Day 19 · Act IV — Lead the Organisation
Systems Thinking
Feedback loops · Leverage points · Unintended consequences
~35 minutes
Push on a system and it often pushes back.
The Core Idea
Act IV enlarges the lens. Organisations are systems: incentives, structures and feedback loops produce behaviour more reliably than individuals do.
Donella Meadows taught that the most powerful leverage points are often counter-intuitive — changing goals, rules and mindsets rather than tweaking numbers.
The Mental Model
Reinforcing and Balancing Loops
Reinforcing loops amplify (growth or collapse); balancing loops stabilise toward a goal.
At work: Overtime to hit targets → burnout → attrition → fewer people → more overtime: a vicious reinforcing loop.
The Case Study
The 'cobra effect'
DocumentedA widely told (though historically debated) story describes a bounty on cobras in colonial Delhi leading people to breed cobras.
Interpretation: whether apocryphal or not, it illustrates how incentives can backfire inside a system.
Cinema & Story
Chernobyl (miniseries) (2019)
Systemic failure emerges from incentives that punish bad news.
The Reading Room
Thinking in Systems
Donella H. Meadows
The clearest primer on how systems behave and where to intervene.
Further reading: The Fifth Discipline — Peter M. Senge
The Journal · Portfolio output: Systems map
The Field Experiment · within 24 hours
Sketch a causal loop diagram of one recurring problem and share it with a colleague.
The Evening Review
Change the structure, and behaviour follows.