Leverage Points Where Small Changes Move Big Systems

May 4, 2020

Not all interventions in a system are equal. Leverage points are the places where a small shift produces large, lasting change and most people push on the wrong ones.

"Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals."

Donella Meadows observed that the most common mistake in systems thinking is intervening at the level of parameters adjusting numbers, tweaking rates when the real leverage lies in changing the rules of the system, the information flows, or the goals. A hospital that measures itself on beds filled will always resist preventive care. A school that measures itself on test scores will always resist deep learning. The metric is not the problem; the system's purpose (as revealed by its behavior, not its mission statement) is the problem.

The hierarchy of leverage runs roughly as follows: changing numbers and buffers is the weakest intervention. Changing feedback loops adding new ones or strengthening existing ones is more powerful. Changing the rules that govern the system (incentives, constraints, access to information) is more powerful still. And the most powerful lever of all is changing the system's goals or paradigm the mindset out of which the system arises in the first place.

This maps directly to Russell Ackoff's insight that "most large social systems are pursuing objectives other than the ones they proclaim, and the ones they pursue are wrong." They try to do the wrong thing righter, which only makes things wronger. The real leverage is not in optimizing within the current paradigm but in dissolving the problem entirely redesigning the system so the problem no longer exists.

Takeaway: When a system resists your efforts to change it, you are probably pushing on a low-leverage point step back and look for where the system's rules or goals can be rewritten.