These stories are not unique to Detroit, Philadelphia, or Los Angeles, nor are the dynamics unique to cities. IBM, once the paragon of business excellence, has laid off more than 100,000 employees and seen its market value tumble from a high of $106 billion in 1987 to $29 billion in 1992. Digital, once hailed as the epitome of entrepreneurial success, has been experiencing its own share of problems. The story is the same at other, once-successful companies, such as General Motors and DuPont.

What happened to these cities and companies that were once so successful and attractive? How do once-vital neighborhoods descend into endless blocks of slums? How do long-time successful companies end up in such crises? Although these two questions may appear unrelated, the underlying structures that produce the dynamics have much in common.

Urban Dynamics

The 1969 book Urban Dynamics, written by founder of system dynamics Jay W. Forrester, identified and described the systemic structure responsible for the dynamics of urban development and decay. Through repeated computer simulations, Forrester analyzed the changing ratios of critical urban development factors such as population, housing, and industry, and how the changes would affect a city’s growth.

For example, if a particular city received financial aid from an external source, how would the assistance affect the city’s economic status?

One controversial conclusion in Urban Dynamics was that the most commonly-accepted plans for improving an urban area (such as financial assistance) may actually hurt a city’s long-term health. Financial aid, job training, other job programs, and low-cost housing were each found to be ineffective and potentially harmful for the city system because they can lead to other problems such as overpopulation and greater tax demands on the underemployed.

The descriptions in Urban Dynamics of these well-intended urban policies leading to disaster are currently visible in many cities. For example, an article in the January 27, 1992 US News & World Report described the 10 worst economic blunders made by state and local governments. “Local government officials from coast to coast, besieged by the demands of financially ailing citizens who want more services but fewer taxes, are hitting the economic panic button in order to retain their jobs. This hysteria has resulted in a series of wrongheaded and shortsighted decisions…[and] the long-term impact of these blunders is frightening. Budgetary quick fixes are driving herds of companies from high-tax cities and states to more inviting economic pastures. This stampede will ultimately burden the next generation of citizens with even more intractable deficits.”

Yet another piece stated, “Many of the troubles flow from conditions beyond the cities’ control. Despite all the talk of urban gentrification, city dwellers continue to move to the suburbs, eroding tax bases…(and) Reagan-era cutbacks have cost cities $20 billion in federal funding since 1981” (“Cities on the Brink,” Newsweek, November 19, 1990). Again, promising solutions such as increasing taxes and external financial aid have led only to higher unemployment in cities on the edge of bankruptcy. Blame is often placed on individuals, consumers, and the government, without recognition of the larger dynamics at work.

Forrester wrote Urban Dynamics over 20 years ago, decades after the first indications of urban decay appeared. Twenty years later, we are still far from understanding the counterintuitive dynamics at work and how we can use those dynamics to manage urban growth.

The Dynamics of Booms and Busts

How, exactly, does a city experience a rise and fall in growth and attractiveness? The story usually begins with a “hot” city being perceived as the new “best” place to work, live, and raise a family. Construction in the city is booming, so employment is on the increase. People are starting to move from other regions to “HotTown” for the abundant job opportunities. During the years of expansion, the job growth is not just in construction work, but in all the ancillary business that the work generates. Attorneys, accountants, engineers, architects, designers, and many other professionals are needed which, in turn, fuels demand for print shops, restaurants, supermarkets, and department stores.

Over a number of decades, the city boundaries expand out as far as possible, as industry and people pour in and the land area begins to be filled. “Hot-Town” thrives on a growth loop that is virtuously fed by reinforcing cycles of business immigration and tax revenues (loop RI in “Boom and Bust of Urban Dynamics”).

As growth continues, availability of land grows scarce, real estate prices increase, and growth in the number of businesses slows (B2). The city’s attractiveness decreases and construction slows down. Unemployment rises as the construction boom ends, sometimes leading to the establishment of low income housing for the poor and underemployed. This, in turn, further reduces the availability of land for business use (also eroding tax revenues), and continues the decline of businesses in the city (R3). As businesses disappear, building maintenance declines and leads to abandoned buildings and slums, further lowering the city’s attractiveness and driving even more businesses away (R4). With the loss of businesses come the loss of tax revenues, which creates financial pressures. Raising taxes fixes the revenue problem in the short term (B5), but creates another vicious cycle of business emigration (R1).

Philadelphia is a case in point. During the decade from 1952-1962, Philadelphia was a vibrant city, where businesses thrived under the leadership of mayors Joseph S. Clark and Richardson Dillworth. Its glory days are long gone, however. In 1991, its public transportation system was threatened with imminent bankruptcy and the city of “brotherly love” found its voters racially polarized. The wage tax of almost 5% is one of the highest in the country and the garbage disposal fees (also among the highest) are widely blamed for the mass exodus of businesses from the city to the suburbs. A construction boom did revitalize downtown Philadelphia in the 1980s, but generous property-tax concessions to developers limited the city’s ability to profit from the growth.

Counterintuitive Nature of Complex Systems

According to Forrester, the counterintuitive discoveries in Urban Dynamics are indicative of the nature of all complex systems. Pushing on one facet of a system will eventually create repercussions in other, seemingly unrelated areas. Any city improvement program will change the balance of the system as a whole, regardless of the individual program’s potential. For example, every city has a natural rate of upward mobility through which the unemployed move into the labor pool. if a city becomes dependent on job training programs to spur such growth, other job-creating initiatives will be deemphasized. Because of this shift, you can never experience a positive program’s full benefits.

Therefore, in any complex system, the most obvious solutions are those most likely to fail. Forrester wrote in Urban Dynamics, “With a high degree of confidence we can say that the intuitive solutions to the problems of complex social systems will be wrong most of the time. Here lies much of the explanation for the problems of faltering companies, disappointments in developing nations, foreign-exchange crises, and troubles of urban areas.”

In addition, any kind of complex system is almost always accompanied by a conflict between short and long-term thinking. Such dynamics play out frequently in business situations, where short-term thinking and quick results are often rewarded. In many companies, annual and sometimes quarterly reports are considered to give accurate indication of the organization’s health, when, in reality, they provide only a narrow view of the company’s position. Budgetary and political pressures often result in decisions that will have positive results in the short term, but negative consequences over the long term.

Overbuilding and Collapse of Corporate Infrastructures

Companies also create their own “inner slums” through dynamics similar to those Forrester described for cities. The need to revitalize these areas is often unplanned and unanticipated. But as many companies are being forced to restructure and rethink their work processes, managers are being challenged to openly face these issues while attempting to restore economic “health” to their departments and to their business as a whole.

For example, management information systems (MIS) in some companies have sprawled out throughout the organization through haphazard growth (see “Boom and Bust of Information Systems”). To meet the growing needs of the company, corporate MIS expands (R6). As it grows, the systems become more complex and less attractive to use (B10). New available technology offers other, sometimes more cost-effective options, so individual corporate divisions choose to find independent solutions, therefore establishing more independent systems (R8). As more and more users defect, chargeback dollars fall, placing more financial pressure on corporate IS, leading to higher user fees (B9) that further decrease its attractiveness (R6).

Cutbacks and limited returns from past investments are currently placing budgetary demands on MIS, as managers are under increasing pressure from upper management to justify the cost of their operations. Readily-available technology has quickly complicated and decentralized what were once purely mainframe systems. The quick transition to microcomputers and lack of an integrated plan and direction have led to many overbuilt departments with underutilized technology. In many cases, poor organization and planning is sometimes credited for the mismatch between needs and resources.

“One source of this (MIS] problem is the way the development process typically is organized. Information systems’ applications are often developed in isolation, with each team working on one particular application…Thus the process becomes organizationally as well as technically fragmented. The result is a set of applications that may work individually or in isolation, yet the overall system represented by the organization’s collective set of applications may fail to perform adequately or to support the organization’s needs.”

Cities and companies have always been controlled; if not by the designers and architects, then by the complexity of the system itself. By continuing to build and add technology, we force the system to choose its own limits, and therefore create the very destruction we want to avoid.

These shifts in the structure of MIS workflow may have been better anticipated and planned for, given the quick changes and outdating of computer systems. Instead of creating a sustainable system, many MIS departments are now being challenged to maintain their outdated systems because of the hefty financial investment, while trying to keep pace with new technology. In trying to address these issues for the long term, chief information officers are beginning to return to the basics of information management — cost reduction and modernization. Benchmarking is also becoming more prevalent as a way for MIS departments to establish performance bases for continuous improvement.

Manage Growth — Don’t Be Its Victim

MIS is not alone in its resemblance to urban dynamics. Internal purchasing, accounting, sales, support, and administrative departments are also susceptible. A better understanding of the dynamics can help us learn to manage growth to create the kind of long-term results we desire. Advocates of free market systems may see this kind of managed growth as an attempt to control too much by placing limits and minimizing opportunity. Cities and companies, however, have always been controlled; if not by the designers and architects, then by the complexity of the system itself. By continuing to build and add technology, we force the system to choose its own limits, and therefore create the very destruction we want to avoid.

In attempting to design any system that can grow sustainably and support the needs of the whole, departments such as MIS and their parent companies can learn from Urban Dynamics. Applying the lessons of Urban Dynamics may help us learn to balance more carefully the forces of attractiveness and growth to create sustainable cities and companies. Avoiding the creation of slums altogether will therefore require learning how to manage the dynamics of growth rather than be a victim of them.

Forrester suggests urban planning should focus on how to balance the positive and negative dimensions of urban life (see “The Attractiveness Principle”). Changing specific components of a city’s attractiveness, while ensuring that the total attractiveness of the city remains the same, can help in managing a city’s development. The key is to focus on the particular core competencies that will create sustainable health over the long term. The author would like to thank Michael Goodman of Innovation Associates (Framingham, MA) and Jay W. Forrester of MIT Sloan School of Management (Cambridge, MA) for their contributions and comments. Sources:

Boroughs, Don L. “The 10 Worst Economic Moves.” US News & World Report, January 27, 1992.

Forrester, Jay W. Urban Dynamics. (Portland, OR: Productivity Press, 1969).

Forrester, Jay W. “Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems,” Chapter 14, Collected Papers of Jay W. Forrester. (Portland, OR: Productivity Press, 1975).

Zack, Michael H. An Information Infrastructure Model for Systems Planning.” Journal of Systems Management, August 1992. For additional resources, please contact Pegasus Communications at (617) 576-1231.

The post What Companies Can Learn from Urban Dynamics appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

JAY FORRESTER: I think we should start by realizing that system dynamics is a profession like learning engineering or medicine. The idea that it is quick and easy to acquire is fallacious. We’ve had the experience of running a basic training program in system dynamics here at MIT the last three years by e-mail for professionals around the world; about 20 took it each year. It was a very intensive program in which participants received an assignment each week that took them about 15 hours to complete. That is a big load on top of their normal activities. The program ran for 30 weeks. Thirty weeks at 15 hours a week is 450 hours of work on their part. At the end, many said, “I’m now beginning to see enough of this field to know that I need to go further.”

We have seen people going to three-day conferences and thinking they’re experts in system dynamics. They set themselves up as consultants or to bring the ideas into a corporation when, in fact, they don’t have enough insight to know how to approach the subject. You can draw an analogy to medicine. I think a one-day first-aid course is useful. It will help you with simple things in medicine, but it does not prepare you to do heart transplants. System dynamics covers fully that wide a range.

The activity called “systems thinking,” which is talking about systems, recognizing there are systems, and agreeing that systems are important, is really at the level of the one-day first-aid course. It is not sufficient for understanding the dynamics of an organization. I have no doubt that a brief introduction can be useful; it just isn’t sufficient. The introduction from systems thinking is not strong enough and not persuasive enough to reverse detrimental policies that are strongly held, because there’s no solid basis for the argument to change. A systems thinker cannot, I believe, achieve the kind of position that one can have working from a good system dynamics simulation model.

With a solid, thoroughly studied system dynamics model, you know the assumptions that are in the model, you know the behavior those assumptions lead to, and you know how the behavior will change from a wide variety of different policies. If everything you say at the level of policies, at the level of structure, and at the level of behavior is correct in the eyes of participants who know various parts of the real system, it becomes persuasive. And that’s what the expert system dynamics practitioner should aspire to.

I would say that any attempt to introduce a deep understanding of systems on a broad sweep through the organization by simply talking about it probably will not be effective. The right way is to go deeply into some specific issues, do serious computer simulation modeling, and show how the troubles of the organization are being generated, how problems evolved out of past policies, and how alternative policies would improve behavior. To effectively create and use a model requires skill. People will spend tens of millions of dollars over a period of five years or more to develop a new product, but are reluctant to spend anything like that amount in preparing themselves to make the corporation more successful.

I think the way to introduce system dynamics is to find colleagues, build a grassroots understanding, develop skills, and get help from people who understand system dynamics very well. Engaging an expert consultant in system dynamics can accelerate the launching of a program. System dynamics is for solving problems. An effort should start by selecting an important problem. Decide what difficulty to work on and model its causes, rather than starting to model the entire system.

Most people believe their problems are created from outside. In system dynamics modeling, we usually find that the problems are being created on the inside. A corporation that is having problems and is being overtaken by other organizations is operating in the same outside world as those other corporations. Therefore, it must be something they themselves are doing that is causing them to be different and less effective.

Beyond the “Quick Fix” Mindset

DC: In some of my meetings with management teams, something seems to be missing in terms of the way that problems or issues are approached. The thinking somehow doesn’t encompass what you just talked about.

JWF: People expect a quick fix in a year. A company’s problems take years to develop and the fixes take years to repair the damage. If you look carefully at the difficulties of many major corporations, you find the cause of troubles began 10, 15, or 20 years before symptoms are recognized by management or the public.

It’s a mindset of the whole society that’s standing in the way — the mindset on short-term results. In complex systems, we usually see that policies that are good in the short run produce troubles in the long run and vice versa. Therefore, to do something good in the long run probably imposes some pain in the short run. With hired managers who are in their positions only one to five years, their personal interests tend to be in the short run. They are not committed to the long-run good of their organizations. The financial markets also tend to impose that same detrimental short-run view.

People will spend tens of millions of dollars to develop a new product, but are reluctant to spend anything like that amount to make the corporation more successful.

The attitude of founder owner managers is substantially different. Those who found a company, who are significant owners, and who are managing without expectation of going to some other corporation can have a 20 year view or more. I think many of today’s corporations that are being run by short view point managers will disappear in favor of a new wave of founder-owner-manager companies.

DC: Compare the current state of the field of system dynamics its development and acceptance with your own hopes and expectations.

JWF: It’s probably developing faster than I would have expected. The growth rate in the field number of people interested in it is probably doubling every four years or so, which is a very rapid growth rate. We are arriving now at the point where it really can’t be ignored. The consulting companies are looking more and more for people with system dynamics backgrounds. And, of course, my own work is helping to in filtrate system dynamics into the kindergarten through 12th-grade educational levels. I think it’s going very, very well.

A lot of people in the field express disappointment. They say, “Why isn’t it developing faster?” Well, it can’t because one of the great dangers is running ahead of the number of people who can practice it effectively and correctly.

I think one can argue that great frontiers don’t stay as frontiers; they become a part of everyday life. The most recent frontier has been exploring science and technology. I think the next great frontier is to truly understand and be able to improve the behavior of our social, economic, and managerial systems. The understanding of those systems has not improved markedly since the time of the ancient Greeks. My wife and I were taking a tour through the Alhambra, the great Moorish castle above Granada, Spain. Our guide stopped at one point to show us the room where the Moors around the year 1300 met to discuss their problems of inflation and balance of trade problems that are still with us.

It’s clear why the understanding has not advanced until recently there has not been any effective means to understand dynamic complexity of social systems. Mathematics is a weak science when it comes to dealing with dynamics. It can deal with extremely simple systems, but in realistic social systems, there is no possibility of getting mathematical solutions. Therefore, simulation is the only known approach. System dynamics modeling is like doing experiments in the laboratory instead of trying new policies on a corporation. The simulation experiment is much clearer than trying policy changes in real life because you know the circumstances under which you did the experiment, you know the policy changes that were made, and you know nothing else has changed. If you carry on those same experiments in real life, results are very ambiguous, because you’re never quite sure what other things affected the results.

Are We Doomed?

DC: In my work, I keep running into deep frustration that employees lower within an organization experience, and the high levels of burn out, cynicism, and turnover that result. I believe that this is linked to not using system dynamics more effectively in running organizations.

JWF: Well, you find a lot of reasons for frustration. Demands are put on people that they cannot possibly achieve, because they aren’t given the resources and authority to produce what is demanded. Further more, people haven’t been educated in what they need to know to succeed. Those lower-level people are squeezed by demands for impossible performance. That’s very frustrating.

DC: My sense is that people tend to blame upper management for the problem.

JWF: I suppose it’s fair enough from the viewpoint of the middle level to blame upper management. But upper managers are in the same situation; they also do not know what to do and are themselves under pressures from the outside world. Everybody is operating under the pressure of growth. Why should they be? Why not just run a successful business? It is not possible for everybody to grow beyond the capability of the system. We have great pleading to allow people to immigrate into this country because we think we need more labor. Why should we want to do more than we are able to do? The attitudes that society has drifted into create pressures not only at the middle levels, but also at the top of corporations. Many top managers are coping with problems created by predecessors who focused on the short run.

DC: Are we doomed?

JWF: A lot of large corporations are doomed, yes, and properly they should be. It is good for society to have decaying organizations eliminated. Great depressions like in the 1930s have traditionally helped solve such decay and inefficiency. Severe economic downturns wipe out a lot of dead wood incorporations and open the door for new, vital growth.

DC: What do you see in the future as potential breakthrough areas in the field of system dynamics?

JWF: We need a different approach from the one followed in the early days of system dynamics. The result of a system dynamics study will almost always show that the serious problem at hand arises from policies people know they are following but believe are the solution to their problems. You often have to say to people, “Your problems are because of what you’re doing that you’re proud of, and you must reverse your course.” It takes three or four years for them to accept that point.

We’ve often worked many years to introduce system dynamics into corporations from the top down. It takes three or four years with even a receptive top management before they fully understand. Then the people you’re dealing with retire or die, and you have to start over with another group. This is one of the main reasons why I shifted over to system dynamics in kindergarten through 12th grade, to bring up a society that has a better understanding of the nature of the systems within which we live.

It is much easier to teach system dynamics to fifth graders than it is to CEOs or parents. As children ask questions that people can’t answer, they learn it’s politically incorrect to ask questions that embarrass people. So they finally stop addressing the big issues. However, at age 10, children have much less to unlearn and they have more open minds. They are more inquisitive; they have not yet had stamped out of them the desire to understand what is difficult.

The Linking of People and Modeling Skills

DC: I have found a lot of fear in people trusting that there might be a different way to do things.

JWF: That’s right. There are two big hurdles in system dynamics: having enough people with enough competence, and finding out what to do about people being afraid to take the steps necessary to improve their situations. There are great challenges in implementing policies that are opposite to what people have been doing and what they believe is successful, even though those policies are getting them into worse and worse difficulty.

DC: Does it mean that system dynamics professionals also need to be fairly skillful in dealing with people? They can’t just be good modelers?

JWF: To be successful, yes. Sometimes we see a team where several people have different roles, with one doing dynamic modeling work and other spaying attention to how to get people to understand it, why are they balking, and why they find it so difficult.

DC: What career advice would you give young system dynamics practitioners?

JWF: I suppose the main thing would be to keep building skills. Very few have read all of the available good system dynamics literature, and probably very few are trying to establish an apprenticeship with an expert. Just as in medicine, one needs to go through an internship. One does not just go to medical school and then do major operations or deal with the most serious illnesses most learning comes from experience. You don’t learn system dynamics by just going to conferences; you must have working experience. System dynamics is not a spectator sport. Like learning to ride a bicycle, listening to lectures is not sufficient.

I would say that a young system dynamicist who goes by himself into a company and is doing simulations will have great difficulty in building acceptance. The best choice would be to go into a place where there is already some level of acceptance, but also to be careful not to be subverted by bad system dynamics that may already be going on there. There’s a lot of so called system dynamics work that is very bad practice. People who are not yet competent are trying to do things well beyond their ability because system dynamics seems deceptively simple. The major books in the field can be read by almost anyone. Urban Dynamics was, I think, on the list of books for discussion by the League of Women Voters and PTAs. People can read those books and understand them, and the process looks very straight forward. Then, when the person closes the book and says, “I’ll do some of that for myself,” there isn’t the slightest idea of what to do next. Also, the accessibility of system dynamics software allows people to build things that look like system dynamics models but may not be useful. There is a great need for processes for developing high levels of skill.

DC: If you were going to design a corporation, how would you introduce system dynamics?

JWF: It’s like introducing system dynamics into K–12 education. InK–12, very few places have a way to learn system dynamics. System dynamics needs to become a part of everything else that’s going on. It has to be widespread to be most effective. In a corporation, suppose we have a top management that has some serious problems, and the long-term dynamic solution requires reversing cherished policies. Assume top management accepts the reversed policies, they believe in the new policies, they are willing to act, and they issue instructions to do so. Below the top will be several levels of managers who see it as their duty to protect the organization from the idiosyncrasies of the top. The understanding of policy design must extend down through many levels.

DC: So even if you had a group of executives who decide to change policies, they may still be in trouble.

JWF: As an example, take one of the early studies in system dynamics done by a couple of graduate students. It dealt with a two terminal trucking company between Boston and Philadelphia. Their big problem was that trucks tended to be at the wrong end of the route. When they needed to ship things from Boston to Philadelphia, they had too many trucks in Philadelphia and vice versa.

The modeling showed how the terminal with extra trucks could provide prompt service, and business there would increase until trucks were concentrated at the opposite end, resulting in poor service and decline of business at the first terminal. Then service would improve and business would pick up at the second terminal. Business would swing back and forth as the stock of trucks shifted.

“The high-school teachers who know what’s going on here are terrified. They see the day coming when the elementary schools and the middle schools will be delivering to them little monsters who can think!”

The solution then became relatively obvious: They needed to keep their trucks balanced, even if they sometimes had to send empty trucks from one end to the other. Management understood and issued orders but nothing happened, because the people in the dispatching office and on the shipping dock knew the company didn’t make money driving empty trucks around. Nothing happened until the model was explained on the shipping room platform and in the dispatchers’ offices. I was told that one could hear truck loaders on the dock discussing the model. At that point, management could get the policy implemented, because now it made sense and everyone understood why. Previously, the lower level employees, who were making day-by-day decisions, saw the policies as totally irrational and believed they should resist in the best interests of doing a good job.

“Delivering Little Monsters Who Can Think!”

DC: Is your K–12 initiative developing as you had anticipated? What have you been learning from it?

JWF: Yes, I think it’s developing as rapidly as is reasonable. Moving to system dynamics is a difficult transition. A particular school may start with one enthusiast but, even in a receptive environment, it may take 10 years to get to a self-sustaining, school wide activity.

There are now conferences for teachers interested in system dynamics in K–12 education. My wife and I went to one at the end of June 2000. There were nearly 200 teachers present. Never before in any field have I gone to professional meetings where the excitement is so high and the enthusiasm about the future so great. Teachers come up to me and say, “I had no idea these students could do so much.” One teacher reported that in the junior high, the students in detention hall for misbehavior dropped from an average of 50 to an average of 5. It’s the first time they’ve seen students who want to come in before school starts and stay after it ends. My favorite sound bite was from the teacher who said, “The high school teachers who know what’s going on here are terrified. They see the day coming when the elementary schools and the middle schools will be delivering to them little monsters who can think!”.

DC: Jay, what are they doing in high schools around system dynamics?

JWF: Most of what’s going on so far is very elementary. Furthermore, there is not yet any continuous program that builds on itself from kindergarten through 12th grade, to say nothing about going on through undergraduate college and graduate schools. There’s no organized developmental path yet. Eighth, ninth, or tenth graders should be able to move well head of what is now being taught in the graduate schools. There’s the challenge of developing new material for high school, and for four years of undergraduate and three years of graduate school. That would be some 12 years of material not yet on the books. The system dynamics challenge for the future lies in developing such additional depth and breadth.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute is the first school to organize a four year undergraduate program leading to a bachelor’s degree in system dynamics. It will take a long time to get system dynamics introduced widely into teachers’ colleges. The teachers that are coming into system dynamics now are doing so through knowing others who have become enthusiastic and by reading the limited amount of available material. They become intrigued, they introduce a little into a class, and then it begins to evolve. You hear stories like a teacher begins to introduce system dynamics in biology, and other teachers find that their students are taking notes in system dynamics stock and flow diagrams. Then the other teachers go to find out what is happening.

System dynamics runs across all disciplines. The application to physics is fairly obvious because of the dynamics involved, but it’s probably not one of the most active areas. In social studies, students can use system dynamics to explore the economic and social forces causing various things to unfold in history. There are English teachers doing computer simulation modeling of the psychological dynamics in various pieces of literature. System dynamics provides a foundation that underlies most of the subjects. A student discovers a new mobility between subjects. If one understands a particular dynamic structure in one setting, the behavior is the same in all settings.

DC: So it seems as though for children who experience feedback dynamics over a number of years, there’s a deep difference in the way they perceive things.

JWF: Entirely different. One father of a junior high boy told me his son had gone on a tour of Europe. He came back with descriptions of the way things are interrelated far beyond what you see in the newspapers, because he looked at things differently. Another boy, when asked what all this has meant to him, said, “I’m much better able to deal with my mother.” It gets down to things that matter. After all, that’s a very complicated interacting feedback system.

The system dynamics mentor to the schools in Glynn County, Georgia, has written that some of her most interesting experiences come when she is talking with teachers and students about modeling discipline problems. As she develops a diagram of the processes and interactions going on, the students suddenly see why what they’re doing gets the teachers so frustrated. The teachers also see that the discipline system they’ve set up is preordained to create trouble.

On the Cliff’s Edge

DC: When you wrote Urban Dynamics, you bumped up against people’s cherished beliefs by putting out something very different. What allows you to continue to work when you stir up a lot of controversy or receive a lot of criticism?

JWF: Pioneers always find that. The very definition of pioneering is that you’re doing something that people don’t already know and don’t already believe. I have been a pioneer in several different fields. In the early days of digital computers, we were building a computer using the binary system of calculation. Many people said it would be useless unless we did decimal calculations. Of course, all modern digital computers are binary.

Before that, I’d been in the pioneering of feedback control systems for the military in World War II. I graduated in electrical engineering, electronics, and we found ourselves working on systems to control Army gun mounts. The Army wouldn’t trust anything made out of electronics except their radios. So my first professional job was to design high performance controls using hydraulic oil pressure, with an emphasis on reliability. We were doing one of these for the Navy, and the question naturally arose, what will happen with the equipment in an ocean environment? So I thought I’d better know. I went down to the beach and brought back a gallon of genuine Atlantic Ocean water, mixed it half and half with the oil, and ran the equipment in it all winter. Everything still worked.

DC: So part of the success of moving the field of system dynamics forward has to do with your own comfort in being a pioneer?

JWF: Yes.

DC: And knowing what that entails as you’re moving things forward.

JWF: Knowing the opposition, knowing a little bit about how you bridge the gap. But it takes time. And, of course, being very much in touch with the real world. I grew up on a cattle ranch in Nebraska. And there, if things didn’t work, you found out fast. In my senior year in high school, I built a wind driven electric plant that provided the first electricity we had on our ranch. And it worked. So I think you develop a feeling for where the edge of the cliff is. If you step out too far, you’re a crackpot and you fall off. If you stay back too far, you’re just part of the crowd.

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A Stock and Flow Depiction

Fortunately, analogies and simple, everyday examples can help us understand what’s really going on. For instance, a common way to illustrate some of the core behaviors of systems is through the example of a bathtub. A bathtub—or a stock—is something that holds different levels of water. That level is affected by the rates at which water both enters and drains from the tub— these are know as flows. A stock can be anything that accumulates, such as money in a bank account or greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, while a flow affects the way that the stock changes over time, such as through deposits or withdrawals—of money or pollutants. Recognizing how changes in flows affect associated stocks can go a long way toward improving our decision-making processes.

An Attention-Grabbing Illustration

Weight-loss Scenario

In a recent Op-Ed piece in The New YorkTimes, columnist Gail Collins chooses an attention-grabbing image to dramatize the Bush administration’s policies on climate change—and to shed light on the stocks and flows involved. According to Collins, in a press conference in April, the president announced that the U. S. is on track for reducing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent by 2012. Sounds promising, until you consider what that statistic actually means.

To put this goal in more tangible terms, Collins translates it into something that many of us can relate to— weigh gain. She quips, “Suppose that two years after taking office, George W. Bush discovered that because of the stress of his job, he had gained 40 pounds and was tipping the scales at 220.” If the president set a goal of reducing the rate at which he was gaining weight by 18 percent, to be achieved within the next decade, by 2012, he would weigh 400 pounds.

In the press conference, Bush made an additional commitment of stopping the growth of U. S. greenhouse gas emissions entirely by 2025. To continue with the tongue-in-cheek scenario, Collins asks the reader, “Imagine it’s 2025, and you’ve got a 486-pound ex-president being wheeled in to accept the congratulations of the world on his excellent physical fitness program.” Not such impressive results, unless the president is looking to launch a career as a sumo wrestler after leaving the White House.

Reality Check

Collins’s point is that, under this policy, greenhouse gases will continue to flood into the atmosphere, just a little more slowly than they might have otherwise. But without testing the implications of various strategies, we often make unrealistic assumptions about the results they may produce. We end up relying on the goodwill of politicians to spell out the effects that their policies are designed to produce—or on the media to connect the dots for us. Looking at how proposed laws, regulations, and other interventions might play out over time can help us better judge their effectiveness— and might lead us to advocate for alternative approaches instead.

Janice Molloy is content director at Pegasus Communications and managing editor of The Systems Thinker. Thanks to Bill Harris of Facilitated Systems (www.facilitatedsystems.com) for serving as a thought partner and creating the diagrams.

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