Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.
Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.
While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for …
Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.
Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.
While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.
In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.
(I haven't re-read this in a decade, but still think in it)
5 stars
Clear and illustrative use of language shines through this (and is immediately recognizable from Limits to Growth). Really outstanding short introduction to systems thinking, why systems surprise us, and why systems thinking is also no silver bullet for control of the complex systems that make up our world. The best (and final) chapters of this book are available online www.donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ and www.donellameadows.org/dancing-with-systems/
This book is used in a few different classes at mpow, and I’m glad it is. I’m giving a talk on Monday about how leaders are catalysts for change, and I am going to be meditating on a few of the ideas presented here - in particular, the need to break out of our positionality & perspective to change things in a non-destructive manner. It’s very prescient of the time we’re in now, and sad to think about how its warnings have been unheeded by engineers & technologists at a point where we’re more reliant on & worshipping of shitty models than ever.
