quick and dirty solution to the symptom of the problem, which prevents or distracts one from the harder and longer term task of solving the real problem.
We respond to our environment with Bounded Rationality
We respond to our environment — and follow the lowest friction path. That is, until an external force changes our behavior. When we do respond, we do so with Bounded Rationality: the behavior is reasonable with the (limited) information we have now. Because we don't see the whole system, we don't optimize for it — Bounded Rationality leads to Suboptimization. To fix this, don't 'fire the worker', repair the structure.
Top 5 places to intervene in a system
- Transcending Paradigms: not holding any particular mind-set above another; staying flexible to any worldview including no worldview (which itself is a worldview you may have to let go). Pick the most useful paradigm for your purposes at the moment.
- Paradigms: the mind-set which system goals, structure, rules, and core assumptions come from. Like questioning: "growth makes companies better".
- Goals: the purpose of the system. Rallying the country around the war-time effort.
- Self-Organization: the ability to change or evolve system structure. Like creating a new Operating Agreement where employees can start their own initiatives, after seeking advising from relevant peers.
- Rules: Incentives + constraints. What if elections were by popular vote? What if the CEO's salary couldn't be higher than 5x the lowest paid employee?
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