Systems Dynamics for dummies, as a
colleague said to me from MIT, is the Fifth Discipline, most
of us read that book, but we didn’t take away from it that it
was systems dynamics dressed up in different clothes.

System dynamics
is an approach to understanding the behaviour of

complex systems over time. It deals with internal feedback
loops and time delays that affect the behaviour of the entire
system.^[1]
What makes using system dynamics different from other
approaches to studying complex systems is the use of

feedback loops and

stocks and flows. These elements help describe how even
seemingly simple systems display baffling

nonlinearity. –

Wiki

In FLOW, we need to embrace System
Dynamics in as rudimentary form as possible, and as advanced
as possible, where we can.

A friend and client told me this:

Once you understand that stocks and
flows are like bathtubs out there, and stuff flows in –> at a
flow rate…  And stuff flows out–>at a flow rate, then what we
need to model is what we think those bathtubs are, and what we
think the rates in and out are, and what they are connected to
over time.

Streaming really helps here, as we
can model almost anything (NOT that we would want too! and we
don’t!), but what we decide is important to model can help us
understand how to design, scaffold and support with so much
more sense-making, IMHO.

Over time, I’ve learned some things
about Systems Dynamics, and it has been useful. I’m not a
full-fledged modeler yet, but like everything else in FLOW, I
am close with one and we meet regularly to discuss the world
through these eyes. There are courses at MIT and of course,
software and a googlefull of ideas (like that new word<G>)
available.

The key for me is to add it to our
FLOW toolkit, because as we model Happiness AND Success
Overtime, it’s really important; I mean really important to
model reality, even though the MODEL is NOT the territory, nor
is any map.  Just understanding the ramifications of decisions
we make can be incredibly helpful to design, scaffolding, and
support.

Helpful Hint:
Systems
thinking offers you a powerful new perspective, a specialized
language, and a set of tools that you can use to address the
most stubborn problems in your everyday life and work. Systems
thinking is a way of understanding reality that emphasizes the
relationships among a system’s parts, rather than the parts
themselves. Based on a field of study known as
system dynamics, systems thinking has a practical value
that rests on a solid theoretical foundation.

Action Step:

Download an overview of Applied Systems Dynamics for
Integrated Learning Communities, and sit with it awhile.