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

In the United Nations’ IPCC most recent climate change mitigation report, the word “lifestyle” appears 193 times. The authors write, “The acceptability of collective social change over a longer term towards less resource intensive lifestyles, however, depends on the social mandate for change. This mandate can be built through public participation,

PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM

(in increasing order of effectiveness)

12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards).


13. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.


14. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures).


15. The lengths of delays, relative to the

It’s also something that I encourage people to investigate with their own practices. There’s so much that you can do beyond just making your thing. You can also work on the whole system of getting that thing and others like it out into the world. There’s a lot of room for expansion and creativity there. I think the coolest projects look at the

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

Indeed, even if one could apply the notion of oscillation between

polarized features proffered by current political ideologies, a normative choice to affirm a paradigmatic project beyond such oscillation is more advisable. This normativity is rooted in compassion, care, cohesion, solidarity, social responsibility, universal healthcare and education,