Living Guide to Social Innovation Labs
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  • Introduction
  • Seeing
    • Understanding Complex Problems
      • Challenge Statements
      • Systems Thinking
      • Systems Mapping
      • Leverage Points
      • Wicked Questions
    • Design Research
      • Design Thinking
      • Ethnography
      • Interviews
      • Journey Mapping
      • Service Blueprint
      • Sensemaking
      • Dashboards
    • Systemic Design
    • Identifying and Engaging Key People
      • Stakeholders
      • Stakeholder Mapping
  • Doing
    • Co-Creation
      • Convening
        • Is Convening the Right Tool?
        • Types of Convening
      • Facilitation
      • Collective Impact
      • Ideation
    • Prototyping
      • Prototyping in a Lab Context
      • Testing
      • Types and Modalities
      • Prototyping Approaches
    • Scaling
      • Growth Thresholds
      • Scaling Up, Out, Deep
      • Tactics for Scaling
      • Scaling Strategy
    • Monitoring, Measuring and Communicating Impact
      • Types of Evaluation
      • Logic Models
      • Measures and Metrics
      • Standards of Evidence
      • Evaluating Complexity
      • Communicating Impact
  • Being
    • Innovation Labs and Process
      • Agile Project Management
      • Value Proposition
      • Theory for Change
      • Business Models
    • Resourcing and Team
      • Lab Partners
      • Team Expertise and Skills
      • Wellbeing of Remote Teams
      • Funding
    • Inclusion and Equity Practice
      • Power Structures
      • Innovation for Real Transformation
      • Truth and Reconciliation
      • Recommendations for Inclusive Practice
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  • Defining Leverage Points
  • 12 Types of Leverage Points
  • Examples and Resources

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  1. Seeing
  2. Understanding Complex Problems

Leverage Points

The 'right' places in a system where small, well-focused actions can produce significant, lasting improvements.

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Last updated 5 years ago

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Defining Leverage Points

To find out where we want to intervene in the system, we need to find the leverage points. As Peter Senge describes in the Fifth Discipline, leverage points are 'levers', or the right places in a system where small, well-focused actions can produce significant, enduring improvements. These leverage points then become the focus of design and prototypes of a suite of coordinated, reinforcing interventions.

Leverage points, like many ideas about complex systems, are simple concepts but very difficult to master. To find where they are in a system (and subsequently where to intervene) may seem intuitive to people who know a system well, but actually the interventions are often surprising or counterintuitive. In MaRS' work to improve job opportunities for disconnected youth, we knew the place to intervene was changing and optimizing where youth, employers, and employment services intersect. Three years on, we are still tweaking and testing interventions.

12 Types of Leverage Points

12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards). 11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows (such as reserves, inventory, debt limits). 10. The structure of material stocks and flows - physical systems and their nodes of intersection (such as transport networks, population age structures). 9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change. 8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against. 7. Reinforcing feedback loops - the gain around driving positive feedback loops. 6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information). 5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints). 4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure. 3. The goals of the system. 2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises. 1. The power to transcend paradigms.

After researching and identifying patterns in the system, you can use this list to help you look for and think about potential interventions.

Examples and Resources

Donella Meadows' is one of the more accessible and comprehensive guides to leverage points and other systems thinking concepts. In her book, she identified 12 types of leverage points. Here in increasing order of effectiveness:

You can read more about the 12 types of leverage points .

In the Systems Thinking section we had mentioned that has developed an approach for a group to identify leverage points starting with the Iceberg Model followed by Z.I.P. Analysis. You can find them here, along with general instructions (thanks to Ben Weinlick & Jaime Calayo).

suggests a different approach to identifying leverage points. In his book , he describes how systems can be seen as being made up of patterns of behaviour. These patterns can be generalized into 12 recurring patterns, or system dynamics archetypes. Each of these system dynamics archetypes have suggested responses. Identifying the system dynamics archetypes enables identification of the appropriate leverage points and interventions.

Thinking in Systems: A Primer
here
Think Jar collective
Systems Thinking
Peter Senge
The Fifth Discipline
Using Systems Thinking to Solve Complex Problems by Alex Ryan
Iceberg systems mapping tool to identify leverage points for changeThink Jar Collective
Logo
Concept of a high leverage point. Source: https://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/LeveragePoint.htm
How hard do you push? Surprising and counterintuitive system behaviours.
12 Types of Leverage Points. Source: https://ecowe.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
An overview of System Dynamics Archetypes. Available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SD_Archetypes.png