Stop the gradual theft of your sand heap. Keep standards absolute and set goals based on the best performances not based on the current state of the systems.
There are two ways advised in "Thinking in Systems". Because, only a second ago, it wasn't that colder really. If only the frog could remember how the water was at the very beginning, not only a second ago. But put the frog in cold water and then gradually heat it up, the frog will boil to death happy in it's relaxing hot bath. Put a frog in boiling water and it immediately jumps out. So, when did the heap stop being a heap? How did we let this heap erode? The boiling frog theoremĪlthough biologically incorrect, this fable is well known to anyone. And it goes on until there is a single piece of sand left. Let us assume we have a huge heap of sand and we are allowed to only take a single grain of sand at a time. Barnard and has been published by R&L Education this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on with Education categories. It is very easy to go under the radar unnoticed until it is way too late. The Systems Thinking School written by Peter A. And the worst thing is that it happens slowly and over time. This kind of thinking and allowing goals to erode can lead to continuous degradation of the system's performance. At least we are the least obese state in the country. The previous government was stealing much more than we did! No one jogs these days anyway. Our neighbouring countries also have a lot of problems. But if the current state of the system is not satisfactory then they allow the goals that are based on it to also erode. They set performance goals and aim for a state that is compared to the actual state. We see examples of this all around us in people, governments, schools, companies and organizations in general. That is why Donella Meadows calls them traps.ĭrift to low performance is one such trap when by allowing standards to be influenced by past performance, especially when past performance is perceived as bad, sets up a reinforcing feedback loop of eroding goals that set a system drifting toward low performance. However, the obvious solutions to these problems are usually not the correct ones and very often backfire. These archetypes cause problems that have to be fixed or they will lead to the system's destruction. In system theory, the system structures that produce common patterns of problematic behaviour are called archetypes. Photo by Karl Groendal on Unsplash Drift to low performance That trap is called Drift to Low Performance. Meadows talks about in her book "Thinking in Systems". That immediately reminded me of one of the system traps that the Donella H.
Donella meadows thinking in systems amazon driver#
The best thing that the driver could mention is that they are not as bad as everyone else. Funny right? And when you'd expect a tip about sightseeing. we are the least obese state in the country!". After giving him some thought the driver said: "Well. He immediately asked the driver if he could tell him what was Colorado most famous about. He travelled to Colorado and got a cab from the airport to take him to his hotel. I recently heard a joke John Oliver told on one of his stand-ups.