The idea of “places to intervene in a system” comes from Donella Meadows’ influential work on systems thinking. She identified that within any complex system—e.g., an organization, ecosystem, or economy—there are specific “leverage points” for change which vary greatly in their effectiveness and in how difficult they are to influence. Typically, those easiest to address have less overall impact, while those difficult to adjust have much higher potential. These leverage points are often counterintuitive—people frequently push in the wrong direction, worsening problems they intend to solve.
From least to most effective:
12. Constants, Parameters, Numbers: These are quantitative adjustments like subsidies, taxes, or standards. They are where most attention is focused (99% of effort), but offer the least leverage, rarely changing fundamental behavior unless they trigger changes at higher levels.
11. Buffers and Stabilizing Stocks: Buffers are large stocks (amounts, quantities, collections, stores) that stabilize a system against fluctuations caused by the flows into and out of the stock, like water in a lake or the size of an inventory relative to additions and deletions. Increasing stock capacity can help to create stability, but if too large, it can cause inflexibility or high costs. Buffers and stocks are often physical and may be difficult to alter.
10. Material Stocks and Flows: This refers to the physical “plumbing” or arrangement of a system, such as road networks or population age structures. Physical structures are typically the slowest and most expensive to change once built, so true leverage is in proper initial design and understanding of limitations.
9. Length of Delays: Delays in feedback loops frequently cause oscillations, overshoots, and chaos. A common example is when you go to adjust the shower temperature: if you don’t wait long enough for the temperature of the water to respond to how far you turned the knob, you might choose to turn it more. Then the water overshoots the temperature you want, but it surprises you, so you turn the knob the other way too much. Now it’s too cold. Leverage often comes from slowing the rate of system change (reducing how far you turn the knob) rather than trying to speed up inevitable delays (waiting for less time) .
8. Negative Feedback Loops: These are self-correcting (or “balancing”) mechanisms that keep system states within desired bounds, like a thermostat or market prices balancing supply and demand. Strengthening these loops (e.g., anti-trust laws, pollution taxes, adjusting interest rates) enhances a system’s self-correcting ability and resilience. Weakening them (e.g., through subsidies or distorted information) makes systems vulnerable.
7. Positive Feedback Loops: Positive feedback loops are self-reinforcing, leading to growth, explosion, erosion, or collapse (e.g., flu spread, population growth, compound interest, polar ice melt). Reducing the gain around these loops or slowing their growth is generally a more powerful leverage point than strengthening negative loops.
6. Structure of Information Flows: This involves who has access to what information within the system. Adding or restoring compelling, timely, and truthful information may be a helpful intervention, and is often easier and cheaper than rebuilding physical infrastructure. Although, in the context of digital information flows, it is likely necessary to change the coding structure.
5. Rules of the System: These define the system’s scope, boundaries, and degrees of freedom (e.g., laws, constitutions, incentives, punishments, social agreements). Changing these rules can dramatically alter behavior within the system.
4. Self-Organization: The power to add, change, and evolve system structure enables living and social systems to fundamentally transform themselves by creating entirely new structures and behaviors (e.g., biological evolution, technical advance, social revolution). Self-organization provides the strongest form of system resilience because an evolving system can adapt to most challenges.
3. Goals of the System: The overarching goal of the system sets the direction for all the levels below it, including its own self-organizing ability. Goals can be deduced by looking at what the system actually does, not just what it is “supposed to” do. While Education systems are intended to foster learning and personal growth, what they are also “actually” good at is keeping kids in one place during working hours, ensuring compliant behaviour during that time, and socializing key cultural practices necessary for modern social functioning, like following rules, showing up on time, and being accountable for mistakes.
2. Paradigm: The mindset or paradigm out of which a system arises refers to the deepest set of beliefs and unstated assumptions about how the world works. Paradigms are the ultimate source of all systems, shaping goals, information flows, feedback loops, and structures—for example, the belief that children must be taught in order to learn. Shifting paradigms can cause total system transformation. Societies, however, fiercely resist challenges to their paradigms.
1. Power to Transcend Paradigms: This is the highest and most profound leverage point. It involves detaching oneself from paradigms, recognizing that no single worldview is absolute “truth,” and embracing “not knowing.” The impact of transcending paradigms can be to break out of stuck thinking and choose paths that were previously invisible.
Deeper Dive
- Meadows, D. Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a Systems. The Sustainability Institute, 1999.
- Meadows, D. Thinking in Systems, a primer. Edited by Diana Wright, 2008.
Related Frameworks
- Action Scales Model: uses a balance rather than a lever analogy and collapses the many levels to four
- Intervention Level Framework: similar analogy but collapses the twelve levels to five
- Six Conditions for Systems Change: this one has six types of change at three levels