🔁Feedback loops

A feedback loop exists when the level of a stock changes the flows into or out of that same stock. Two kinds, from chapter one of 📕 Thinking in Systems (my notes: 📖 Meadows on stocks, flows and delays):

• Balancing (B): pushes the stock towards a goal and resists change. A thermostat. Hunger. A team that slows down when the review queue is full.
• Reinforcing (R): more leads to more. Interest on savings. Readers who recommend a newsletter to other readers. Also panic.

Example from work: more exceptions on the screen means each one gets less attention, so fewer are closed properly, so more reopen. That is a reinforcing loop wearing a balancing loop's uniform.

Often confused with: feedback in the sense of comments on a draft. A loop needs the result to come back and change the cause.

I draw them with the marks in Feedback loop symbols. Knowing the loops is not the same as steering them: 💎 I can listen to a system but I cannot control it.