Leverage Points: A Paradigm Shift in Governance

Abstract

What makes management effective? How might a social system be successfully guided or controlled? These questions are as old as the concept of management itself. One of the more influential ideas was and still is “management by objectives”. However, setting a goal does not bring it into reality by itself. History is full of objectives by governments, by management that never became manifest. Jay Forrester pioneered the idea that social systems are inherently insensitive to most policy changes, yet social systems have a few sensitive influence points through which the behavior of the system can be changed. That was a fundamentally new way of looking at governance and management—a paradigm shift. Accessing these so-called leverage points opens up a larger scope for action where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.