🪜Leverage points

Places in a system where a small push produces a large change in behaviour. Donella Meadows listed twelve of them in 📰 Leverage Points - Places to Intervene in a System, ranked from least to most effective.

The ranking is the lesson, because it runs against instinct:

• Weakest: numbers. Budgets, rates, targets, dates. Nearly all the arguing happens here.
• Middle: the sizes of buffers, the lengths of delays, the strength of feedback loops, and who has access to what information.
• Strongest: the rules, the power to change the rules, the goal of the system, and the assumptions the goal came from.

She adds a warning: people often find the right lever and push it the wrong way.

Example from work: all of January went on a launch date, which is a parameter. The one change that altered behaviour was showing people the exception count per dispatcher on an ordinary Tuesday, which is an information flow.

Often confused with: quick wins. High leverage is rarely quick, and the top of the list is mostly out of a product manager's reach.

I cannot hold twelve in my head, so the working version is 🧭 Leverage points as a ladder. Notes: 📖 Meadows on leverage points. Claim: 💎 Changing a parameter is the weakest way to change a system.