After discussion with Nigel Green, one of the authors of VPEC-T, I have done a mapping between the five elements of VPEC-T and the twelve generic leverage points identified by Donella Meadows. There seems to be a surprisingly good fit.
Donella Meadows makes two important points.
- “Although people deeply involved in a system often know intuitively where to find leverage points, more often than not they push the change in the wrong direction.”
- “Complex systems are, well, complex. It’s dangerous to generalize about them. What you read here is still a work in progress; it’s not a recipe for finding leverage points. Rather, it’s an invitation to think more broadly about system change.”
| Places to intervene in a system (Donella Meadows) | VPEC-T |
|---|---|
| 12 - Numbers – constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, standards | Content |
| 11 - Buffers – the sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows | Content |
| 10 - Stock-and-Flow Structures – Physical systems and their nodes of intersection | Content |
| 9 - Delays – the lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes | Events |
| 8 - Balancing feedback loops – the strength of the feedbacks relative to the impacts they are trying to correct | Events |
| 7 - Reinforcing feedback loops – the strength of the gain of driving loops | Events |
| 6 - Information flows – the structure of who does and who does not have access to information | Policy |
| 5 - Rules – incentives, punishments, constraints | Policy |
| 4 - Self-organization – the power to add, change or evolve system structure | Policy |
| 3 - Goals – the purpose or function of the system | Values |
| 2 - Paradigms – the mind-set out of which the system – its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters - arises | Values |
| 1 - Transcending paradigms | Trust |
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