Dancing with Systems - Donella Meadows

The future can't be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. Systems can't be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned.

1. Get the beat.
2. Listen to the wisdom of the system.
3. Expose your mental models to the open air.
4. Stay humble. Stay a learner.
5. Honor and protect information.
6. Locate responsibility in the system.
7. Make feedback policies for feedback systems.
8. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.
9. Go for the good of the whole.
10. Expand time horizons.
11. Expand thought horizons.
12. Expand the boundary of caring.
13. Celebrate complexity.
14. Hold fast to the goal of goodness.

1. Get the beat.
1. Ask for history. Make time graph.
2. Dynamic, not static analysis. How did we get here? What behavior modes are possible? If we don't change direction, where are we going to end up?
3. We tend to define a problem not by the actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution. (e.g. The problem is, we need more oil. The problem is, we need to ban abortion. The problem is, how can we attract more growth to this town?)
2. Listen to the wisdom of the system.
1. Find the system's own self-maintenance capacities
2. Maybe small loans, classes in literacy & accounting are better than bringing in outside investment.
3. Expose your mental models to the open air.
1. Collect as many explanations & hypotheses as possible. Consider all of them plausible until you find some evidence that causes you to rule one out. That way you will be emotionally able to see the evidence that rules out an assumption with which you might have confused your own identity.
2. Mental flexibility: redraw boundaries. Always put words, lists, arrows, draw connections.
4. Stay humble. Stay a learner.
1. We learn by trial and error, error, error. - Buckminster Fuller
2. Small steps, constant monitoring, willing to change course as I find out more about where it's leading. 
3. @This is so beautiful. Clash clash boom boom. Taste a bit here, a bit there, try something new! Bring in new voices, new thoughts. Fail fast. 
5. Honor and protect information.
1. Thou shalt not distort (accurate), delay (timely), or sequester (complete) information.
6. Locate responsibility in the system.
1. Intrinsic responsibility: System is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision-making directly, quickly, compellingly to the decision-makers.
2. Each prof pays for their own air-con. Insurance companies & public funds don't pay medical costs for accidents caused by riders don't wear helmet. All towns place intake pipe downstream from their outflow pipe.
7. Make feedback policies for feedback systems.
1. Jimmy Carter: tax on gasoline proportional to the fraction of US oil consumption that has to be imported
2. Meta-feedback loops-loops that alter, correct & expand loops. These are policies that design learning into the management process.
8. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.
1. If no one speak up and point towards their presence/ absence, they'll cease to exist.
9. Go for the good of the whole.
1. Don't go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all. - Kenneth Boulding
2. Creativity, stability, diversity, resilience, sustainability - total system properties
10. Expand time horizons.
1. Phenomena at different time-scales are nested within each other.
11. Expand thought horizons.
1. In spite of what you majored in, follow a system wherever it leads.
2. Give people from different disciplines a problem to solve together.
12. Expand the boundary of caring.
1. Most people already know about the interconnections that make moral and practical rules turn out to be the same rules. They just have to bring themselves to believe that which they know.
13. Celebrate complexity.
14. Hold fast to the goal of goodness.
1. Keep standards absolute. Don't erode our goals