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LEVERAGE POINTS

When trying to confront the Anthropocene, we are everywhere faced with the difficulty of wisely intervening in complex systems. Here another idea from system dynamics becomes important: “leverage points”, which are places in a system where a small change can make a big difference.

Leverage points were brought to the fore by one of the most prominent practitioners of system dynamics, Donella Meadows [Me3]. Meadows learned a lot from Forrester at MIT in the early 1970s, and she was deeply concerned with environmentalism and sustainability. In 1972 she helped write the famous study The Limits to Growth [Me1]. The huge controversy surrounding this should make clear that any model is no more accurate than its assumptions. It also shows that system dynamics is less helpful as a method of long-term prediction than as a focal point for community discussion and strategizing.

In the early 1990s, while attending a meeting on international trade, Meadows compiled a typology of leverage points [Me2]. One of her key observations was that less effective interventions tend to be quantitative—essentially, turning knobs—while more effective ones involve restructuring the system, or changing its entire goal. Many, but by no means all, of her leverage points are neatly framed in the language of system dynamics:

https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/

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[Me3] Meadows, D. H. 2008. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Edited by Diana Wright. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.

[Me2] Meadows, D. H. (1999). Leverage points: Places to intervene in a system. Hartland, Vt., The Sustainability Institute, 1999. Available at https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Leverage_Points.pdf