System 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

Awareness’ is an unambitious political end-goal for a few reasons. Firstly: awareness of what? The information circulated in ‘awareness’ narratives often uncritically props up neoliberal ideology. Neoliberalism supports the privatisation of major businesses, cuts to state welfare, and an emphasis on ‘individual responsibility

Burnout, then, is an outcome of an interaction between burnout producing environmental factors and individually susceptible workers.

Counterintuitive. That’s Forrester’s word to describe complex systems. Leverage points are not intuitive. Or if they are, we intuitively use them backward, systematically worsening whatever problems we are trying to solve

To make diagnosis something ‘empowering’, the first step is to completely break it apart and acknowledge all of its potential different and conflicting functions. Diagnosis can give you access to community, or cut you off from community. It can give you access to benefits, or it can bar you from income through employment. It could get you your