By Janice Molloy
In the best-selling book Good to Great, author Jim Collins introduced a notion that should strike a chord with anyone familiar with systems thinking: the “flywheel.” A flywheel is a heavy metal disk mounted on an axle that helps a machine maintain a regular speed. It takes a lot of effort to get a flywheel going, but once it has built up a certain amount of momentum, it is hard to stop.
In systems language, the flywheel is a reinforcing process, a dynamic that builds on itself over time, a virtuous cycle (except, of course, when it is running in the opposite direction than we want it to, but that’s a different story!). Collins uses this metaphor to illustrate the process through which organizations launch and sustain lasting success: “No matter how short or long it took, every good-to-great transformation followed the same basic pattern—accumulating momentum, turn by turn of the flywheel—until buildup transformed into breakthrough.”
It’s no secret that the past several years have proven challenging across the board. From economic meltdown to environmental disasters, we’ve all been affected by the complex, big-systems crises that have rocked our world. Things haven’t been much easier on an organizational level. Most of us are facing the challenge of doing more with less, of pushing harder for each small victory, of tackling higher levels of intricacy and urgency in everything we do.
But what if we could set that flywheel in motion in our organizations and lives? What if we could make changes at the structural level—real, fundamental shifts—to turn vicious cycles into virtuous ones? What if we could see underlying trends and intervene before they reached a tipping point? How might things be different if we could understand the role we play in creating the situations we are a part of—and learn to think and act differently to achieve the results we want?
In designing this year’s Systems Thinking in Action® Conference, “Fueling New Cycles of Success,” we’ve assembled a stellar line-up of speakers and other contributors to introduce and explore proven tools, inspiring ideas, and hard-fought lessons for accelerating momentum in a positive direction. Keynote presenters include Dayna Baumeister, Andy Hargreaves, Daniel H. Kim, Frances Moore Lappé, and Peter Senge. To enhance the experience, Kelvy Bird will capture the plenary content in vivid graphic recordings, and Tim Merry and Marc Durkee will enliven the proceedings with poetry and music. We’ll be adding videos of many of the conference contributors throughout the summer; see the end of this post for a clip of the amazing Frances Moore Lappé.
As Jim Collins remarked, “When people begin to feel the magic of momentum—when they begin to see tangible results, when they can feel the flywheel beginning to build speed—that’s when the bulk of people line up to throw their shoulders against the wheel and push.” At this November’s conference, we will share ways to spark that magic through the power of systems thinking.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
 The one conference you can't afford to miss!
Join Pegasus this November in Boston for Systems Thinking in Action: Fueling New Cycles of Success. Meet fellow systems thinkers from around the globe. Keynotes presenters include Peter Senge, Daniel H. Kim, Frances Moore Lappé, and more.
Visit www.SystemsThinkingInAction.com for detailed program and registration information.
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By Janice Molloy
"I suspect that all it would take would be some well-placed user-friendly feedback to change the world." --Donella Meadows
Think about the last time you undertook a change initiative, whether in your work or personal life. How did you measure progress toward your goal? How did you know when to make adjustments?
The answer in most cases is through feedback. When a company launches a new product, they monitor sales data and customer comments; this information, in turn, influences their marketing efforts and guides them in tweaking the product to better meet people's needs. Without data about the results of our efforts, it's impossible to evaluate performance, fine-tune improvement efforts, and gauge the success of different actions.
In one of my favorite columns by pioneering systems educator Donella Meadows, she recounted learning to drive more efficiently based on the feedback provided by the instrument panel of her gas-electric hybrid car (in "To Make Better Decisions, We Need Better Information," The Systems Thinker, V11N7, September 2000). By watching the indicator lights, she discovered that jackrabbit starts and stops ate away at her miles-per-gallon average; driving at the speed limit had the opposite effect. Meadows concluded, "Three weeks of information I never had before have changed 40 years of ingrained driving habits. I didn't have to be coerced or rewarded; I didn't have to change my values. I just had to see how my actions did and did not conform to my values."
Feedback also plays a vital role in change efforts that take place on a larger scale. In his latest book, Ecological Intelligence (Broadway Books, 2009), Daniel Goleman dedicates a chapter to "The Virtuous Cycle." He recounts how trans fats came to permeate the Western diet throughout the 20th century--and became an unknown contributor to heart disease. But once researchers discovered the dangers of hydrogenated oils, within the span of a decade, trans fats virtually vanished.
What caused this food revolution? According to Goleman, "The federal government never banned hydrogenated oils. No one told food companies they had to stop using trans fat. The crucial shift was in the information available to consumers." Once purchasers understood the dangers of trans fat and were able to use nutritional information on food labels to avoid it, they shifted their buying habits. Food manufacturers quickly responded by removing trans fat from their products and broadly advertising that fact. Consumers spoke, and the food industry listened.
These lessons about feedback continue to resonate today, especially as we head into the negotiations at the Copenhagen climate summit. Our friends at Climate Interactive have created the "Climate Scoreboard," a widget to help monitor the long-term consequences of policy proposals. It shows, in a simple visual form, the expected temperatures in 2100 if curre
nt proposals in the global climate negotiations were fully implemented and indicates how close those proposals bring us to achieving climate goals. When negotiating positions change, a team in Copenhagen will immediately update the analysis.
As in the case of driving more efficiently, this kind of dashboard allows us to see the results of our actions--and then modify them to achieve our goals. And as in the case of eliminating trans fats, the Climate Scoreboard gives us a tool for pressuring others--our elected officials, world leaders, the media, and so on--to ensure that any agreements they make are adequate to the challenges we face. As Daniel Goleman says, "All it takes is a bit of radical transparency."
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
As we struggle to meet today's challenges, we're t
empted to do more with less in our organizations and lives. And yet the key to accomplishing our goals may be to do less with more--more focus, attention, and sense of purpose. In this selection from her book It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys: The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized (Viking Compass, 2003), Pegasus board member Marilyn Paul highlights the value of focus as a means to make the most of our precious time and energy.
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Our attention is like a powerful light. We can illuminate what we focus on. Yet with so much to do, so many options, so many goals, it is easy to scatter your energies to the winds and get overwhelmed. You can learn to focus on what you truly want, which begins with knowing what is important to you. This task is lifework. Managing your attention, learning to focus, is a big part of accomplishing what you truly want.
Part of learning to be present is defining your priorities and then staying with them. There are goods reasons not to define your priorities. Perhaps you pile on tasks in order to avoid getting to know yourself and your deepest aspirations. Sherry said, "I am completely busy, I am never home. My schedule is full to bursting. But I am too busy to feel much or to think about the things that are bothering me. Sometimes, I think that's a good thing, but other times I am vaguely aware of a deep fear that is driving me."
Prioritizing strengthens your sense of who you are and what you value. It also sets a virtuous cycle in motion. As you get to know yourself, you find it easier to set priorities. You are not spread so thin, and you see more clearly what has meaning for you.
Sometimes people don't focus when they are working because they feel they don't have the time to concentrate. It's hard to focus because there is so much to do. However, lack of focus leads to poor quality work, which then needs to be redone, which increases the feeling of pressure by adding more to your to-do list. This is a vicious cycle that can be interrupted by learning to focus on what you are doing well.
We have so many choices. When we focus we give ourselves the gift of depth and presence. We can focus on what is important to us, and we can bring our attention to the present moment. Both of these types of focusing will deepen the quality of our lives.
Life is a practice of coming back to the richness of the present moment, and coming back again.