“Many of the problems we now face arise as unanticipated side effects of our past actions. All too often, the policies we implement to solve important problems fail, make the problem worse, or create new problems.”
— John Sterman, MIT Sloan School of Management
Extracted from The Fifth Discipline: Compensating feedback usually involves a “delay”, a time lag between the short-term benefit (“At last I can relax, because I have pushed the domino”) and the long-term disbenefit (the chain of dominoes behind him will eventually circle his chair and strike him from the right.)
When we take an action to reverse the effects of a situation (or fix a problem), at first the corrections create a response (either positively or negatively) to the situation. Low-leverage interventions would be much less attractive if it were not for the fact that many actually work in the short term.
When productivity is down, we introduce performance management systems and rewards to award good performance. These elements are intended to ensure the performance management process is positive and successful and spur employees to improve. In performance management, employers provide continuous appraisal through feedback and re-alignment of goals based on performance.
The organization responds to the intervention and productivity begins to improve. And that is why we like interventions. And it does not matter that they are of low leverage. They work. That is, at first.
The key word here is at first. And the second is it gets worse, eventually. Often progressively worse, each time. Suppose performance management systems are instituted in a shroud of mistrust. In that case, more persons corroborate with each other, especially those who do not rise to the top, to “sabotage” the system questioning its legitimacy or its ability to track performance realistically or create blame on management for the failure of the system. All of which are intended to make sure they do not turn out looking bad. As a result, overall performance declines.
And so, it does not become obvious to us that as the problem returns it does so, after some time. As such, we often do not connect its return to the result of low-leverage actions we had taken and that these actions had been at work. This explains why systemic problems are so hard to recognize.
Instead, our reaction will most likely be, “What had we tried in the past when the last time the problem was here? Had it worked then?” If the answer is yes, “then let’s do more of the same again.”
Try working the law out on “The Urgent File Case Study”. Notice if the law is playing out. What do you notice is happening in terms of the behavior of the pattern of the structure over time? Discuss your findings with your learning partner.
Share the story of a country’s efforts to deal with declining levels of agricultural output. The more the country responded to declining rainfall levels by advising its farmers to plant drier crops and providing both financial and subject matter expertise to subsistence farmers, while at first things improved, the problem returned over time. Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to feed themselves and their families. In subsistence agriculture, farm output is targeted to survival and is mostly for local requirements with little or no surplus trade.
How do we know that the problem has returned? Well, every time the politicians go to the polls, they are forced to deal with the issue and are voted when they make the promise that they would allocate more levels of resources to the farmers the next time.
So, did the problem get worse?
Why did that happen?
Systems Thinking Research & Leadership Development Institute (STRLDi) 
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