Summary of Donella Meadows' “Thinking in Systems” (2009)

Judging by the post and your pinned tweet, I think you would like what we're doing at Kumu. http://kumu.io/manifesto

I just finished reading her book, and I am trying to dig into this field to learn more about it, as I consider it pretty interesting.

I am still surprised that we don't teach it at school (high school). I want to believe it will happen in the next 20-25 years.

This has really influenced my thinking as a strategist and architect, particularly around when to introduce and remove process in teams. In particular, trying to figure out how to engineer reinforcing loops so that your teams and groups experience virtuous cycles of productivity.

RIP Donella Meadows, a great thinker.

The interested reader may also like this slideshare overview of Thinking in Systems ch. 1-3: http://www.slideshare.net/sandhyajohnson/thinking-in-systems...

Another of her well-known works is Leverage Points, which is also great and goes into more detail on some of that which is summarized in OP's linked article. http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points

Having worked in automated systems analysis and optimization across several fields, I think Meadows' thinking is very instructive. Some of her notions which stand out in particular to me:

* The importance of the effect of feedback loops in complex system. When unexpected or counterintuitive behavior occurs, a hidden or misunderstood reinforcement feedback loop is often at root.

* The requirement that systems that seek to automate or optimize complex interactive systems be constantly-adaptive because the system itself will interact with the observation/analysis/optimization acts. This can seem like crazy voodoo at first, but it is undeniable when you start to experience it in action.

* Understanding of cost externalities vs benefit rewards for system actors and how they relate to system sources/sinks (or "stocks and flows"). This drives so much of our economy, as well as the subsystems which feed it and she has some illuminating thoughts and analyses on addressing these issues broadly.

This all of course goes well beyond the more basic material on oversimplification vs complexity in simulation or interventions, limits of rationality in system-actors, nonlinearity vs linear thinking, boundary conditions/non-boundary conditions, etc.

For those intrigued by Systems Thinking but want to explore it in context of startups (or business in general), consider reading Scaling Lean by Ash Maurya [1]. The whole Customer Factory [2] is based on a causal loop diagram of McClure's Pirate Metrics (AARRR); Ash also incorporates a lot of Theory of Constraints into the book. Highly recommended.

Systems Thinking was also part of Intel's culture under Andrew Grove (at least at the leadership level, from what I can tell). You can see evidence of that in his super-acclaimed book, High Output Management [3], especially the first couple of chapters (though he doesn't refer to it directly). Rich Jolly, another executive @ Intel, actually has a PhD in Systems Science and also wrote a book, Systems Thinking for Business [4], although it's definitely a bit more advanced and more theoretical than the others listed here.

And, I whole-heartedly agree - Meadows' book is simply an AMAZING treatise of Systems Thinking. It's a great place to start regardless of your background (the beauty of ST is that it is applicable to a broad range of fields and disciplines).

As an aside, does anyone know of any good/free/open source tools for drawing causal loop diagrams, or better yet, running simulations?

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Scaling-Lean-Mastering-Metrics-Startu...

[2] https://leanstack.com/customer-factory-blueprint/

[3] https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove-e...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Thinking-Business-Capitalize-...