Today the  Club of Rome and the Smithsonian Institution Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet in Washington DC are hosting a day-long seminar on its legacy.  You can watch it live on the web from 9.00 am to 6:00 pm Eastern US time (It’s recorded too, if you can’t listen in today).   Here’s the link:  http://www.si.edu/consortia/limitstogrowth2012

I encourage you to pause for even a few moments today to listen in.  Then sit down at dinner tonight with your friends or family. Ask this question:  how can we prosper on a on a finite planet?  What might that look like?

For good reading on the subject, check out:

Alan AtKisson’s Life Beyond Growth

Tim Jackson’s Prosperity without Growth

Personally, I take my continued inspiration from the last chapter of Limits to Growth.  This chapter focuses on the “unscientific tools”  we can use to transition to sustainability:

VISIONING

NETWORKING

TRUTH-TELLING

LEARNING

… and my favorite,

LOVING.

Outside Escola Municipal Jose Calil Filho

More than 50 students from the Escola Municipal Jose Calil Filho, an elementary school in Macae (about four hours north of Rio de Janerio) cram two-to-a-seat in a steamy classroom.  It is the day before summer (and Christmas) break in Brazil and the tiny classroom is about to burst with excitement.   These students, ranging in age from 8-11, are here to listen to a lady from the U.S. talk about something called “living systems”.

Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?

I would have thought so, but I was that lady and I couldn’t have been more impressed by the beautiful minds that greeted me that morning.

With students, teachers and SEED volunteers in Macae

I was there to pilot a workshop for SEED that integrated three “literacies”:  systems, science and self-knowledge.  Despite the steamy conditions, the students were curious, attentive and ready to learn.

Showing a straight line of causality (front row) and closed loops (second row)

Working in groups of three to four, the student-detectives were tasked with figuring out the connections, some obvious and some hidden, in a farm setting (using a systems playkit).  Many students were surprised to discover, for instance, the central role chickens can play in the health of the cows and the pasture.

There’s much to report from that December workshop (you can read more about it here) but for readers of this blog I have to report an observation that continues to fascinate and challenge me:

When asked to show the interconnections on a farm (what influenced what), some students, seemingly regardless of age and gender, laid out a straight line of cause and effect (see picture above), while others (see the second row) created twisty, curvy connections that, occasionally, looped back on themselves (what we would call a feedback loop).  (To learn about feedback loops in farm settings, see the Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures Curriculum Guide).

Badgered by Bateson

I remember being a little annoyed by Gregory Bateson’s claim that: “Adults have a chronic inability to understand cyclical, patterned phenomena such as interpersonal relationships and a variety of biological processes.”

“Chronic inability”.  Really?   After investigating children’s and adult’s intuitive understandings of complex systems for the past 15 years,  I’ve concluded that Bateson was on to something.   Deep misconceptions about the dynamics of complex systems — whether the focus is climate, food, energy, obesity, or the environment — do exist, even among highly educated adults (see my research with  John Sterman and colleagues, and Harvard’s Understanding of Consequence Project, for a multitude of examples). In my own research, I found that a significant number of students and adults used “open-loop” or one-way causal thinking when “closed-loop” causality or feedback was present, for instance, in situations involving predator-prey relationships  or savings accounts.

Caution:  Straight Line Thinking Can Be Dangerous

These deep misconceptions can be dangerous. In the natural world, we know that health and renewal occur through closed-loop cycles  – water, oxygen, nitrogen, even solar.  Yet when we disrupt these natural cycles*, we see big consequences — famine, flooding, and more.  And then there is policy resistance, when the solutions to problems often make the problem worse. Think road building programs meant to reduce congestion that end up increasing traffic, delays and pollution.  Or flood control efforts such as levees and dams that prevent the natural dispersion of excess water and so have led to more floods. John Sterman, who gives us these examples, argues that “policy resistance arises because we  do not understand the full range of feedbacks operating in the system.”

The costs of fixing any one these problems is high.  The cost of learning about cycles and feedback is low.

Back to the question of loop and lines.  What led some students to straight lines and others to loops?   I don’t have the answers yet but I’m hoping there are others out there who will think about this question with me.  In the meantime, I’m going back to George Richardson’s Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory for inspiration.

Please be in touch.  I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Loops…

…vs. lines

________________________________________________________

NOTES:  *For example, urban sprawl and the paving over of wetlands, grasslands and forests often disrupts nutrient, animal and water cycles.  Ground that is unpaved absorbs water and stores it for use by plants.  With more pavement, less water is absorbed by the ground which means there is less water for plants to absorb.

Then I remember last year’s holiday “experiment” and I relax.  There’s hope!

Last year,  I realized that vacations helped to calm the jangly nerves of my family and give a boost to my over-worked husband, but they weren’t enough.  We needed a good dose of what my friend  Sara Schley calls Radical Renewal (and what Joe Lieberman calls “The Gift of Rest).*  Other than through sleep, how did I and my family renew ourselves? It was a good question.  So, I decided to try an experiment:  I’d go “merrily unplugged” — no computer, no e-mails — between December 23^rd, my husband’s birthday and my birthday, December 31st.

Before I logged off, I quickly answered the most important e-mails, cleaned off my desk, mailed out the bills.  I had fun thinking up and “Out of Office” message (which I found out later was source of a lot of interest, imitation and consternation).  When I finally turned the computer OFF (not on SLEEP), I felt like I was closing up a summer home for the winter, turning off the pipes so they wouldn’t burst in my absence.

I quickly concluded that this was a big,  adventure.  The last time I went unplugged like this was when my babies were born.   I’ll always remember and cherish that cocoon-like state that emerged as each baby came home:  the noise of the outside world kept at bay, the magic of this new human being our only focus.

Would I be able to reclaim some of the insulated feeling?

Could I actually resist logging in?  Could I step off that well-worn path to my computer and back, the one I probably walk 10-20 times a day “to check”?

The good news is, I did resist.  But it wasn’t easy.  For the first 48 hours, I felt twitchy, my own version of EAW, e-mail addiction withdrawal.  In the end, I found it easiest to stay out of my office.  As my nervous system began to settle, I watched what was happening around me.  I sat down on the sofa one after to write Christmas cards, and stayed there. There was no “just a second, I’ll be write back” to check my e-mail.  I just sat.  I noticed my three children, ages 5, 9 and 12, gravitate to the sofa, and stayed, orbiting in and out of my bit of celestial space.  My typical restless, chattering, list-making mind – what the Buddhists call “Monkey Mind”–  began to settle.  By the third day, I was giddy with a sense of presence, as if my whole center of gravity shifted my head to heart and belly.

Just as I was beginning to feel the loud silence from the outside world, and I began to have a sinking feeling that my “system” wasn’t working, I started to receive a trickle of phone calls:

“Is Ted available for a birthday party tomorrow?  I saw your message so thought I’d better call.”

“There’s an illustrator I want you to meet.  When you get back on-line, check out his website.”

The folks who needed to get in touch with me, did.  The e-mails that weren’t urgent, just accumulated, like letters in my mailbox. At first I dreaded thinking about the number of accumulated e-mails, but then I reminded myself that if there was anything urgent, they’d call me.  This unplugged idea was working!

Six days in a flaw in my system showed up:  my husband took my two boys skiing in a low-cell coverage area in Vermont.  Essentially, we were both off the electronic highway — me intentionally, him unintentionally – for two days.  Anyone with kids’ sports schedules knows, that the schedules can change on a moments notice, and the way you learn about those changes is through e-mail.  So, neither one of us got the coach’s e-mail until it was too late.

So that one fell through the cracks (although the coach could have called).

When the New Year began, my patience level was way up, my anxiety level was way down and my capacity for deep thought was back again.  Did going unplugged work for me?  You bet.  Getting some good sleep helped too.

Now we’re headed into the holidays again, and it feels good to know I’ll be going unplugged again soon.   But I also realize, that just as Sara and her family unplug for Shabbat on Friday night, there are more frequent ways I can my family can unhook, unplug, and just relax and renew.

As we head toward the holidays, the kids are pushing to get Mom an iPhone.

I’ll become more efficient, yes, but…I’ll let you know how that one goes.

________________________________________

*I could write a whole  blog about Edith Cobb, (b. 1895), another inspiration for building renewal into our every day lives.

In her book, The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Cobb writes of the body’s natural “homeostatic wisdom”. I learned about homeostasis in school, but never thought to look for the wisdom in it.  Cobb referred to those cyclical “behavioral patterns of regulation and integration.” (P. 43), such as respiration, that allows us to maintain equilibrium. It was this state of equilibrium that allows species survive and thrive.  Maintaining equilibrium means a constant set of adjustments.  We know this well when we think about how a thermostat works.  
If the temperature in a house is too cold, the thermostat will turn on the furnace, seeking to reach the desired temperature (or goal) as set on the thermostat.  The furnace raises the temperature until the goal is reached and eventually the furnace shuts off.

This “self-regulating” or balancing system maintains a goal, in this case, a steady temperature in a room.  If we look at ourselves, the process of maintaining our temperature is also a self-regulating system.   We shiver when we’re cold to warm up our muscles and sweat when we’re hot to cool them down, all the while trying to achieve a steady temperature.  So, self-regulating or balancing feedback loops are goal-seeking but they also bring renewal.  Think about the dynamics of stress and exercise.  For many people, exercise is a helpful way to manage stress.  As stress levels kick in, we exercise, with exercise, stress goes down (of course, there are many folks who exercise regularly whether they’re feeling stressed or not).

Now my question is:  Where are the built-in adjustments that help me and my family to maintain equilibrium? Where are the cycles of renewal in my own life?

Many of you know I’ve been asking this question for a long time.

These days, I’m thrilled to be part of a movement to help children develop “systems literacy“, “systems thinking dispositions“, and other systems thinking “habits of mind” (and here).   Today, children and the adults who teach them can learn to think about and work with systems through camps like Camp Snowball and Design Camp, through innovative learning programs from SEED, the Institute of Play (see related blog) and Lego Serious Play and from systems educators at The Waters Foundation, the Creative Learning Exchange and The Cloud Institute, by reading blogs by Beth Sawin, Tim Joy, Tom Fiddaman (especially when he talks about his kids), Pegasus and many more (tell me who I’ve missed!)

I now have to add my most recent book – Connected Wisdom: Living Stories about Living Systems (SEED/Chelsea Green)*–  to the list of good things that encourage systems literacy.

I found out today that the book and children’s CD won at the New York Book Festival. (The CD won last month at the San Francisco book festival).

That’s good news!

What may be even better news is that we now get to put those little gold “winner” stickers on the book and the CD.

Sure, it’s good to get the recognition (who couldn’t use a pat on the back), but mostly, it’s good because people will be pick up the book or CD, and share it with their children.

Now that’s the really good news! As our children come to appreciate and see living systems in their everyday lives, we can confirm for them what they already know:  that their world is interconnected and dynamic, a tightly woven web of interrelated elements involving people, places, events and nature and, as such, is indeed purposeful and meaningful.

My deepest gratitude goes to Simone Amber, who listened to (and acted on!) my crazy idea to use folk tales as as a way to learn about the principles of living systems.  And to all who have been on this journey with me for past fifteen years, thank you for your continued encouragement.  It has made a world of difference to me.  For those of you who are new, welcome!

————————————————————————–

*The Connected Wisdom book and CD is a collaborative effort with three first-class artists - Milton Glaser, recipient of the National Medal of Arts is the book designer, Guy Billout is the award-winning illustrator and Courtney Campbell is the wildly talented children’s singer/songwriter.   Funding for Connected Wisdom was provided by SEED. It is currently translated into nine languages including English, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish,  Russian, Dutch and Hungarian.

This is what the poet Judy Sorum Brown has to say about the book:

“Artfully, beautifully, playfully, seriously, clearly Linda Booth Sweeney invites us to join her in a deeper understanding of the profound principles of living systems. Tapping wisdom connected to many cultures and many times, Linda weaves memorable simple stories into a tapestry holding enormous complexity.   A book that is at once a work of art, a representation of science, and an invitation to think more deeply and playfully, Connected Wisdom is a gift. Whether the reader is six or sixty, it matters not.  These pages open us more fully to the world around us.”

Ok. Just one more, from the children’s troubadour and author, Raffi:

“The moment you touch and open this book, its wisdom is evident. This is the wisdom of wholes, of belonging, and connecting the dots to see the richer tapestry of life.”

To hear a preview of the Connected Wisdom CD, click here.  Also for the academic-types among you (I’m one of them), my endnotes for Connected Wisdom can be found here.

For teachers:

Earth science and other educators looking to effectively engage young people while meeting state and national standards will find the Connected Wisdom book and CD invaluable resource that is easily linked to curriculum standards. For example, National Science Education Standards call for students in grades five through eight to study earth and life systems, including natural cycles, natural cycles, nature awareness, habitats and community (specifically, dependency of plants and animals on their habitat and each other) and, human influence on habitats (and in Canada, standards 4s1 and 4s3).

Edie and "Clucky"

Edie, a spry elder with a twinkle and lightning-white hair, brought one of her chickens for the children to touch and hold.  I brought one of my “systems playkits”.

"Healthy Chickens, Healthy Farms" Playkit

“Clucky”, Edie’s barnyard bantam, was a huge success. The children, ranging in age from 3 to 8, sat cross-legged in a circle, listening intently as she explained why a chicken has this part and that, what they eat, what color eggs they lay (Thoreaucana, a breed Edie developed, lays greenish-blue eggs. Dr. Suess would approve).

Each child had a chance to feed and hold the chicken on their lap.  To their great delight, they all received a white feather to stroke and tuck into their pockets to take home.  When Edie finished, one of the monitors arrived to give the group a choice:  “You can play basketball in the gym, or you can play a ‘systems game’ with Mrs. Sweeney.”

No surprise.  Most of the children bolted to the gym! (Note to self:  Drop the word  “system” next time).  The few who remained gathered into a small circle on the floor.  I showed them pictures of a chicken coop at Drumlin Farm, a local Audubon site. We laid out playing cards with pictures of chickens, cows, grass, manure, insects, decomposing soil, eggs, people, the sun, and more, and gave everyone a handful of wikki stixs, bend-able sticks made from hand-knitting yarn enhanced with non-toxic wax. We were ready to play.

When they looked closely at the mobile coop they could see that this coop was unique:  It had wheels!

The Egg Mobile, Drumlin Farm (Lincoln, MA)

“Now, why would that be?” we wondered.  Lilly, a bright and curious first-grader, had been to Drumlin Farm. She’d seen the chickens scratching the grass near the mobile chicken coop.  “I know, I know!” she said. “The chickens eat the bugs in the grass!” Lilly grabbed a green wikki stix and connected chicken card to the grass card.

I asked more questions:  What happens to the chicken manure when it’s left in the field? How are the chickens, the pasture and people connected?

A group of children created this "systems map" using wikki stix (from the Wolves in Yellowstone playkit)

Then the group set to work, adding and taking away links. When they were done, they had “connected the dots”, and had put together a tightly linked “map” of causes and effects.  They discovered that the more the soil was fed the chicken manure and decaying plants, the healthier it was.  With a little help, they also saw the positive influence the chickens had on the health of cows (eating the harmful insect larvae in the cow’s manure), people (an omnivore’s diet improved the quality of the chicken’s eggs) and the climate (less fossil fuels needed to produce chicken feed)

When the last wikki stix was pressed into place, Lilly paused to study the map. Then she exclaimed:  “It all comes down to dirt!”

If you read the newspapers, you know that this statement is both timely and profound. Loss of topsoil and soil erosion due to over-farming and over-grazing of fragile soils is, according to The Worldwatch Institute, “A quiet crisis in the world economy.”  The causes of soil erosion (expanding demand for food, short-cut farming practices) and consequences (silt-laden rivers, desertification) are complex. Said simply though, the more the soil erodes, the less productive it is. Without good topsoil, plants cannot grow.

So, Lilly, at the tender of seven, got it. She explored the interconnections and dynamics of the farm and found that all roads (all wikki stix in this case) lead to the soil. In just a short half hour, she discovered the role soil plays in the health of crops, animals and people. With more time, she would have also likely discovered soil’s role in the cleanliness of water and the livelihoods of farmers. She might also have been guided to think about “systems” as an organizing framework to take home and apply, for instance to that escalating squabble with her brother or to preventing homework “burn-out.”

Systems Playkits, like the one I used with Lilly and her friends, have been used on farms, in public workshops, with a local girl scout troop towards earning their eco-explorer badge, and most recently with a group of 50 graduate students, studying sustainable development and education in Brazil.

People, whether they’re eight or 88, like to touch, build, discover, explore, imagine and play. Using all their senses and interacting with the real world increases the depth and breadth of learning. As our children begin to understand the critical issues that shape our interdependent world, let them become true “systems citizens” with their hands in the dirt and a chicken feather in their pocket.  I think Confucius had it right when he said:

When I hear, I forget,

When I see, I remember,

When I do, I understand.

About the Systems Playkit:

Working with the Creative Learning Exchange and Drumlin Farm, we designed the “Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures” playkit to encourage students to think deliberately about living systems in a farm setting.  Through observation and play, the students discover the often hidden connections within the pasture and see the people, and wildlife around the farms, not as a set of interesting but disconnected parts, but as components in a vibrant living system.  When used in educational settings, the game also provides students with an organizing framework (informed by system dynamics) to take home and apply in other contexts. (The “Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures” playkit can be ordered through the Creative Learning Exchange).

An Opportunity to Learn and Play with Systems

Want to learn more about systems? Check out  Camp Snowball in Tucson the week of July 21-25.  This summer “camp” experience brings together students, parents, educators, and business and community leaders to build everyone’s capacity for learning and leading in the 21st century. Teams and individuals from school systems and communities around the world are invited to learn how to enable youth to develop into “systems citizens.”

Many thanks to my good friends Gale Prior and Sara Schley for your thoughtful comments on this article.  And to Ann Jennings (superb graphic designer), Renata Pomponi (Drumlin Farm) and Lees Stuntz (CLE) for our most enjoyable and fruitful collaboration!

What’s tricky here is that systems — two or more parts that interact to form a whole — are often hard to see.

If you think of it, have you ever seen a system walking around?  Why not? Well, for the most part we don’t actually see the connections that make up systems. We have to imagine how this influences that.

I was reminded of this during yet another snowstorm last week.  With school closed, my two boys were having a ball, and then, as the afternoon crept in, the laughing was replaced by arguing.  What started out as a sharp word or two, ending up in a not-so-playful snowball fight.

Was this simply too much of good thing?  To find out, I took each one aside, and listened while each told their version.

They both told a similar story:  an annoyed comment from one, led the other to comment back, which led to a poke, then… (you know the scenario). In both of their explanations, I heard a common pattern – often seen in systems – called escalation. (If you don’t have children, just think about any situation that escalates like the old advertising campaigns for Coke and Pepsi, competing street gangs, or the current situation between Palestine and Israel. Siblings, companies and countries can all be viewed as “living systems”; the difference is the scale.)

Whether you’ve studied systems or not, you know the pattern I saw. One party does something that is seen as a threat by another party so the other party responds in kind, increasing the threat to the first party. This results in even more threatening actions by the first party and the cycle continues. Seeing this pattern I drew the following picture with my boys:

(Here’s how you read it: Start in the middle. One boy, let’s call him “J”, makes a move to be more awesome than the other. Now, moving to the bottom of the right-hand loop, we see this annoys “T”, who then throws a poke of some sort at his brother. “T”, feeling he now has the leg up,  then probably expresses some level of satisfaction. Then the cycle continues on the left-hand side, with “J” now feeling annoyed at “T” and so on.)

When I asked: “Would you say this is what’s going on?” they both agreed immediately but then quickly started talking over each other.

“Look,” one of them said, pointing to the diagram, “it’s a figure eight lying on its side.” The symbol of infinity.

“This thing could go on forever,” one moaned.

“And just keep getting worse,” the other groaned.

As we talked about it, the growing conflict was driven by each one trying to “out-cool” or “top-dog” the other. The more “cool” behavior one kid put on, the more the other wanted to squash it. As it turns out, one was particularly good at “poking” and the other one was good at “squashing”.

For that one snowy afternoon (with their Mom at her wit’s end), they saw themselves as part of the “system”, rather than separate from it. They “got” that focusing on just one of them wasn’t going to solve the problem. When they could see how their actions were actually fueling the actions of the other (with the help of a simple picture) they then were able to talk about how they might break the cycle.

When I asked what they could do differently, the answer came easily. The poker would lighten up on the poking, and the squasher wouldn’t squash so much.

When our children learn to see systems they eventually learn to see themselves “in” and not outside of situations.  When they see that nothing stands alone, they begin to see that  my bully is your bully, your food shortage is my food shortage, my climate is your climate. They learn to stop jumping to blame a single cause for the challenges they encounter and instead, try to track the a variety of interacting causes, effects and unintended impacts. They learn to move beyond laundry lists and look for  more web-like patterns of cause and effect in their everyday lives.

Does all of this really happen when we talk to our children about systems?

We’re expecting another snow day this week.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

You can read about it yourself in Adam Lahart’s Wall Street Journal article (see How a Feedback loop is Providing a Boost, Dec. 23, 2010).  Although Lahart never mentions the word “feedback loop” in the article itself (I assume you have to know what one is), he refers to this hopeful trend:

Consumer’s willingness to spend (and not save) is encouraging businesses to spend, which means businesses are hiring, which is sending a signal to consumers….

You guessed it.   It’s okay to spend!

If Mr. Lahart were to have included a simple diagram in his article (and I wish he did), it might look something like this:

(The R in the middle lets you know this is a reinforcing feedback loop).

Here’s an even shorter version of this loop:

Consumer optimism generates business optimism, which generates consumer optimism and so on.

As a systems educator, I’m thrilled to see a “feedback loop” in the headline of a Wall Street Journal article.  We sorely need more media coverage that moves beyond bullet points and mechanistic metaphors, to language and images that more closely match the interdependent, dynamic, complex reality of our world.  I’m game for anything that helps people to develop systems literacy, that is, to “connect the dots” and see not just of the parts but the interrelationships, patterns, and dynamics as well of complex issues.

Mr. Lahart’s article was a tease to me.   I really wanted him to use phrase “feedback loop” in his article and to show us, using some kind of image, how the loop worked.  Perhaps he assumes that the average WSJ readers knows what a feedback loop is (loops of cause and effect) and that the loops come in two flavors: balancing feedback, which counteracts or lessens change, and reinforcing feedback, which amplifies or reinforces change.  (In this article, he’s referring to the latter).*

At this point, you might be wondering:  Why should I care about feedback loops?

Here’s why I care about them:   Feedback loops help us to understand why things change and why they stay the same.

Mr. Lahart refers to a “vicious cycle… starting to turn virtuous” (feedback loops) to explain why and how consumer optimism is changing (in this case, increasing). Everyday challenges, from an escalating marital argument to resistance of a new school policy, all can be traced to the interaction of balancing (or self-correcting) and reinforcing feedback loops.

Here’s the good news:  When you see and understand these loops, you then have a better chance of influencing them.

Okay, you still might be saying, I get it, but so what?

As a researcher, I’ve investigated children’s and adult’s intuitive understandings of complex systems and have found that deep misconceptions about complex systems persist, even among highly educated adults.   In one study (see “Thinking about Systems”), a significant number of students and adults used “open-loop” or one-way causal thinking when “closed-loop” causality or feedback was present.

This would explain why a significant number of Americans use their thermostats like a gas pedal.  It’s too cold?  Turn up the thermostat.  Too hot?  Turn it down.  The temperature is increased or decreased suit our moment-by-moment needs.

When we understand balancing feedback, we set the thermostat and leave it alone, letting the internal feedback structure do its work and  allowing the temperature to self-adjust to a desired temperature.

When we pay attention to balancing feedback, we’re less likely to over-correct and over-steer, perhaps allowing our children or our team to handle a problem themselves.

When we understand reinforcing feedback, we see that seemingly small changes can “grow” into big consequences.

We share scientists concerns about melting ice in polar regions.

Cover of the Independent Newspaper, 1.29.07

We “get” that a vicious cycle is at work when a slight rise in atmospheric temperature begins to melt ice in the polar regions; the now bare ground absorbs more heat, causing even more ice to melt.

When we pay attention to reinforcing feedback, we also understand a successful person’s willingness to take on more work.  “Success to the successful” sounds good, but when success brings more and more work, if a balancing loop isn’t brought into play, this reinforcing loop often results in a case of diminishing returns, also know as  burn-out.

Mr. Lahart, thank you for using “feedback” in the title of your article.  Next time, I encourage you to use throw in a feedback loop and maybe even use “feedback loop” in a sentence.   We could all use the practice.

————————–

* Reinforcing feedback loops act as engines of growth. When reinforcing feedback is present, change in a system feeds back to cause even more change in the system.   Think of the spread of a rumor, or a virus, or your saving account (if you actually save and don’t spend).

Balancing or self-regulating feedback return a system (like your body, an ecosystem, market systems) back to a state of equilibrium.  By their very nature, balancing feedback works to bring things to a desired state and keep them there.

I’ll be writing more in this blog about ways to teach people of all ages about feedback loops.  For other great resources, see the Waters Foundation site or check out the cover article by Steve Wilhite — “Concept Learning — Feedback Loops” in the Fall 2010 Creative Learning Exchange newsletter. (This particular article focuses on high school students).

Photograph:  John Gustafsson/AP

Like thousands of people around the world, my April travel plans were no match for Eyjafjallajökullo, a smallish volcano located in the far south of Iceland.  I’m in Iceland now for a Balaton Group meeting and thanks to an enthusiastic soil scientist, I find myself  standing in a pasture not far from  Eyjafjallajökull. With its sleek, gray sides and surprisingly flat top, Eyjafjallajökull is far from the ugly, menacing volcano I expected.

I’m struck by the vibrancy of this place:  a  herd of Icelandic horses grazes about 200 feet down the riverbed and what must be hundreds of sheep roam over the hillsides down the road.  Thick vegetation covers the pasture and Icelandic birch trees line the roads. Even the soil I stand on has a bounce to it.

If you remember, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökullo created a massive ash cloud that eventually forced most of Europe’s airspace to close for five consecutive days, canceling almost all flights to and from Europe.   My family and I were not at all pleased by this turn of events.  When we had to explain why we weren’t in Scotland (where I was supposed to attend an IFF World Game), I had to explain, “We were ashed!”

If you had asked me “What good is a volcano?” I would have said, “not much!”               So, when I learned this week that volcanoes have a silver lining (or two), I had to laugh.  Even a volcano, the same one that ruined my travel plans, has a role to play in the tightly interconnected and delicately balanced phenomenon we call earth.

So, what good is a volcanco?

Thanks to Guõrún Gísladóttir, an enthusiastic and highly knowledgeable professor of Geography at the University of Iceland,  I learned one answer to this question has to do with soils.

In Iceland, the soils are called andosols.  Andosols are soils that are formed in the volcanic regions of the world. These soils have special properties that make them an important and unique natural resource.

Diagram created by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) agency

These soils form from tephra, the stuff blown out of volcanoes.

Professor Gísladóttir and I grab a few shovels and dig down four feet or so in the pasture near Eyjafjallajökullo.  We find six different colored stripes in the soil, each stripe telling a different story.

The author digging for tephra

As I learn, tephra is filled with nutrients.  If you taste it (which I did!), it has a crunchy, earthy taste, not far from a hyper-healthy granola.  With the help of the rains, the nutrients from the tephra wash into the underlying vegetation and into the soil itself.

Whether your soils are fed by a volcano, or by salmon in a nearby river, or good old household compost,  healthy soil provides a foundation for healthy crops, the cleanliness of  water,  and the livelihoods of  farmers.  If handled well, soils (and the millions of creatures living in our soils) also help to break down waste, turning it into food for other species.

We depend on soil to live, yet it is surprisingly easy to forget.  When we pave where pavement isn’t necessary, clear cut forests, over-graze land, or cultivate land without protecting the top soil, we leave our soil unprotected and vulnerable to erosion.

Dana Meadows, an American systems scientist, worked with great mastery and diligence to raise the level of public discussion about a variety of systemic issues, one of them being soil erosion.  Explaining how nonlinear relationships influence soil erosion, she wrote:

“The effect of nonlinear relationships is also not generally understood. The public debate on the seriousness of soil erosion, for example, has yet to recognize that the relationship between soil depth and crop yield can be sharply nonlinear – that a little erosion may not have much effect, but a little more erosion may reduce agricultural output dramatically.”

Of course, there is much, much more for me to learn about soils.  So for now, I have decided to become a student of soil, studying how to create and talk about healthy soil and prevent soil erosion.

What’s my motivation?    I share Dana’s desire to raise the level of public discussion about systemic issues.  I also want to be able to explain to my kids how the health of our soil effects the health of people.  I want them to be inspired by soil, to invest in it and to treasure it.  If they have all the money in the world, but poor soil, dirty water and less wholesome food and less natural beauty, what good is that?

Perhaps after we all learn more about soil, my kids won’t think their mother is crazy when she “puts the garden to bed” in the fall.  Maybe, just maybe, they might pause as they step out off the school bus or onto a field, and notice the feel of the soil beneath their feet, and even revel in it, just as Walt Whitman once did:

Underfoot the divine soil

Overhead the sun.

The press of my foot to the earth

Springs a hundred affections.

– Walt Whitman

Hallelujah! 

But wait. Why are we celebrating?

Like many of us in the applied systems theory field, the Army (and in particular, General McMaster) has recognized that, “some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” So the complexity of the Afghan situation cannot be condensed into bullet points, after all. PowerPoint, a favorite tool of the military to convey vast amounts of information, is under fire because, as General McMaster points out, it takes no account of interconnections and interrelationships among political, economic and ethnic forces.

General McMaster, we the scientists, practitioners and educators in the burgeoning field of applied systems science applaud you with one hand.  We agree with you that problem solving requires a focus on interconnections, rather than on parts in isolation. Indeed, if you look around you’ll see a systems approach is driving the search for solutions for many of the problems we face in the environment, engineering, and in human societies. More and more, we see food, climate, childhood obesity, poverty, energy and other global challenges “systems” issues.

Yet when the interconnections and interrelationships of American military strategy were represented (as they were in this PowerPoint slide shown in Kabul), General McChrystal brushed it off as too complex and therefore not understandable.

What’s a leader to do?  Most leaders are required to drive action. They must clearly state a goal, line up a set of actions, exert pressure, and then reach the goal.  Many leaders would agree that when lining up strategy, bullet points over-simplify and in the end, mislead. Yet complex systems maps are, well, too complex. 

Let’s pause here for a moment to ask the elephant-in-the-room question:  How did we get here? How did we get so bullet point and PowerPoint obsessed?

Of course, that could be the topic of a much longer blog (or book) but here is one, short answer:  We Americans are encouraged to focus on objects rather than relationships.

In his book, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why (2003), cognitive psychologist Richard Nisbett reports on studies conducted by developmental psychologists with American children. American school children and college students tended to group objects (such as a cow, a chicken and grass) by their taxonomic category. Chinese school children and college students, however, grouped objects based on interrelationships. For example, American students would group a cow with a chicken because they were both animals whereas Chinese students would be more likely to put the cow and grass together because the “cow eats the grass”.  Referring to a similar study conducted with American and Japanese children, Nisbett observes:  “American children are learning that the world is mostly a place with objects, Japanese children that the world is mostly about relationships.”

There are many other influences, such as language structure, compartmentalization of disciplines in school, and more.  It’s no wonder our military leaders get antsy when they see a complex systems map.  Most Americans, including our military, industry and government leaders, were not taught to think systemically; we were taught that the best way to understand a subject was to analyze it or break it up into parts.  

Thinking in terms of systems doesn’t have to be hard.  And it doesn’t have to replace bullet pointed lists and the 2×2 matrix.  In many instances, it simply requires a perception shift from, for example, focusing on parts and fragments to tracing interconnections and the often surprising  dynamics created by closed loops of cause and effect.* 

In my classes and talks, I encourage students and audiences to be suspect of information that is presented as discrete (bullet point lists, for instance).  When you see the world in terms of interconnections, networks and systems, you make a perspective shift:

From:  Discrete information   –>    To:  Closed Loops of Cause & Effect

When presented with bullet points, ask questions.  Probe how those elements may be interconnected in closed loops of causality.  Imagine you are in the audience as a presenter concludes his or her presentation with a list of “Next Steps.”  One step is to “train future leaders” in a specific research or problem-solving approach. The next step is to “increase funding for special projects”.  Rather that nodding your head and swallowing the list whole, pause, and ask:  “What will happen if we train more future leaders?  Will that have some impact on the our ability to ‘increase funding for special projects’?” Look beyond the bullet points for multiple causes, effects and unintended or unexpected impacts.

“What?!” you say?  Ask more questions?  There’s no reward in that!  As a general, manager, or any type of leader, I need to know where to exert my effort, my resources and my attention.  

I can offer you this promise:  If  you find ways to work with your team to map either the current or desired reality of a complex issue, using pencil & paper sketches, PowerPoint or computer models, you will:  a) uncover a host of unintended consequences that emerge from the interactions among your decisions, b) discover unforeseen leverage points, and c) make more informed decisions and policy changes that will likely lead to positive results. As a side benefit, you will be more likely to get off that problem solving treadmill, where our “solutions” often only create more problems or make the original problem worse and, as a result of creating causal models as a group, you will experience greater clarity and learning among group members. (By the way, if you don’t do these things, Joseph Campbell has a warning for you:  “People who don’t have a concept of the whole, can do very unfortunate things…”). 

And what about PowerPoint?  Is it such an evil tool? 

In my opinion, the Army missed the point about PowerPoint.  PowerPoint, like any tool, it is only as good as the person using it. You can dumb down complexity by parsing out information into mind-numbing sets of bullet points.  You can also use PowerPoint to represent complex interrelationships and dynamics by using arrows, icons and builds.  The mistake made with the American military map is that too large a serving of spaghetti was put on one plate, instead of showing one noodle (or causal link), and one domain (e.g., tribal governance) at a time. (My assumption here though, is that since the map was created by the highly-skilled PA Consulting Group, the map was presented to the generals one section at a time). 

Whether you’re an educator, business leader, physician, urban planner, engineer, community organizer, or military general, it’s time to be curious about how this is connected to that.  We all need to move beyond laundry list or bullet point thinking to seeing and thinking about patterns of interaction, networks and other lines of inquiry and problem solving that more closely matches the more interdependent, complex world we live in. 

L. Booth Sweeney,  Concord, MA

For another system dynamics perspective from on the New York Times article, see this post from Chris Soderquist. 

Many thanks to Gale Pryor and John Sweeney for their thoughtful commentary on early drafts of this post).  

*What are “closed loops of cause and effect?”:  When we “get” the idea of closed loops (vs. straight lines) of cause and effect, we understand that closed “feedback loops”– circular loops of mutual causality that amplify change — underlie the spread of a rumor, the growth of a virus, or a successful person’s willingness to take on more work.  Reinforcing feedback loops act as engines of growth:  change in a system feeds back to cause even more change in the system. 

We also look for balancing or self-regulating feedback — a set of interactions that return a system (like your body, an ecosystem, market systems) back to a state of equilibrium.  By their very nature, balancing feedback works to bring things to a desired state and keep them there.  When we understand balancing feedback, we stop using our thermostat like a gas pedal, increasing or decreasing the temperature to suit our moment-by-moment needs.  Rather we let the internal feedback structure do its work, allowing the temperature to self-adjust to a desired temperature.

Sounds like a question a college interviewer might ask.  To be literate of course, means you have a good understanding of a particular subject, like a foreign language or mathematics. If you’re reading this, you probably have good English literacy.  For others, science or engineering, or even our woodworking or gardening literacy is particularly strong.

If you listen closely to folks like Thomas Friedman, Michael Pollan, Nicholas Kristof, Wendell Berry and others, you’ll hear them asking for a new kind of literacy, one I call systems literacy. 

This new literacy calls for us to “connect the dots”,  to look at not just the parts but the interrelationships, patterns, and dynamics as well when faced with complex issues, or what Russ Ackoff use to call “wicked messes.”  When we think in terms of systems, we toggle our focus between parts and wholes, between open loops and closed loops (where waste from one source can be “food” for another), between microcosms to macrocosms. We learn to see recurring patterns that exist among a wide variety of living systems and we use our understanding of those patterns to correct actions, anticipate unintended consequences, and produce learning.*  

Why do we need another literacy?  My favorite agrarian poet Wendell Berry says it so well:

“We seem to have been living for a long time on the assumption that we can safely deal with parts, leaving the whole to take care of itself.  But now the news from everywhere is that we have to begin gathering up the scattered pieces, figuring out where they belong, and putting them back together. For the parts can be reconciled to one another only within the pattern of the whole thing to which they belong.” (from The Way of Ignorance, pg. 77)

Most Americans, including our industry and government leaders, were taught that the best way to understand a subject was to analyze it or break it up into parts.   Where were we taught the skills of seeing and understanding systems of complex causes and effect relationships and unintended impacts? 

Yet these are the skills we need to create sustainable communities, and to address pressing issues such as vulnerable food systems, global warming, childhood obesity, unstable energy relationships, environmental degradation and more.

When we are systems literate, we can…

… stop jumping to blame a single cause for the challenges we encounter and instead, look for multiple causes, effects and unintended impacts. 

…move beyond laundry lists and bullet points, to seeing patterns of interaction that more closely match the more interdependent, complex world we live in.

…get off that problem solving treadmill, where our “solutions” often only create more problems or make the original problem worse.  

When we are systems literate, we look at the economy, the climate, education, energy, poverty, waste, disease, sustainable communities as systems issues. We see that nothing stands alone, which means that my climate is your climate, your infectious disease is my infectious disease, your food shortage is my food shortage. 

Where do you start?   Perhaps you pick up a copy of Donella Meadows book “Thinking in Systems” or Peter Senge’s classic The Fifth Discipline, or Fritjof Capra’s The Web of Life or the just released systems education book, Tracing Connections. (For other suggestions, look at the systems literacy resources on my site).

Or you simply try adding the word “system” as you talk about everyday issues, big and small, such as laundry (system), family (system), classroom (system), food (system), waste (system), climate (system), and so on.  By adding the word system, we begin to look for interconnections, closing loops of  material and information flows, anticipating time delays and the inertia created by stocks (or accumulations).

When we think of the laundry as a system, we shift our focus from the pile of laundry to the many interrelated factors influencing that pile:  children, dogs, towels that could be used more than once, etc.  

When we think of farms as living systems, we see the parts and processes of a farm include the farmer, animals, crops, insects, soil, weather and natural cycles, such as the water cycle, as connected to and nested in each other. 

We also see  the farm as part of a larger food production system that includes natural and human resources, waste, food processing, distributors and consumers, and we see the farm’s role in influencing other systems such as health care, energy independence and climate. 

Everyday, I see more opportunities for developing systems literacy.   In the last fifteen years, a growing number of schools in the U.S. and around the world have begun in earnest to teach students systems thinking.  Several State Departments of Education are including systems thinking and “Education for Sustainability” (EFS), or learning that promotes understanding of the interconnectedness of the environment, economy, and society, as a requirement for middle school science standards. The MacArthur Foundation just awarded a major grant for a project focused on developing systems thinking in middle school students and developing new curriculum for teachers across disciplines. 

Just as our nation has improved its math literacy and science literacy, the time has come for us all to support efforts to develop systems literacy.

*Scientists and educators in the burgeoning field of systems science describe a living system as patterns of interrelationships among parts that continually affect one another over time. Increasingly, a systems approach is driving the search for solutions for the problems we face in the environment, engineering, and in human societies.  Systems literacy combines conceptual knowledge (knowledge of system properties and behaviors) and reasoning skills (the ability to locate situations in wider contexts, see multiple levels of perspective within a system, trace complex interrelationships, look for endogenous or “within system” influences, be aware of changing behavior over time, and recognize recurring patterns that exist within a wide variety of systems. See here for more on the principles and habits of mind related to systems literacy.