Developing a strategy for dealing with a situation begins with a description of the situation and the preferred state for today, not in some distant future, and the perceived implications of not doing anything. There is a also a video for this insight.
As long as A and B are equally successful everything will remain stable. Though if either A or B receive more resources than the other, or A or B is more successful than the other, the imbalance will result in greater success of A or B accordingly and promote even more success of the one that demonstrates greater success.
A small change in one variable can have a marked impact on multiple variables. Run the model [quits change] = 0 and consider the output. What happens if you change [quits change] = 5. Run the model to find out. Was the change what you expected?
The Accidental Adversaries Systems Archetype represents a structure where two entities which would be in a synergistic growth relationship end up limiting each others results because of their own activities.
New Learning tend to reduce Outdated Thinking, Communicating & Learning though our Outdated Thinking, Communicating & Learning inhibits new learning. The question is then how do we break this cycle. Adopted from "An Introduction to Systems Thinking with STELLA" by Barry Richmond.
A Growth and Underinvestment with a Drifting Standard structure is simply an elaborated Growth and Underinvestment structure where the growth inhibitor induces a decline of the standard over time. The real nasty thing about this structure is that the growth inhibitor influence sets up a Reinforcing Loop which even further promotes a drifting of the standard over time.
When endeavoring to develop an understanding of the nature of something it is generally useful to create a model of some type to aid in surfacing that understanding.
An element of Perspectives: The Foundation of Understanding and Insights. Register at http://www.systemswiki.org/
Insight Maker is completely web based making it easy to develop and share models, allows concurrent multi-user editing, and just happens to be FREE, which a pretty good feature/price ratio.
A Limits to Growth Systems Archetype consists of a Reinforcing Loop, the growth of which, after some success, is offset by the action of a Balancing Loop.
Analysis has served us well in developing the understanding of things, at least to a point. Though analysis will not allow us to answer the why questions about things. For that we need synthesis. One might consider analysis and synthesis two sides of a coin that one shouldn't attempt to separate.