2 hr 14 min
28: Bring the Crowbar. Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows Made You Think
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- Society & Culture
“Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and I’ve figured out a leverage point — in inventory policy, maybe, or in the relationship between salesforce and productive force, or in personnel policy. Then I’ve gone to the company and discovered that there’s already a lot of attention to that point. Everyone is trying very hard to push it in the wrong direction!”
In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and I discuss Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows. In this article, Meadows goes through her twelve “leverage points” in which you can affect change in your company or any complex system, from least to most effective.
“Magical leverage points are not easily accessible, even if we know where they are and which direction to push on them. There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly letting go.”
We cover a wide range of topics, including:
All of Meadow’s 12 Leverage Points Positive and negative feedback loops The NRA and gun control How individuals can change the system in small and big ways Brexit and the Eurozone The paradigms that shape our thinking And much more.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt for its meta-theory of business, and our episode on Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse, about how employers and employees can create, change, and play in systems.
Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more.
Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show: The Titanic [10:43] Paleolithic diet [12:40] Ketogenic diet [12:40] The Bike-Shed Effect [14:17] Evernote [23:20] Rule of 3 and 10 [23:19] American Eagle [25:15] Zara [25:35] Cryptocurrency [30:15] Apple Inc. [35:00] The Big Mike – Banana Species [39:00] Slippery Slope Argument [41:47] Veil of Ignorance [42:00] The Selfish Gene Hypothesis [47:25] Intuit [54:00] 9-9-9 Plan [54:20] TurboTax [55:40] QuickBooks [55:40] The Florida Shooting [01:05:15] National Rifle Association — NRA [01:05:20] Net Neutrality [01:05:30] The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris [01:09:15] Game Theory [01:09:55] The Daily Wire [01:14:13] The Ben Shapiro Show – Podcast [1:14:13] Justworks [01:24:00] MomTrusted.com [01:24:47] AirBnB [01:35:50] Uber [01:35:50] Scott Galloway Says Amazon, Apple, Facebook, And Google should be broken up [1:39:22] Socialists of New York [1:53:59] Flatgeologists [02:01:50] Books mentioned: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox [2:57] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Way of Zen by Alan Watts [3:00] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Finite and Infinite Games by James C. Carse [04:31] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter [07:36] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life by Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan [07:23] The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb [16:49] Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb [16:49] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [23:59] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel [39:25] Merchants of Doubt: by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway [40:29] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician by Michihiko Hachiya [01:04:30] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg [01:47:50] (Nat’s notes)
“Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and I’ve figured out a leverage point — in inventory policy, maybe, or in the relationship between salesforce and productive force, or in personnel policy. Then I’ve gone to the company and discovered that there’s already a lot of attention to that point. Everyone is trying very hard to push it in the wrong direction!”
In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and I discuss Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows. In this article, Meadows goes through her twelve “leverage points” in which you can affect change in your company or any complex system, from least to most effective.
“Magical leverage points are not easily accessible, even if we know where they are and which direction to push on them. There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly letting go.”
We cover a wide range of topics, including:
All of Meadow’s 12 Leverage Points Positive and negative feedback loops The NRA and gun control How individuals can change the system in small and big ways Brexit and the Eurozone The paradigms that shape our thinking And much more.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt for its meta-theory of business, and our episode on Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse, about how employers and employees can create, change, and play in systems.
Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more.
Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show: The Titanic [10:43] Paleolithic diet [12:40] Ketogenic diet [12:40] The Bike-Shed Effect [14:17] Evernote [23:20] Rule of 3 and 10 [23:19] American Eagle [25:15] Zara [25:35] Cryptocurrency [30:15] Apple Inc. [35:00] The Big Mike – Banana Species [39:00] Slippery Slope Argument [41:47] Veil of Ignorance [42:00] The Selfish Gene Hypothesis [47:25] Intuit [54:00] 9-9-9 Plan [54:20] TurboTax [55:40] QuickBooks [55:40] The Florida Shooting [01:05:15] National Rifle Association — NRA [01:05:20] Net Neutrality [01:05:30] The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris [01:09:15] Game Theory [01:09:55] The Daily Wire [01:14:13] The Ben Shapiro Show – Podcast [1:14:13] Justworks [01:24:00] MomTrusted.com [01:24:47] AirBnB [01:35:50] Uber [01:35:50] Scott Galloway Says Amazon, Apple, Facebook, And Google should be broken up [1:39:22] Socialists of New York [1:53:59] Flatgeologists [02:01:50] Books mentioned: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox [2:57] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Way of Zen by Alan Watts [3:00] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Finite and Infinite Games by James C. Carse [04:31] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter [07:36] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life by Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan [07:23] The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb [16:49] Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb [16:49] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [23:59] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel [39:25] Merchants of Doubt: by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway [40:29] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician by Michihiko Hachiya [01:04:30] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg [01:47:50] (Nat’s notes)
2 hr 14 min