
It would be a better world if this were required reading for all. It spends its time in transient behaviour on its way somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. Donella Meadows was a Harvard-educated scientist who worked at MIT and taught at Dartmouth, and was among the vanguard of systems thinkers At first glance, it’s hard not to be dismissive of systems theory. Even such things like firing people and hiring the new ones, including politicians - but of the structure is the same and info flows are the same would not help. Respectively, a change in one part of the system would course the change in another part. This important concept is largely overlooked in the book. You can do it with words or lists or pictures or arrows showing what you think is connected to what. In it Donella makes the crucially important point that the most transformative and effective leverage points are addressed by acting at the level of paradigm-change, by addressing the culture change that would shift the dominant believes about the system. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own. The bit about the volatility that can result from removing delays from a system is powerfully and scarily echoed in the story of the flash crash well-told in the Radiolab episode “Speed”. A Visual Approach to Leverage Points – The Donella Meadows Project An absolute essential for anyone aiming towards even the slightest understanding of this incredibly complex world we live in. If we can rely on one another, we can cope with almost anything. I th A good introduction to systems theory. Through the Freedom donela Information Act from a systems point of view one of the most important laws in the nationthat information became a matter of public record. If these sysetms are in balance, the fish population will remain stable.
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Donella Meadows offers a series of general guidelines, how to facilitate positive change in a system. Some companies were launching policies to bring their emissions down by 90 percent, just because of the release of previously sequestered information. Understanding how the parts of systems interact or are likely to interact, and realizing that much of systems operation is surprising and even counterintuitive, can be a powerful tool for anyone involved in organizational decision-making, management, or projection and guidance. Learn how your comment data is processed. She also brings natural resources into social system.īut it is very rewarding at the end. I think perhaps it puts a lot of people off because of two things: In other projects Wikiquote.


In her article, “Dancing with Systems,” the late and beloved Donella Meadows ( ) speaks to the mystery at the source of quest for wholeness.

“The Dance” is a great motivator to post on the bulletin board at your think-tank, school. We love Donella Meadows’ take on nurturing systems. Donella Meadows, a professor at Dartmouth College, a long-time organic farmer, journalist, and systems analyst, was working on a book titled Thinking in.
