added by Adam Zeiner · updated 2y ago
From service design to systems change
The systems analysis community has a lot of lore about leverage points. Those of us who were trained by the great Jay Forrester at MIT have all absorbed one of his favorite stories. “People know intuitively where leverage points are,” he says. “Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and I’ve figured out a leverage point — in inventory
... See morefrom Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows
Keely Adler added
- In order for design to transform business, it must first transform itself. It must leave behind the language and mindset of engineering. Get past scalability and extensibility. Systems and components. Agility and usability. Usefulness and seamlessness. Efficiency and friction. Data and metrics. Patterns and code.
from Visualizing Minimalist Design by Thomas Klaffke
Keely Adler added
- Discover, describe and define: In order to create effective solutions, we need to have a deep understanding of what is going on.
- Create meaningful change: In systems thinking lingo, you might call this an intervention.
- Measure: Continually learn from and adapt the system
from Activating Change: A Designer’s Guide to Systems Thinking - Boxes and Arrows by Boxes and Arrows
Mo Shafieeha added
- How to Use Systems Thinking One: Understand the Big PictureUsing mapping as a tool to understand the complexity of a problem or project, we level-set the playing field by making it visual and giving all stakeholders the opportunity to understand it. There are different ways to map, and it is important to define the relationships between elements wh... See more
from Activating Change: A Designer’s Guide to Systems Thinking - Boxes and Arrows by Boxes and Arrows
Mo Shafieeha added
“leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.
from Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows
Keely Adler added
- As Fritjof Capra says: a machine can be controlled, a living system can only be disturbed. At best, we will find ways of carefully nudging a living system. According to Donella Meadows, we must find its leverage points, those pivots that allow us to influence system behavior. Most importantly: after each cautious inter- vention, we must patiently o... See more
from Understanding Living Systems
Phil Nguyen and added
There’s a lot to love about metrics driven systems: they’re fairly meritocratic, they reward intelligence and hard work, they align (at least in some way) the incentives of producers and consumers, and they accelerate really quickly once they start working.
But, using this framework to understand the systemic failure at the root of a lot of wide sca
... See morefrom Metrics, Incrementalism, and Local Maxima by Andrew Kortina
sari added
- the most powerful ‘leverage points for change’ within in a system are non-material (changing the rules and goals of the system, changing mindsets, or changing the entire paradigm)
from Designing Systems Interventions – Transition Design Seminar CMU
Sarah Wong added