Thinking in Systems: International Bestseller Paperback – Illustrated, December 5, 2008

Donella opened my eyes to a different way of thinking and to the importance of systems thinking. She challenged the widely accepted use of GNP as a measure of a country’s growth, showing how it doesn’t reflect true progress. She revealed the long-term harm this kind of thinking can bring to a nation. Her insights helped me think differently and see many things differently.

The media could not be loaded. I love this book it stands out because of its ability to take complex ideas and make them understandable. Meadows walks you through the basics of systems thinking—feedback loops, delays, stocks and flows—with real-world examples.

Useful overview of system structure and behavior. List of recommendations of how to interact with systems or what signals to pay attention to. Near the end veering a bit into the mystical or metaphysical when talking about hard-to-measure qualities and moral or ethical values.

Full of insights on biological and human systems with ideas on how to effectively influence them as well as the dangers involved. One chapter focuses is called Leverage Points - Places to Intervene In a System which describes, in an order from least effective to most effective, ways to influence a system.Reading this made me realize we are witnessing, in real time, her 2nd most important leverage point, Paradigms. The paradigm of what the United States is and stands for is being reshaped in the specific way she describes: "You keep speaking and acting, loudly and with assurance, from the new [paradigm]. You insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power".Systems do not remain static, for better or worse.

This is a really powerful paradigm for thinking.It’s not the only great idea or structure out there, but it meshes well with a lot of the others (Toulmin Structure of Arguments comes to mind). Th is just a book I would want my kids to be aware of the concepts of, even if they don’t know it word for word or anything.Really useful stuff

There are a few books that encapsulate a way of thinking so simply, so clearly and so compellingly that I find myself giving little kisses of delight to the cover. I read this on a Kindle, so this resulted in quite a lot of smudging.I am not a student of systems or someone who ever spent much time thinking about systems at all, although, like practically everybody, my life and work are all about either creating, maintaining, supporting, or surviving various systems. I heard about this book from a Tweet referring to its twenty-fifth anniversary and linking to an article singing its praises, which it does better than I can. For me, it has been a truly revelatory experience, a platonic slave-in-the-cave moment, which I believe will divide my cognitive experience into pre and post its reading. As Meadows warns at its outset, studying systems leads one to see systems everywhere, which, of course, is because they were there all along. But being able to see and interpret them allows us to better participate and avoid traps that commonly lead to system failure. Sadly, it also allows us to understand why some decisions taken by executives, politicians, and others that manage systems in which we have little or no control are doomed to failure and to undermine their own goals. This awareness will help readers become better citizens/coworkers and critics of leadership. But it can also help us avoid issues that threaten our own, smaller systems, our relationships, families, homes, work, and health.This book draws heavily on examples from the time in which it was written, which artificially sets the book in a particular historical moment. Meadows simply had so many examples to chose from, that she took quotes from contemporaneous newspaper articles. But the examples might as well be chosen from today’s stories or those from hundreds of years ago. They are just examples. This book is timeless. These quotes from the early nineties have the added benefit of proving her point, as in most cases history has borne out the predictions that stem from the flaws and features that Meadows points out.Note that there were some oddities in the Kindle version. A few words seem to have disappeared in various places in the transposition. I bought a hard copy of the book and was able to fill the gaps (just a few words here and there, nothing that would keep me from recommending the Kindle edition). I hope the editors will correct this.The end of the book contains a very useful appendix that I am tempted to tear out and put up on the wall, detailing fundamentals of systems thinking.I could not recommend this highly enough.