System Thinking

“In order to tell a systems story, people need to make three shifts:
• From seeing just their part of the system to seeing more of the whole system—including why and how it currently operates as well as what is being done to change it.
• From hoping that others will change to seeing how they can first change themselves.
• From focusing on individual events (crises, fires) to understanding and redesigning the deeper system structures that give rise to these events.”

Excerpt From: David Peter Stroh. “Systems Thinking For Social Change: A Practical Guide to Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results.”

“Growth in a constrained environment is very common, so common that systems thinkers call it the “limits-to-growth” archetype. (We’ll explore more archetypes—frequently found system structures that produce familiar behavior patterns—in Chapter Five.) Whenever we see a growing entity, whether it be a population, a corporation, a bank account, a rumor, an epidemic, or sales of a new product, we look for the reinforcing loops that are driving it and for the balancing loops that ultimately will constrain it. We know those balancing loops are there, even if they are not yet dominating the system’s behavior, because no real physical system can grow forever. Even a hot new product will saturate the market eventually. A chain reaction in a nuclear power plant or bomb will run out of fuel. A virus will run out of susceptible people to infect. An economy may be constrained by physical capital or monetary capital or labor or markets or management or resources or pollution.”

Excerpt From: Donella H. Meadows. “Thinking in Systems.”