Systems Thinking Wisdoms | LSW#57

"We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them."

Oct 24, 2024

One of my all-time favorite books is Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows. Towards the end, she has a collection of “systems wisdoms” that I regularly revisit.

The reason? As leaders, in fact as human beings, it’s easy to get into the “control and conquer” mode and forget that it’s a “dance”. Trying to control that which can’t by definition is a recipe for perennial frustration and misplaced efforts.

Meadows writes:

For those who stake their identity on the role of omniscient conqueror, the uncertainty exposed by systems thinking is hard to take. If you can’t understand, predict, and control, what is there to do?
Systems thinking leads to another conclusion, however… as soon as we stop being blinded by the illusion of control. It says that there is plenty to do, of a different sort of “doing.” 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. We can’t surge forward with certainty into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises and learn from them and even profit from them. We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.
We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!

In this edition, I share excerpts from the fifteen systems wisdoms she lists. I’ve also added my take on implications to leadership, along with links to related pieces. In a future edition, I’ll share the personal and career implications.

Hey! It’s Sheril Mathews from Leading Sapiens. Welcome to my newsletter, where I share strategies for getting savvier at leadership and work.

1. Get the beat of the system

Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves. If it’s a piece of music or a whitewater rapid or a fluctuation in a commodity price, study its beat. If it’s a social system, watch it work. Learn its history. Ask people who’ve been around a long time to tell you what has happened. …
Starting with the behavior of the system forces you to focus on facts, not theories. It keeps you from falling too quickly into your own beliefs or misconceptions, or those of others.
… Starting with the behavior of the system directs one’s thoughts to dynamic, not static, analysis—not only to “What’s wrong?” but also to “How did we get there?” “What other behavior modes are possible?” “If we don’t change direction, where are we going to end up?” And looking to the strengths of the system, one can ask “What’s working well here?”
… starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution.

It’s easy to jump in and point out what’s not working. Much harder to identify what’s already working as these are often hidden. This isn’t just about observing patterns but cultivating attunement. It’s how a seasoned jazz musician doesn’t just follow the sheet music but senses the band’s improvisational energy.

As a leader, observe the system’s rhythm, norms, and tacit rules before making changes. This means engaging in deeper conversations, walking the floors, and reading subtle cues. This sensitivity helps to understand informal dynamics and avoid premature interventions.

2. Expose your mental models to the light of day

Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own. Instead of becoming a champion for one possible explanation or hypothesis or model, collect as many as possible. Consider all of them to be 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 that may become entangled with your own identity.
Getting models out into the light of day, making them as rigorous as possible, testing them against the evidence, and being willing to scuttle them if they are no longer supported is nothing more than practicing the scientific method —something that is done too seldom even in science, and is done hardly at all in social science or management or government or everyday life.

Effective leaders are not only clear about their assumptions but also transparent about their uncertainties. By exposing your mental models, you encourage others to do the same, leading to a more intellectually honest organization.

Bringing mental models to light is hard because it demands a readiness to let go of ideas tied to our identities, ego, and past successes. However, this discomfort is how genuine learning happens.

3. Honor, respect and distribute information

Information holds systems together and … delayed, biased, scattered, or missing information can make feedback loops malfunction. Decision makers can’t respond to information they don’t have, can’t respond accurately to information that is inaccurate, and can’t respond in a timely way to information that is late. I would guess that most of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of biased, late, or missing information.
If I could, I would add an eleventh commandment to the first ten: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or withhold information. You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, more accurate, more complete information.
… Information is power. Anyone interested in power grasps that idea very quickly. The media, the public relations people, the politicians, and advertisers who regulate much of the public flow of information have far more power than most people realize.

Information isn’t just neutral data; it’s a social currency that shapes perceptions, relationships, and power dynamics.

Information asymmetry doesn’t just distort outcomes; it breeds mistrust. In contrast, transparent information flows create engagement and accountability.

By democratizing information, you distribute agency. People can respond intelligently, making the system adaptive rather than brittle.

4. Use language with care and enrich it with systems concepts

Our information streams are composed primarily of language. Our mental models are mostly verbal. Honoring information means above all avoiding language pollution — making the cleanest possible use we can of language. Second, it means expanding our language so we can talk about complexity.
… Fred Kofman wrote in a systems journal:
[Language] can serve as a medium through which we create new understandings and new realities as we begin to talk about them. In fact, we don’t talk about what we see; we see only what we can talk about. Our perspectives on the world depend on the interaction of our nervous system and our language — both act as filters through which we perceive our world. . . . The language and information systems of an organization are not an objective means of describing an outside reality—they fundamentally structure the perceptions and actions of its members. To reshape the measurement and communication systems of a [society] is to reshape all potential interactions at the most fundamental level. Language . . . as articulation of reality is more primordial than strategy, structure, or . . . culture.
…The first step in respecting language is keeping it as concrete, meaningful, and truthful as possible — part of the job of keeping information streams clear. The second step is to enlarge language to make it consistent with our enlarged understanding of systems. If the Eskimos have so many words for snow, it’s because they have studied and learned how to use snow. They have turned snow into a resource, a system with which they can dance.

Leadership is communication — the words you use can limit or expand possibilities. Language acts as both a lens and a filter. It doesn’t just describe reality; it shapes it. Calling something “waste” versus “byproduct” sets the context and alters how people respond.

You can shift the framing of issues, revealing opportunities or concealing them. Incorporating systems thinking encourages broader thinking beyond silos and a more interconnected perspective.

5. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable

Our culture, obsessed with numbers, has given us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can’t measure… It means that we make quantity more important than quality. If quantity forms the goals of our feedback loops, if quantity is the center of our attention and language and institutions, if we motivate ourselves, rate ourselves, and reward ourselves on our ability to produce quantity, then quantity will be the result.
… Pretending that something doesn’t exist if it’s hard to quantify leads to faulty models. … Human beings have been endowed not only with the ability to count, but also with the ability to assess quality. Be a quality detector. Be a walking, noisy Geiger counter that registers the presence or absence of quality.
If something is ugly, say so. If it is tacky, inappropriate, out of proportion, unsustainable, morally degrading, ecologically impoverishing, or humanly demeaning, don’t let it pass. Don’t be stopped by the “if you can’t define it and measure it, I don’t have to pay attention to it” ploy.

Metrics are proxies, not the reality itself. Qualitative shifts precede quantitative outcomes. The temptation is to optimize what we can measure while sidelining what truly matters.

Develop the ability to detect intangibles that are vital to systemic health but don’t show up neatly on a spreadsheet. Use your “soft” sensors — gut feeling, intuition, and empathy. Paradoxically, focusing on the unmeasurable often enhances measurable outcomes.

6. Go for the good of the whole

Remember that hierarchies exist to serve the bottom layers, not the top. Don’t maximize parts of systems or subsystems while ignoring the whole. Don’t…go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all. Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability — whether they are easily measured or not.

Leaders should invert the pyramid, seeing their role as enabling the performance of those closer to the ground — the “bottom layers” interacting directly with customers, products, or processes. Engage with and listen to frontline folks, understanding their needs and challenges. Prioritizing their well-being and performance strengthens the organization’s foundation.

Netflix calls this the decision making tree with the CEO at the bottom.

7. Listen to the wisdom of the system

Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself. Notice how many of those forces and structures are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Don’t be an unthinking intervenor and destroy the system’s own self-maintenance capacities. Before you charge in to make things better, pay attention to the value of what’s already there.

Observing how the system self-corrects can reveal underlying intelligence that interventionists miss.

This principle emphasizes humility — not imposing solutions but noticing what the system is trying to achieve on its own. By paying attention to how the system manages conflicts or sustains equilibrium, you can better align interventions with its existing wisdom rather than imposing external logic that disrupts rather than help.

8. Locate responsibility in the system

That’s a guideline both for analysis and design. In analysis, it means looking for the ways the system creates its own behavior. Do pay attention to the triggering events, the outside influences that bring forth one kind of behavior from the system rather than another. Sometimes those outside events can be controlled .... But sometimes they can’t. And sometimes blaming or trying to control the outside influence blinds one to the easier task of increasing responsibility within the system.

“Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision makers. Because the pilot of a plane rides in the front of the plane, that pilot is intrinsically responsible. He or she will experience directly the consequences of his or her decisions.
… A great deal of responsibility was lost when rulers who declared war were no longer expected to lead the troops into battle. Warfare became even more irresponsible when it became possible to push a button and cause tremendous damage at such a distance that the person pushing the button never even sees the damage.
Garrett Hardin has suggested that people who want to prevent other people from having an abortion are not practicing intrinsic responsibility, unless they are personally willing to bring up the resulting child!
These… examples are enough to get you thinking about how little our current culture has come to look for responsibility within the system that generates an action, and how poorly we design systems to experience the consequences of their actions.

In many organizations, authority is concentrated at the top, while responsibility is diffused throughout the organization. Systems thinking urges leaders to align authority with responsibility, ensuring decision-makers have both the power to act and the responsibility to manage the outcomes. This requires giving them the tools, information, and support needed to succeed, along with a clear understanding of the stakes.

9. Stay humble — stay a learner

The thing to do, when you don’t know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn. The way you learn is by experiment—or, as Buckminster Fuller put it, by trial and error, error, error. In a world of complex systems, it is not appropriate to charge forward with rigid, undeviating directives.
“Stay the course” is only a good idea if you’re sure you’re on course. Pretending you’re in control even when you aren’t is a recipe not only for mistakes, but for not learning from mistakes. What’s appropriate when you’re learning is small steps, constant monitoring, and a willingness to change course as you find out more about where it’s leading.
That’s hard. It means making mistakes and, worse, admitting them. It means what psychologist Don Michael calls “error-embracing.” It takes a lot of courage to embrace your errors.

… It means seeking and using—and sharing—information about what went wrong with what you expected or hoped would go right. Both error embracing and living with high levels of uncertainty emphasize our personal as well as societal vulnerability. Typically we hide our vulnerabilities from ourselves as well as from others. But . . . to be the kind of person who truly accepts his responsibility . . . requires knowledge of and access to self far beyond that possessed by most people in this society.

Leaders must view themselves as learners-in-chief, setting the tone for the team’s approach to complexity. Model this by asking questions, seeking differing perspectives, and showing a willingness to adapt based on what you learn.

Intellectual humility means acknowledging you don’t have all the answers. It doesn’t mean indecisiveness; it means being open to change when evidence warrants it.

10. Celebrate complexity

There’s something within the human mind that is attracted to straight lines and not curves, to whole numbers and not fractions, to uniformity and not diversity, and to certainties and not mystery. But there is something else within us that has the opposite set of tendencies, since we ourselves evolved out of and are shaped by and structured as complex feedback systems.

Only a part of us, a part that has emerged recently, designs buildings as boxes with uncompromising straight lines and flat surfaces. Another part of us recognizes instinctively that nature designs in fractals, with intriguing detail on every scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic. That part of us makes Gothic cathedrals and Persian carpets, symphonies and novels, Mardi Gras costumes and artificial intelligence programs, all with embellishments almost as complex as the ones we find in the world around us.
We can… celebrate and encourage self-organization, disorder, variety, and diversity.

Complexity thrives on self-organization, where parts of the system spontaneously align or adapt to changing conditions. Leaders can support self-organization by enabling autonomy and distributed decision-making.

Instead of forcing clarity where it doesn’t exist, be comfortable with holding the tension of uncertainty — what Keats called negative capability. This involves framing ambiguity as a natural part of the process.

11. Expand time horizons

In a strict systems sense, there is no long term, short-term distinction. Phenomena at different time-scales are nested within each other. Actions taken now have some immediate effects and some that radiate out for decades to come. We experience now the consequences of actions set in motion yesterday and decades ago and centuries ago. The couplings between very fast processes and very slow ones are sometimes strong, sometimes weak. When the slow ones dominate, nothing seems to be happening; when the fast ones take over, things happen with breathtaking speed. Systems are always coupling and uncoupling the large and the small, the fast and the slow.
When you’re walking along a tricky, curving, unknown, surprising, obstacle-strewn path, you’d be a fool to keep your head down and look just at the next step in front of you. You’d be equally a fool just to peer far ahead and never notice what’s immediately under your feet. You need to be watching both the short and the long term — the whole system.

This isn’t just about strategic foresight; it’s about aligning everyday decisions with future implications. Systems thinking teaches that short-term fixes often lead to long-term problems. Effective leaders hold a dual focus—managing short-term pressures while communicating a compelling long-term vision.

Expanding time horizons doesn’t mean creating rigid plans. It means developing flexible strategies that adapt over time while maintaining a coherent long-term direction.

12. Defy the disciplines

In spite of what you majored in, or what the textbooks say, or what you think you’re an expert at, follow a system wherever it leads. It will be sure to lead across traditional disciplinary lines. To understand that system, you will have to be able to learn from — while not being limited by — economists and chemists and psychologists and theologians. You will have to penetrate their jargons, integrate what they tell you, recognize what they can honestly see through their particular lenses, and discard the distortions that come from the narrowness and incompleteness of their lenses. …
Interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved, and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct. …They will have to admit ignorance and be willing to be taught, by each other and by the system.

Great leaders are boundary crossers. They are willing to explore new fields of knowledge to understand how different systems intersect. They actively seek ideas from unexpected places. It requires borrowing tools from other fields and reinterpreting them to fit a new context.

13. Don’t erode the goal of goodness

The most damaging example of the systems archetype called “drift to low performance” is the process by which modern industrial culture has eroded the goal of morality. The workings of the trap have been classic, and awful to behold.
Examples of bad human behavior are held up, magnified by the media, affirmed by the culture, as typical. This is just what you would expect. After all, we’re only human. The far more numerous examples of human goodness are barely noticed. …
And so expectations are lowered. The gap between desired behavior and actual behavior narrows. Fewer actions are taken to affirm and instill ideals.

“Drift to low performance” is where the desired state (ideal behavior) gradually adjusts downward to match actual behavior. This creates a reinforcing feedback loop: as expectations fall, behavior declines further, leading to even lower expectations.

Challenge the cultural drift toward cynicism by highlighting and rewarding positive examples. Change the narrative from “we’re only human” to “we’re capable of better.”

Demonstrate the behaviors you wish to see. Leadership is not about enforcing rules but about embodying principles.