System Change

Systemic change is generally understood to require adjustments or transformations in the policies, practices, power dynamics, social norms or mindsets that underlie the societal issue at stake. It often involves the collaboration of a diverse set of players and can take place on a local, national or global level.

Adam Zeiner and

Places to intervene in a system

Gordon Brander newsletter.squishy.computer

Sam Liebeskind

From service design to systems change

Adam Groves medium.com

Adam Zeiner

If you didn’t want to look closely at your own organizational practices, if you felt uncomfortable about what younger works were agitating for, if you feared changed or anything that usurped your understanding of “how business is done” — Quiet Quitting was the easy answer.

Anne Helen Petersen • Bed Rotting and Loud Quitting - by Anne Helen Petersen Bed Rotting and Loud Quitting

Keely Adler

Now published: Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation

ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com

Adam Zeiner

PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM

(in increasing order of effectiveness)

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

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

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

The lengths of delays, relative to the

donellameadows.org • Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

Keely Adler

When we seek to intervene in any system created by someone, it’s not enough to view their decisions and choices simply as the consequences of first-order thinking because we can inadvertently create serious problems. Before changing anything, we should wonder whether they were using second-order thinking. Their reasons for making certain choices... See more

fs.blog • Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking - Farnam Street

Sam Liebeskind

social change always begins with people who have “both a critical eye and a hopeful heart.”

Sam Pressler • Building societal structures to hold the messiness of our relationships

SSam Liebeskind

Marshall Ganz

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

donellameadows.org • Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

Keely Adler

To understand exactly why this is the case, let’s consider Chesterton’s Fence, described by G. K. Chesterton himself as follows:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use

fs.blog • Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking - Farnam Street

SSam Liebeskind

Don’t remove a fence until you’ve understood why someone put it up in the first place