Module VII System Performance

Advanced System Change

Learning Objectives

• Reinforce understanding of system archetypes and leverage points

• Reinforce understanding of three particular system archetypes

• Learn how to change the behavior of these archetypes

• Introduce systems science computer simulation

Review: Archetype

A commonly recurring pattern of system structure and associated behaviors

System Archetypes

• Success to the Successful• Fixes that Fail • Shifting the Burden

What is a Leverage Point?

A place in a complex system that, if changed, will change the overall behavior of the system.

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Leverage Points in Archetypes

Success to the Successful

• Two or more organizations/methods/agents are competing for a limited resource (like funding or time)

• The allocation of that resource is based on past successes

• But success is only possible if you have resources

• Whichever organization initially succeeds will have more and more resources allocated to it

Success to the Successful

True Leverage Points

What people usually do:• Nothing!

What they should be doing:• Changing paradigms• Changing goals• Creating self-organization• Changing rules• Changing information flows• Change numbers

What We Could Do Instead

Fixes that Fail

• Quick-fix solution is applied to a problem• Resolves the problem in the short term• Unintended consequences of the quick fix

make the problem worse in the long term

Fixes that Fail

Fixes that Fail

Fixes that Fail

True Leverage PointsWhat people usually do:• Try another fix without examining why the previous

one failed

What they should be doing:• Changing paradigms• Changing goals• Changing information flows• Weakening undesirable reinforcing loops

What We Could Do Instead

Shifting the Burden

• Choice between solving a problem by treating the symptoms or applying a fundamental solution (i.e. root cause)

• Symptomatic relief of the problem reduces pressure to apply a fundamental solution

• Over time, side effects of the symptomatic solution undermines the ability to apply the fundamental solution

Shifting the Burden

True Leverage PointsWhat people usually do:• Continue shifting the burden

What they should be doing:• Changing paradigms• Changing goals• Changing information flows• Weakening undesirable reinforcing loops

What We Could Do Instead

Complicated Systems

YIKES

What is a Simulation?

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Why a Simulation?Causal Loop Diagram• Diagrams help us have new

conversations about the situations we have experienced

• Diagrams help us understand how the interventions we have done or are planning will interact with the system

• Diagrams can help us see how feedback loops influence our work

Simulation• Simulations help us explore

and better understand situations we have no experience with

• Simulations let us experiment in a “virtual system” with interventions that might never have been tried before

• Simulations can help us see out the interactions between feedback loops influence our work

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Lessons Learned

• Intervening in archetypes can be counterintuitive• We need an understanding of both leverage

points and system structure before we intervene• We may not be able to predict responses to

interventions in very complex systems without turning to computer simulation

• Nevertheless, the methods we have learned are applicable and appropriate in many complex systems

Learning Objectives

• Reinforce understanding of system archetypes and leverage points

• Reinforce understanding of four particular system archetypes

• Learn how to change the behavior of these archetypes

• Introduce systems science computer simulation