Thinking in systems // Respecting complexity // Humility and tinkering
On 📕 Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows Although she died before finishing this book, Donella left enough of a legacy in the pages for the project to be brought to completion by her colleagues at MIT.
The book is exceptionally good, although structured in a way that caused me to take nearly five years to finish it.
The first third is academic/practical: systems diagrams, flows vs. stocks, etc. The remainder is more big picture. For me, the back end of the book is where the value lives.
On long-term resilience vs. short-term optimizations:
Because resilience may not be obvious without a whole-system view, people often sacrifice resilience for stability, or for productivity, or for some other more immediately recognizable property.
Thirty years ago, not too far from where I grew up, near Miami, a remarkable natural system existed: tens of thousands of flamingos would gather to feed at dusk in the shallow waters of the Everglades. Just as the sun touched the water, they would all take flight. When I was a child, we would go as a family to watch, and many others did the same. It was worth the trip.
Some idiot in the local government then made it a mission to remove the local alligators, fearing that an attack might halt the flow of tourists.
But without the alligators, the iguanas population flourished. Iguanas eat eggs, and with so many around, the flamingos simply left. The politicians had removed a piece of the system (the gators) without understanding the full thing, and the entire system collapsed and never recovered. I think about that a lot when I’m tempted to fiddle with something complex.
Still, barring that sort of reckless interventionism, good systems are robust:
A single balancing loop brings a system stock back to its desired state. Resilience is provided by several such loops, operating through different mechanisms, at different time scales, and with redundancy. A set of feedback loops that can restore or rebuild feedback loops is resilience at a still higher level — meta-resilience.
I’ve started to see burnout as this sort of balancing loop: our work and worldview grows unsustainable, and burnout kicks in to force us—very painfully, I’ll admit—to take a big step away. I felt something similar when I caught covid.
But also, the system breaks because we run it too close to optimal:
Placing a system in a straightjacket of constancy can cause fragility. —C.S. Holling, ecologist
Maybe, with a bit more thought toward running our days as a healthier, more holistic system, we can avoid a few of these painful restorations:
There are layers of limits around every growing plant, child, epidemic, product, technology, company, city, economy, and population. […]
Ultimately, the choice is not to whether to grow forever, but to decide which limits to live within. […]
If [we] do not choose and force [our] own limits to keep growth within the capacity of the supporting environment, then the environment will choose and enforce limits.
Donella also got me thinking about the value of play-as-strategy (in the sense of exploratory tinkering, not in the sense of purely goofing around). It’s not exactly a plan that you could put in a pitch deck, but it is a strategy, particularly when complexity is high:
The interactions between what I think I know about dynamic systems and my experience of the real world never fails to be humbling. […]
The bad news, or the good news, depending on your need to control the world and your willingness to be delighted by its surprises, is that even if you do understand all these system characteristics, you may be surprised less often, but you will still be surprised.
Communities are a type of complex system. Maybe this is why I’ve been so slow to make changes to my authors’ group; something is working, and I don’t want to replicate the flamingo debacle by tearing out pieces before understanding how everything fits together.
It makes a case for gentle tinkering over long time horizons.
Maybe building toward a satisfying life is like this as well. Not something that you can guarantee from a checklist or a plan, but something that you can bumble toward through humble (yet optimistic) exploration, experimentation, and tinkering.
📕 Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
Comments (8)
> nearly five years to finish it.
I have taken twice as long putting it off to read this.
Your recs here that I haven't read before (Sierra and Skrob) have been 2/2 for me. ANd both are books i expect to return to repeatedly so i guess it's time to crack this one open.
One rec i recommend but won't take you 5 years to read is John Gall's System Bible.
“ John Gall's System Bible”
Buying it now — thanks!
By coincidence, I used a quote from that book on the opening page of my first book :) [image.png]
I love how you always go beyond the surface of everything you comment on.
Two points:
1) Isn't play-as-strategy (in the sense of exploratory tinkering) at the root of lean startups?
2) You say you don't want to replicate the flamingo debacle by tearing out pieces before understanding how everything fits together. In truly complex systems, we never do understand (or can be sure that we understand) how everything fits together. You need to conduct safe (or as safe as possible) experiments and invest incrementally as your confidence grows.
👍 Very bayesian way of thinking
I liked the parable at the beginning. Simple enough to remind me of the lessons.
The story of the blind men and the elephant (ancient Sufi story)
one man felt the ear: "It is a large, rough thing, wide and broad, like a rug"
one man felt the trunk: "I have the real facts about it. It is like a straight and hollow pipe, awful and destructive."
one man felt its feet and legs: "It is mighty and firm, like a pillar"
Lesson: **The behaviour of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made**
A system must consist of at least three things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose
“ Lesson: **The behaviour of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made**
A system must consist of at least three things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose.”
This is an excellent summary and takeaway, and clarifies a bit of unease that I felt while trying to advice about "community-building," where they would always talk at the element-event level (people or posts) in isolation, without addressing the rest of the system.
“Isn't play-as-strategy (in the sense of exploratory tinkering) at the root of lean startups? ”
Hah, love this, and I think I agree in terms of original spirit, but it ended feeling very different to me by the end.
Maybe the turning point was somewhere around the growth hacking and/or experiment cards stage? At some point, it felt like playful exploration was no longer "allowed," even though we all knew full well that plenty of successful products and companies had been created via that route.
“ In truly complex systems, we never do understand (or can be sure that we understand) how everything fits together. You need to conduct safe (or as safe as possible) experiments and invest incrementally as your confidence grows. ”
100%. Well said.