Quotes About Structure

So, what is a system? A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.

An important function of almost every system is to ensure its own perpetuation.

You can't navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off short-term events and look for long term behavior and structure; unless you are aware of false boundaries and bounded rationality; unless you take into account limiting factors, nonlinearities and delays.

Once you start listing the elements of a system, there is almost no end to the process. You can divide elements into sub-elements and then sub-sub-elements. Pretty soon you lose sight of the system. As the saying goes, you can't see the forest for the trees.

Many of the interconnections in systems operate through the flow of information. Information holds systems together and plays a great role in determining how they operate.

Storing information means increasing the complexity of the mechanism.

Hierarchical systems evolve from the bottom up. The purpose of the upper layers of the hierarchy is to serve the purposes of the lower layers.

System: A set of elements or parts that is coherently organized and interconnected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviors, often classified as its "function" or "purpose.

A system consists of elements, interconnections, and a purpose. Changing elements usually has the least effect on the system.

If we're to understand anything, we have to simplify, which means we have to make boundaries.

The structure of a commons system makes selfish behavior much more convenient and profitable than behavior that is responsible to the whole community and to the future.

Resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy are three of the reasons dynamic systems can work so well.

The answer clearly lies within the Slinky itself. The hands that manipulate it suppress or release some behavior that is latent within the structure of the spring. That is a central insight of systems theory. Once we see the relationship between structure and behavior, we can begin to understand how systems work, what makes them produce poor results, and how to shift them into better behavior patterns.

Serious problems have been solved by focusing on external agents—preventing smallpox, increasing food production, moving large weights and many people rapidly over long distances. Because they are embedded in larger systems, however, some of our "solutions" have created further problems. And some problems, those most rooted in the internal structure of complex systems, the real messes, have refused to go away.

The behavior of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made. PART ONE System Structure and Behavior

A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system's response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.

Mental flexibility—the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure—is a necessity when you live in a world of flexible systems.

Systems often have the property of self-organization—the ability to structure themselves, to create new structure, to learn, diversify, and complexify. Even complex forms of self-organization may arise from relatively simple organizing rules—or may not.

Hierarchies are brilliant systems inventions, not only because they give a system stability and resilience, but also because they reduce the amount of information that any part of the system has to keep track of.

System structure is the source of system behavior. System behavior reveals itself as a series of events over time.

The only way to fix a system that is laid out poorly is to rebuild it, if you can.

Physical structure is crucial in a system, but is rarely a leverage point, because changing it is rarely quick or simple. The leverage point is in proper design in the first place.

Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next.

Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.