This is a linkpost for http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
I recently added some spaced repetition prompts to this essay so that while you read the essay you can answer questions, and if you sign up with the Orbit service you can also get email reminders to answer the prompts over time. Here's my version with these prompts. (My version also has working footnotes.)
EDIT: Elo has a nicer formatting below.
Quick summary:
PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM (in increasing order of effectiveness)
- Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards).
- The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.
- The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures).
- The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change.
- The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against.
- The gain around driving positive feedback loops.
- The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information).
- The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints).
- The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
- The goals of the system.
- The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises.
- The power to transcend paradigms.
Most of the linked essay is giving examples / body to the above 12 points, which she identifies as places where change can happen in systems.
Formatting.
PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM (in increasing order of effectiveness)