Twelve leverage points
Encyclopedia
The twelve leverage points to intervene in a system were proposed by Donella Meadows
, a scientist and system analyst focused on environmental limits to economic growth. The leverage points, first published in 1997, were inspired by her attendance at a North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) meeting in the early 1990s where she realized that a very large new system was being proposed but the mechanisms to manage it were ineffective.
Meadows, who worked in the field of systems analysis
, proposed a scale of places to intervene in a system
. Awareness and manipulation of these levers is an aspect of self-organization
and can lead to collective intelligence
.
Her observations are often cited in energy economics
, green economics and human development theory
.
She started with the observation that there are levers, or places within a complex system
(such as a firm, a city, an economy, a living being, an ecosystem
, an ecoregion
) where a "small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything" (compare: constraint in the sense of Theory of Constraints
).
She claimed we need to know about these shifts, where they are and how to use them. She said most people know where these points are instinctively, but tend to adjust them in the wrong direction. This understanding would help solve global problems such as unemployment
, hunger
, economic stagnation
, pollution
, resources depletion, and conservation
issues.
Meadows started with a 9-point list of such places, and expanded it to a list of twelve leverage points with explanation and examples, for systems in general.
She describes a system
as being in a certain state, and containing a stock
, with inflows (amounts coming into the system) and outflows (amounts going out of the system). At a given time, the system is in a certain perceived state. There may also be a goal for the system to be in a certain state. The difference between the current state and the goal is the discrepancy.
Buffers can improve a system, but they are often physical entities whose size is critical and can't be changed easily.
loop slows down a process, tending to promote stability. The loop will keep the stock near the goal, thanks to parameters, accuracy and speed of information feedback, and size of correcting flows.
loop speeds up a process. Meadows indicates that in most cases, it is preferable to slow down a positive loop, rather than speeding up a negative one.
is neither a parameter, nor a reinforcing or slowing loop, but a loop that delivers new information. It is cheaper and easier to change information flows than it is to change structure.
describes a system's ability to change itself by creating new structures, adding new negative and positive feedback loops, promoting new information flows, or making new rules.
Donella Meadows
Donella H. "Dana" Meadows was a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher and writer. She is best known as lead author of the influential book The Limits to Growth, which made headlines around the world.- Life :Born in Elgin, Illinois, Meadows was educated in science, receiving a B.A...
, a scientist and system analyst focused on environmental limits to economic growth. The leverage points, first published in 1997, were inspired by her attendance at a North American Free Trade Agreement
North American Free Trade Agreement
The North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA is an agreement signed by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement...
(NAFTA) meeting in the early 1990s where she realized that a very large new system was being proposed but the mechanisms to manage it were ineffective.
Meadows, who worked in the field of systems analysis
Systems analysis
Systems analysis is the study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis. This field is closely related to requirements analysis or operations research...
, proposed a scale of places to intervene in a system
System
System is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole....
. Awareness and manipulation of these levers is an aspect of self-organization
Self-organization
Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning...
and can lead to collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
.
Her observations are often cited in energy economics
Energy economics
Energy economics is a broad scientific subject area which includes topics related to supply and use of energy in societies. Due to diversity of issues and methods applied and shared with a number of academic disciplines, energy economics does not present itself as a self contained academic...
, green economics and human development theory
Human development theory
Human development theory is a theory that merges older ideas from ecological economics, sustainable development, welfare economics, and feminist economics. It seeks to avoid the overt normative politics of most so-called "green economics" by justifying its theses strictly in ecology, economics and...
.
She started with the observation that there are levers, or places within a complex system
Complex system
A complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties not obvious from the properties of the individual parts....
(such as a firm, a city, an economy, a living being, an ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
, an ecoregion
Ecoregion
An ecoregion , sometimes called a bioregion, is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than an ecozone and larger than an ecosystem. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural...
) where a "small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything" (compare: constraint in the sense of Theory of Constraints
Theory of Constraints
The theory of constraints adopts the common idiom "A chain is no stronger than its weakest link" as a new management paradigm. This means that processes, organizations, etc., are vulnerable because the weakest person or part can always damage or break them or at least adversely affect the...
).
She claimed we need to know about these shifts, where they are and how to use them. She said most people know where these points are instinctively, but tend to adjust them in the wrong direction. This understanding would help solve global problems such as unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
, hunger
Hunger
Hunger is the most commonly used term to describe the social condition of people who frequently experience the physical sensation of desiring food.-Malnutrition, famine, starvation:...
, economic stagnation
Economic stagnation
Economic stagnation or economic immobilism, often called simply stagnation or immobilism, is a prolonged period of slow economic growth , usually accompanied by high unemployment. Under some definitions, "slow" means significantly slower than potential growth as estimated by experts in macroeconomics...
, pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
, resources depletion, and conservation
Conservation ethic
Conservation is an ethic of resource use, allocation, and protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the natural world: its, fisheries, habitats, and biological diversity. Secondary focus is on materials conservation and energy conservation, which are seen as important to...
issues.
Meadows started with a 9-point list of such places, and expanded it to a list of twelve leverage points with explanation and examples, for systems in general.
She describes a system
System
System is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole....
as being in a certain state, and containing a stock
Stock and flow
Economics, business, accounting, and related fields often distinguish between quantities that are stocks and those that are flows. These differ in their units of measurement. A stock variable is measured at one specific time, and represents a quantity existing at that point in time , which may have...
, with inflows (amounts coming into the system) and outflows (amounts going out of the system). At a given time, the system is in a certain perceived state. There may also be a goal for the system to be in a certain state. The difference between the current state and the goal is the discrepancy.
12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards)
Parameters are points of lowest leverage effects. Though they are the most clearly perceived among all leverages, they rarely change behaviors and therefore have little long-term effect.11. The size of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows
A buffer's ability to stabilize a system is important when the stock amount is much higher than the potential amount of inflows or outflows. In the lake, the water is the buffer: if there's a lot more of it than inflow/outflow, the system stays stable.Buffers can improve a system, but they are often physical entities whose size is critical and can't be changed easily.
10. Structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport network, population age structures)
A system's structure may have enormous effect on operations, but may be difficult or prohibitively expensive to change. Fluctuations, limitations, and bottlenecks may be easier to address.9. Length of delays, relative to the rate of system changes
Information received too quickly or too late can cause over- or underreaction, even oscillations.8. Strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the effect they are trying to correct against
A negative feedbackNegative feedback
Negative feedback occurs when the output of a system acts to oppose changes to the input of the system, with the result that the changes are attenuated. If the overall feedback of the system is negative, then the system will tend to be stable.- Overview :...
loop slows down a process, tending to promote stability. The loop will keep the stock near the goal, thanks to parameters, accuracy and speed of information feedback, and size of correcting flows.
7. Gain around driving positive feedback loops
A positive feedbackPositive feedback
Positive feedback is a process in which the effects of a small disturbance on a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation. That is, A produces more of B which in turn produces more of A. In contrast, a system that responds to a perturbation in a way that reduces its effect is...
loop speeds up a process. Meadows indicates that in most cases, it is preferable to slow down a positive loop, rather than speeding up a negative one.
6. Structure of information flow (who does and does not have access to what kinds of information)
Information flowInformation flow (disambiguation)
Information flow can have one of several meanings:* Information flow, in discourse-based grammatical theory** Information Flow: The Logic of Distributed Systems an influential handbook by Jon Barwise and Jerry Seligman for the analysis of theories using its framework based on a melange of topics...
is neither a parameter, nor a reinforcing or slowing loop, but a loop that delivers new information. It is cheaper and easier to change information flows than it is to change structure.
- For example, a monthly public report of water pollution level, especially nearby the industrial release, could have a lot of effect on people's opinions regarding the industry, and lead to changes in the waste water level of pollution.
5. Rules of the system (such as incentives, punishment, constraints)
Pay attention to rules, and to who makes them.4. Power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure
Self-organizationSelf-organization
Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning...
describes a system's ability to change itself by creating new structures, adding new negative and positive feedback loops, promoting new information flows, or making new rules.
3. Goal of the system
Changing goals changes every item listed above: parameters, feedback loops, information and self-organization.2. Mindset or paradigm that the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises from
A societal paradigm is an idea, a shared unstated assumption, or a system of thought that is the foundation of complex social structures. Paradigms are very hard to change, but there are no limits to paradigm change. Meadows indicates paradigms might be changed by repeatedly and consistently pointing out anomalies and failures in the current paradigm to those with open minds.- A current paradigm is "Nature is a stock of resources to be converted to human purpose". What might happen to the lake were this collective idea changed ?
1. Power to transcend paradigms
Transcending paradigms may go beyond challenging fundamental assumptions, into the realm of changing the values and priorities that lead to the assumptions, and being able to choose among value sets at will.See also
- Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable SocietiesComplexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable SocietiesComplexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies is a paper on energy economics by Joseph Tainter from 1996.- Focus :It focuses on the energy cost of problem solving, and the energy-complexity relation in manmade systems...
— Joseph TainterJoseph TainterJoseph A. Tainter is a U.S. anthropologist and historian.Tainter studied anthropology at the University of California and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. He is currently a professor in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University... - Focused improvementFocused improvementFocused improvement in Theory of Constraints is the ensemble of activities aimed at elevating the performance of any system, especially a business system, with respect to its goal by eliminating its constraints one by one and by not working on non-constraints.The method to achieve focused...
- Leverage Point ModelingLeverage Point ModelingLeverage Point Modeling is a demonstrated approach for improved planning and spending for Operations and Support activities. LPM is a continuous-event simulation technique that uses the System Dynamics approach of model building. Dr...
- NatureNatureNature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
- Stock and flowStock and flowEconomics, business, accounting, and related fields often distinguish between quantities that are stocks and those that are flows. These differ in their units of measurement. A stock variable is measured at one specific time, and represents a quantity existing at that point in time , which may have...
- SystemanticsSystemanticsSystemantics is a text by John Gall in which he proposes several "laws" of systems' failures. Systemantics is a play on words on semantics, systematics and systems display antics....
— John Gall - Theory of ConstraintsTheory of ConstraintsThe theory of constraints adopts the common idiom "A chain is no stronger than its weakest link" as a new management paradigm. This means that processes, organizations, etc., are vulnerable because the weakest person or part can always damage or break them or at least adversely affect the...
,