Minutes 01-24-2020 Retreat - Laserfiche WebLink

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3 Mr. Goodman framed remarks around the limitations of good intentions with the following quote: "When you are confronted by any complex social system ... with things about it that you're dissatisfied with and anxious to fix, you cannot just step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping. This is one of the sore discouragements of our time. If you want to fix something you are first obliged to understand ... the whole system." Lewis Thomas Physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, educator, policy advisor, researcher Dean Yale Medical School & NYU President Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute Distinguishing Conventional From Systems Thinking Mr. Goodman shared definitions of a system and systems thinking: "A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something" — Donella Meadows "Systems Thinking is the ability to understand these interconnections in such a way as to achieve a desired purpose." Observations about Systems Mr. Goodman shared laws of human systems: • Many of today's problems were yesterday's solutions. • The Law of Unintended Consequences - Systems are seductive... what looks obvious to do often generates non-obvious consequences... but NOT right away. • The Law of Worse Before Better-What works in the short term typically makes things worse in the long term and what works in the long term often makes things worse in the short term. • The Law of Compensating Feedback—The harder you push on the system the harder the system pushes back. • We are prisoners of systemic forces to the extent we are unaware of their existence and don't appreciate their power. • Systems naturally resist change despite how well intended the efforts to improve performance. • Systems are "perfectly" designed to produce the results we are getting. • We spend enormous time, effort and money fixing problems we don't really understand. • Real leverage points in the system are displaced both in time and in space from the symptoms. • Collective awareness of the system can produce the shifts needed to produce real, sustainable change... when see it, we no longer have to be controlled by it. Mr. Goodman asked participants if they had witnessed any of the following first-hand: 1. Many of today's problems were yesterday's solutions 2. The Law of Unintended Consequences 3. The Law of Worse Before Better 4. The Law of Compensating Feedback 5. We spend enormous time, effort and money fixing problems we don't really understand Conventional vs. Systems Thinking Mr. Goodman delineated the differences between Conventional and Systems Thinking: