My engagement with the Systems perspective seems to date from 1968, and I think developed from my reading of Walter Buckley's Sociology and Modern Systems Theory (1967) which I discovered on Bob Textor's bookshelves. The Whole Earth Catalog and Truck Store provided pointers to several other books, and 'Systems' eclipsed 'Development' as a focus of my interests. Buckley edited Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist a Sourcebook (1968), the table of contents of which is ...tempting more than 50 years later.
Emergence is an epitome
Donella Meadows'
...Try It NowQuote
- Pick a problem you're struggling with. Instead of asking “Who caused this?”, ask “What's the system that's producing this outcome?”
- Identify the stocks involved (what's accumulating or depleting?) and the flows (what's increasing or decreasing those stocks?).
- Look for feedback loops: Is there a balancing loop keeping things stuck? A reinforcing loop making things worse?
- Ask: Where is information missing? Often system malfunctions stem from key players not having access to the right information.
- Consider: What would happen if you changed the goal or what gets measured, rather than just pushing harder on the current approach?
"Let's face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That's what makes the world interesting, that's what makes it beautiful, and that's what makes it work."