Thinking in Systems: A Primer

by Donella H. Meadows(14 total)

The time lags imposed by stocks allow room to maneuver, to experiment, and to revise policies that aren't working.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer

A stock takes time to change, because flow takes time to flow.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer Time

The elements, the parts of systems we are most likely to notice, are often (not always) least important in defining the unique characteristics of the system—unless changing an element also results in changing relationships or purpose.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer

A system generally goes on being itself, changing only slowly if at all, even with complete substitutions of its elements—as long as its interconnections and purposes remain intact.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Changing [a system's] elements usually has the least effect on the system.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer

...one of the most frustrating aspects of systems is that the purposes of subunits may add up to an overall behavior that no one wants.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer Truths

If a frog turns right and catches a fly, and then turns left and catches a fly, and then turns around backward and catches a fly, the purpose of the frog has to do not with turning left or right or backward but with catching flies. If a government proclaims its interest in protecting the environment…

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Facts Insights Rhetoric Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Many interconnections in systems operate through the flow of information.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Systems theory Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Do the parts together produce an effect that is different from the effect of each part on its own?

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Good questions Systems

You think that because you understand 'one' that you must therefore understand 'two' because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand 'and.'

— Sufi teaching story, amazon.com

Insights Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer Wow

A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer

You can be doing something that has always worked and suddenly discover, to your great disappointment, that your action no longer works.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer

The system, to a large extent, causes it's own behavior. An outside event may unleash that behavior, but the same outside event applied to a different system is likely to produce a different result.

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system's response to these forces is characteristic of it…

— Donella H. Meadows, amazon.com

Systems Thinking in Systems: A Primer

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