Eleven Laws of Systems Thinking

^z 20th September 2023 at 7:45am

Suggestions from Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline:

  1. Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions.
  2. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
  3. Behavior grows better before it grows worse.
  4. The easy way out leads back in.
  5. The cure can be worse than the disease.
  6. Faster is slower.
  7. Cause and effect are not always closely related in time and space.
  8. Small changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
  9. You can have your cake and eat it too – but not all at once.
  10. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
  11. There is no blame.

(cf Transient Behavior (1999-05-11), Epistemological Enginerooms (2000-08-10), Fifth Disciplinarians (2000-09-10), Discussion and Dialogue (2006-01-07), Awareness, No Blame, Change (2009-04-19), Learningful Life (2021-07-02), Work as School (2023-06-02), ...) - ^z - 2023-09-20