I’ve been thinking about writing this reflection for some time.  In some ways it became the reason why I should write a blog for the website in the first place.  If you have read my earliest posts, you will know I’ve dragged my heels a lot.  But the idea of having a place to talk about why I might retire an image seemed like a good idea.

So, the prototype for this conversation is Meadows’ Places to Intervene. If you go to this page, you will see two versions of the image, one which uses the lever metaphor and the other which adds some people pulling down the lever.

If you google “Places to Intervene” and select images you will find lots of different versions of this lever metaphor.  It wasn’t until we were writing up the text for this page that Chris pointed out, the physics are wrong!  The stuff that is hardest to change like mental models is placed at the end of the lever, but the whole point of a long lever is to make it easier to move a heavy object. So, while addressing stuff like mental models will be more effective in moving the system, the image suggests this will be easier to move…and it is not.  We added the people to illustrate that it takes more effort to reach that end of the lever.

How did this happen? I’m not going to try to trace the first time this mistake was made, but it is fascinating to think why we all just copied it! You could say we are spreading misinformation.  And if we “retire” an image by taking it out of the collection, it won’t stop people from finding and using it.

Maybe we should just make a new image like the pyramid in the Intervention Level Framework which was derived from Meadows’ Places to Intervene?  Or we could reverse the order of the levels on the lever?  Or maybe there is another image which gets the physics right and conveys the notion of levels?  I asked NotebookLM for some suggestions.  Most were not great but I kind of liked this one:

Computer operating system: The surface-level user interface is easily adjustable but fundamentally changes very little about what the machine can do. The core code and underlying purpose of the machine are deeply hidden and fiercely difficult to rewrite, but they completely dictate the system’s true capabilities.

I’m not sure this metaphor holds up under close scrutiny but maybe it would be accessible to users from a younger generation?

Happy to chat about these ideas by email.