Leverage points

Key systems thinking lessons from Donella Meadows

By Geoff Marlow

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Geoff Marlow (biography)

The book “Thinking In Systems: A Primer” by Donella (Dana) Meadows (2008) offers a useful entry point into systems thinking via seven lessons.

Lesson 1: Systems are always more than the sum of their parts

Feedback loops are pivotal, as is looking beyond the players to the underlying rules of the game.

Meadows (p. 13) offers guidance as to “whether you are looking at a system or just a bunch of stuff:

  • Can you identify parts? . . . and
  • Do the parts affect each other? . . . and
  • Do the parts together produce an effect that is different from the effect of each part on its own? . . . and perhaps
  • Does the effect, the behavior over time, persist in a variety of circumstances?” 

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Three principles for co-designing intervention strategies

By David Lam

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David Lam (biography)

What processes are involved when researchers and local actors co-design context-specific intervention strategies? This ‘how to’ knowledge is outlined in the three principles described below. Local actors can include non-governmental organisations, local leaders, community groups and individual activists.

Principle 1. Explore existing and envisioned initiatives fostering change towards the desired future 

This has 3 key steps:

  1. Identifying existing initiatives and knowledge working towards the desired future
  2. Identifying who is involved and leading different existing initiatives
  3. Analysing how existing and possible future initiatives from local actors contribute to changing the state of system elements that need to change for reaching the desired vision or up to an intermediate state.

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Strengthening the ecosystem for effective team science: A case study from University of California, Irvine, USA

By Dan Stokols, Judith S. Olson, Maritza Salazar and Gary M. Olson

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1. Dan Stokols (biography)
2. Judith S. Olson (biography)
3. Maritza Salazar (biography)
4. Gary M. Olson (biography)

How can an ecosystem approach help in understanding and improving team science? How can this work in practice?

An Ecosystem Approach

Collaborations among scholars from different fields and their community partners are embedded in a multi-layered ecosystem ranging from micro to macro scales, and from local to more remote regions. Ecosystem levels include:

  • individual members of teams;
  • the teams to which they belong viewed as organizational units;
  • the broader institutional contexts (eg., universities, research institutes) that support multi-team systems; and,
  • their community and societal milieus (eg., science policies and priorities established by national and international agencies and foundations).

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