SOME NOTES ON SYSTEMS THINKING
Excerpt from Chapter Six, “Leverage Points—Places to Intervene in a
System” in Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (London:
Earthscan, 2008).
This book can be downloaded here: https://wtf.tw/ref/meadows.pdf
For more information, see “The Donella Meadows Project” here: http://
donellameadows.org
Some Key Properties of Systems:
It behaves on its own, we are in them.
A systems is more than the sum of its parts.
We should look beyond the players to the “rules of the game”.
They run themselves via feedback loops—balancing and reinforcing.
They are resilient, self-organizing, hierarchical.
Leverage Points—Places to Intervene in a System
12. Numbers: Constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, and
standards
11. Buffers: The sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows
10. Stock-and-Flow Structures: Physical systems and their nodes of
intersection
9. Delays: The lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes
8. Balancing Feedback Loops: The strength of the feedbacks relative to
the impacts they are trying to correct
7. Reinforcing Feedback Loops: The strength of the gain of driving loops
6. Information Flows: The structure of who does and does not have
access to information
5. Rules: Incentives, punishments, constraints
4. Self-Organization: The power to add, change, or evolve system
structure
3. Goals: The purpose of the system
2. Paradigms: The mind-set out of which the system (its goals,
structure, rules, delays, parameters) arises
1. Transcending Paradigms
Excerpt: “Mop-and-Bucket Solutions Keep Us Forever Cleaning Up”
by Donella Meadows (August 31, 1995)
David Orr, professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College, likes
to tell the story of the entrance exam for the insane asylum.
Candidates are led into a cement-lined room with a row of faucets on
one wall, fully open, gushing water. Leaning against the opposite wall are
dozens of buckets and mops.
The insane run frantically for the buckets and mops. The sane turn off
the faucets.
If that’s the test, we live in a land that’s certifiably crazy. Name a
problem. With astounding consistency we go for the mop-and-bucket
solution.
We spend fortunes on prisons without any serious inquiry into the
causes of crime.
We invade every wilderness looking for oil, we spend a fortune on
armies to defend oil, we change the chemistry of the atmosphere with the
wastes from burning oil, meanwhile refusing to examine why we need so
much oil. We mop up large and small oil spills, assuming they’re a
necessary cost of doing business. People tell us, indeed show us, how to
accomplish everything we want to do with much less oil, even with no oil.
We go on mopping.
We groan under the expense of our health system (at least 30 percent
more costly than any other in the world), though study after study tells us
how much money and effort we could save if we focused as hard on
preventing illness as we do on curing it. Turning off the faucets in this
case would include immunizing all our children, being sure pregnant
mothers are well nourished, getting reasonable amounts of exercise, and
recognizing that tobacco, alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and most junk foods are
slow poisons.
In a closely related area, E.F. Shumacher once asked: what would a
visitor from outer space notice most, the skill of our dentists, or the
prevalence of decay in our teeth? Dentistry, like doctoring, is a mopping-
up profession […]
[For the full essay, see: http://donellameadows.org/archives/mop-and-
bucket-solutions-keep-us-forever-cleaning-up/]
Prepared by Oscar Bulaong Jr., PhD (15 Nov 2018)
The information contained in this handout is strictly for educational purposes.