Dancing with Systems

 The Donella Meadows Project  is a website dedicated to archiving and disseminating the transformational work of Dana Meadows.  Meadows was a scholar, activist, leader, and prolific writer who changed the international conversation on systems thinking especially in the area of environmental sustainability.  

Meadows coined the phrase Dancing with Systems to convey her emerging understanding of how to participate in systems change based on a well developed systems mindset.  She contrasted a true systems mindset for fostering change and improvement with a more industrial mindset that seeks to predict and control environments.  As we take on new ways of thinking, relating, and investigating with a systems mindset we might mistakenly apply systems vocabulary to the surface of traditional methods and approaches that seek to control and predict.  We might make that mistake repeatedly as we seek to change our worldview.  It’s worth taking a look (again and again) at Meadows’ recommendations for Dancing with Systems.


The Dance by Donella Meadows

1. Get the beat.

2. Listen to the wisdom of the system.

3. Expose your mental models to the open air.

4. Stay humble. Stay a learner.

5. Honor and protect information.

6. Locate responsibility in the system.

7. Make feedback policies for feedback systems.

8. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.

9. Go for the good of the whole.

10. Expand time horizons.

11. Expand thought horizons.

12. Expand the boundary of caring.

13. Celebrate complexity.

14. Hold fast to the goal of goodness.


I find it interesting that within this 14-step approach to the dance Meadows has simultaneously addressed systems mindsets, complexity mindsets, and humanistic mindsets. Her work is powerfully astute, grounded in science, and relevant and connected to human experiences.  


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