p.1 Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of
each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each
other. I call such situations messes.... Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes. - Russell
Ackoff, operations theorist
p.1 Early on in teaching about systems, I often bring out a Slinky... "What made the Slinky bounce up and
down like that?" I ask students... The answer clearly lies within the Slinky itself. The hands that manipulate it suppress
or release some behavior that is latent within the structure of the spring. That is a central insight of systems theory. Once
we see the relationship between structure and behavior, we can begin to understand how systems work
p.3 Because of feedback delays within complex systems, by the time a problem becomes apparent it
may be unnecessarily difficult to solve.
p.3-4 A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external
shock than a uniform system with little diversity.
p.7 The behavior of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made.
p.12 Systems can change, adapt, respond to events, seek goals, mend injuries, and attend to their
own survival in lifelike ways, although they may contain or consist of nonliving things. Systems can be self-organizing,
and often are self-repairing over at least some range of disruptions. They are resilient, and many of them are evolutionary.
p.16 The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant
of the system's behavior.
p.76 Resilience is a measure of a system's ability to survive and persist within a variable environment...
Resilience arises from a rich structure of many feedback loops that can work in different ways to restore a system even after
a large perturbation. A single balancing loop brings a system stock back to its desired state. Resilience is provided by several
such loops, operating through different mechanisms, at different time scales, and with redundancy - one kicking in if another
fails.
p.78 I think of resilience as a plateau upon which the system can play, performing its normal functions
in safety. A resilient system has a big plateau, a lot of space over which it can wander, with gentle, elastic walls that
will bounce it back, if it comes near a dangerous edge... Awareness of resilience enables one to see many ways to
preserve or enhance a system's own restorative powers.
p.78 Systems need to be managed not only for productivity or stability, they also need to be managed
for resilience - the ability to recover from perturbation, the ability to restore or repair themselves.
p.79 The most marvelous characteristic of some complex systems is their ability to learn, diversify, complexify,
evolve... This capacity of a system to make its own structure more complex is called self-organization...
Like resilience, self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability.
p.85 Resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy are three of the reasons dynamic systems can work so well.
p.87 You can't navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off
short-term events and look for long-term behavior and structure; unless you are aware of false boundaries and bounded rationality;
unless you take into account limiting factors, nonlinearities and delays. You are likely to mistreat, misdesign, or misread
systems if you don't respect their properties of resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy.
p.89 Systems thinking goes back and forth constantly between structure (diagrams of stocks, flows, and feedback)
and behavior (time graphs). Systems thinkers strive to understand the connections between the hand releasing the Slinky (event)
and the resulting oscillations (behavior) and the mechanical characteristics of the Slinky's helical coil (structure).
p.101 At any given time, the input that is most important to a system is the one that is most limiting.
p.102 Insight comes not only from recognizing which factor is limiting, but from seeing that growth
itself depletes or enhances limits and therefore changes what is limiting... Whenever one factor ceases to be limiting,
growth occurs, and the growth itself changes the relative scarcity of factors until another becomes limiting. To shift attention
from the abundant factors to the next potential limiting factor is to gain real understanding of, and control over, the growth
process.
p.103 I believe we must learn to wait as we learn to create. We have to patiently sow the seeds, assiduously
water the earth where they are sown and give the plants the time that is their own... -Vaclav Havel, playwright, last President
of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic
p.159 The ability to self-organize is the strongest form of system resilience. A system that can
evolve can survive almost any change, by changing itself.
p.172 You don't have to put forth your mental model with diagrams and equations, although doing so is a
good practice. You can do it with words or lists or pictures or arrows showing what you think is connected to what. The more
you do that, in any form, the clearer your thinking will become, the faster you will admit your uncertainties and correct
your mistakes, and the more flexible you will learn to be... Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite
others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.
p.173 Information is power. Anyone interested in power grasps that idea very quickly.
p.174 A society that talks incessantly about "productivity" but hardly understands, much less uses,
the word "resilience" is going to become productive and not resilient. A society that doesn't understand or use the
term "carrying capacity" will exceed its carrying capacity.
p.191 A quantity growing exponentially towards a limit reaches that limit in a surprisingly short time.
