💃Dancing with Systems

Systems that involve people cannot be predicted well enough to be controlled, and the wish to control them is the first mistake. They can be understood, designed for and worked with. That takes watching how a system actually behaves before disturbing it, keeping your assumptions where others can correct them, respecting what cannot be counted, and staying a learner.

• Read on Saturday 1 February, after the Ackoff talk and before climbing. Wrote the note on Sunday while the leeks were braising for too short a time.
• The humble companion to the leverage essay. That one says where to push. This one says you will not be in charge, so learn to listen.
• Published in 2001, the year 🏛️ Donella Meadows died, from the book she had not finished. It reads like someone setting down what she is sure of.
• A list again, fourteen pieces of advice this time. Some are instructions and some are closer to manners.
• I read it seventeen days before a launch date and nodded all the way through. Then I spent the next fortnight trying to control the launch.
• Paraphrased throughout. The older line I keep with it is Nightingale's 💬 It may seem a strange principle: before improving anything, make sure you are not the harm. Watching first is the same manners.