FS Reading
Guide to:
Thinking in
Systems
Learning Community
Introduction
This book provides an excellent 2. Describe one problem that you would like
to solve.
explanation of the how and why
of systems thinking. By the end
you will have an appreciation
of how ubiquitous systems are
in our world and the tools for
improving the ones in your life.
Before you read the book:
(Write down your answers)
1. Describe a system that you encounter daily.
3. What would you most like to understand
better after reading this book?
Learning Community 2
Cornerstone Ideas:
1. Once we see the relationship 4. Systems largely cause their
between structure and behavior, own behavior
we can begin to understand how
systems work, what makes them 5. Systems with similar feedback
produce poor results, and how to structures produce similar
shift them into better behavior dynamic behaviors, even if the
patterns. outward appearance of these
systems is completely dissimilar.
2. Some problems are systems
problems — undesirable
behaviors characteristic of the
system structures that produce
them. They will yield only as we
reclaim our intuition, stop casting
blame, see the system as the
source of its own problems, and
find the courage and wisdom to
restructure it.
3. The behavior of a system
cannot be known just by knowing
the elements of which the system
is made.
Learning Community 3
Key points from the book:
9. Balancing feedback loops are goal-seeking,
The basics of systems structure stabilizing, and regulating. They try to keep a
stock at a given value or within a range of values.
They oppose whatever direction of change is
1. A system is an interconnected set of elements
imposed on the system.
that is coherently organized in a way that
achieves something.
10. Reinforcing feedback loops are amplifying,
reinforcing, and self-multiplying. They enhance
2. Information holds systems together and plays
whatever direction of change is imposed on it.
a great role in determining how they operate.
11. Nonrenewable resources are stock-limited.
3. Purposes of a system are deduced from
Renewable resources are flow-limited.
behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.
12. The arrangement of systems and subsystems
4. Systems can be nested within systems.
is called a hierarchy.
Therefore, there can be purposes within purposes.
5. The basic operating unit of a system is the
feedback loop. A feedback loop is formed when
changes in a stock affect the flows into or out of
that same stock.
6. Stocks change over time through the actions
of a flow. A stock takes time to change because
flows take time to flow.
7. The time lags imposed by stocks allow room to
maneuver, to experiment, and to revise policies
that aren’t working.
8. Feedback loops often can operate in two
directions. They can correct an oversupply as
well as an undersupply.
Learning Community 4
Key points from the book:
The basics of system function 6. The capacity of a system to make its
own structure more complex is called self-
organization which produces heterogeneity and
1. Systems may exhibit adaptive, dynamic,
unpredictability.
goal-seeking, self-preserving, and sometimes
evolutionary behavior.
7. Nonlinearities are important because they
change the relative strengths of feedback loops.
2. An important function of almost every system
is to ensure its own perpetuation.
8. Leverage points are points of power and
frequently non-intuitive.
3. A system generally goes on being itself,
changing only slowly if at all, even with complete
9. Self-organizing, nonlinear, feedback systems
substitutions of its elements — as long as its
are inherently unpredictable. They are not
interconnections and purposes remain intact.
controllable. They are understandable only in
the most general way.
4. The information delivered by a feedback loop
can only affect future behavior; it can’t deliver
the information, and so can’t have an impact
fast enough, to correct behavior that drove the
current feedback.
5. Resilience in systems arises from a rich
structure of many feedback loops that can work
in different ways to restore a system even after a
large perturbation.
Learning Community 5
Key points from the book:
The application of 6. The goal is the direction-setter of the system,
the definer of discrepancies that require action
systems thinking the indicator of compliance, failure, or success
toward which balancing feedback loops work.
1. A stock governed by linked reinforcing and
balancing loops will grow exponentially if the 7. If you want to understand the deepest
reinforcing loop dominates the balancing one. It malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the
will die off if the balancing loop dominates the rules and to who has power over them.
reinforcing one. It will level off if the two loops
are of equal strength. 8. The ability to self-organize is the strongest
form of system resilience. A system that can
2. Model utility depends not on whether its evolve can survive almost any change, by
driving scenarios are realistic (since no one can changing itself.
know that for sure), but on whether it responds
with a realistic pattern of behavior. 9. Most individual and institutional decisions
are designed to regulate the levels in stocks.
3. Any physical, growing system is going to run
into some kind of constraint, sooner or later.
4. When a subsystem’s goals dominate at the
expense of the total system’s goals, the resulting
behavior is called suboptimization.
5. We have to invent boundaries for clarity and
sanity; and boundaries can produce problems when
we forget that we’ve artificially created them.
Learning Community 6
Key points from the book:
Fixing systems 5. Missing information flows are one of the most
common causes of system malfunction.
1. Because resilience may not be obvious without
6. Starting with the behavior of the system
a whole-system view, people often sacrifice
forces you to focus on facts, not theories.
resilience for stability, or for productivity, or
for some other more immediately recognizable
7. “Stay the course” is only a good idea if you’re
system property.
sure you’re on course.
2. If we’ve learned that a small push produces
a small response, we think that twice as big a
push will produce twice as big a response. But
in a nonlinear system, twice the push could
produce one-sixth the response, or the response
squared, or no response at all.
3. To act only when a problem become obvious
is to miss an important opportunity to solve
the problem.
4. The only way to fix a system that is laid out
poorly is to rebuild it if you can.
Learning Community 7
Ideas for further thought:
1. Complex systems can evolve 5. You get what you measure.
from simple systems only if there
are stable intermediate forms. 6. There is a systematic tendency
The resulting complex forms will on the part of human beings to
naturally be hierarchic. That may avoid accountability for their
explain why hierarchies are so own decisions.
common in the systems nature
presents to us. Among all possible 7. People who have managed to
complex forms, hierarchies are intervene in systems at the level of
the only ones that have had the paradigm have hit a leverage point
time to evolve. that totally transforms systems.
2. Systems fool us by presenting 8. Social systems are the external
themselves — or we fool ourselves manifestations of cultural
by seeing the world — as a series thinking patterns.
of events. We are less likely to be
surprised if we can see how events 9. Mental flexibility is a necessity
accumulate into dynamic patterns when you live in a world of
of behavior. flexible systems.
3. Disorderly, mixed-up borders 10. The longer the operant time
are sources of diversity and horizon, the better the chances
creativity. for survival.
4. Ultimately, the choice is not to
grow forever but to decide what
limits to live within.
Learning Community 8
Reflection questions and prompts from FS:
1. What are the most relevant ideas you have 3. It seems that one way to improve your
learned about how to fix or improve a system? systems thinking is by learning about biological
systems. Identify one or two biological systems
and try to map out their components (stocks,
flows, feedback loops, etc.)
2. How can you account for subjective 4. The chart in chapter 7 is excellent, and we
information in a system, and why is recommend spending some time considering
this necessary? your answers to the questions the author poses.
Learning Community 9
The FS Blank Sheet
After testing it with over a thousand readers, 3. After you complete a reading session, spend a
the Blank Sheet method is the single most few minutes adding to the map (some people use
effective way I’ve found to dramatically increase a different color ink).
retention. Here’s how it works:
4. Before you start your next reading session,
1. Before you start reading a new book, take out a review the mind map
blank sheet of paper (or use the space below)
Put these mind maps into a binder that you
2. Write down what you know about the subject periodically review. Works like a charm. If you
you’re about to read — a mind map of sorts. want to supercharge this method, once you
finish a book, try to recreate your mind map
from memory.
Learning Community 10
Your Thoughts and Reflections
Learning Community 11
