🌱 Example of a system with feedback loops

A business analyst might be asked to look into a sluggish purchase requisition process with the following symptoms:

• Staff experience long delays when trying to get approval for purchases.
• There may be multiple approval levels, unclear ownership, or slow response times.

On the surface, this may like a simple efficiency problem and might traditionally be addressed with solutions such as “streamline the approvals” or “automate the form.” But systems thinking digs deeper, asking:

"Why is the process behaving this way? What loops and incentives are in place? What is being reinforced or stabilised?"

This approach might reveal:

1 A Balancing Loop Protecting Against Overspending

This is a stabilising loop (also called a balancing loop). Its job is to prevent excessive or unnecessary spending:

• When spending increases, managers tighten scrutiny.
• More scrutiny causes slower approvals.
• Slower approvals discourage casual or impulsive requests.
• Fewer requests help reduce spending.
• Reduced spending reduces scrutiny, and the loop stabilises again.

This loop may not be consciously implemented but it has a desired purpose - it slows spending to protect the budget. So the sluggishness is not random - it’s stabilising the amount of spending.

2 **A Reinforcing Loop

This is a positive feedback loop, but in a destructive direction:

1. Delays frustrate users who need to buy things.
2. So they develop workarounds: buying without approval, using personal cards, inflating requests to get through faster, etc.
3. These workarounds erode trust - Finance or management see staff circumventing rules.
4. In response, they add more controls - more documentation, extra sign-offs, system restrictions.
5. These new controls make the process even slower.
6. The cycle reinforces itself.

The “sluggishness” of the process isn’t just bad design. It’s the result of:

• A balancing loop that’s trying to protect resources (valid purpose)
• A reinforcing loop that’s making things worse over time (destructive spiral)

If you only fix the surface (e.g. by speeding up the form), you may undermine the balancing loop (risking overspending) and / or ignore the root cause of the reinforcing loop (mistrust, misaligned incentives).

Instead, redesign the process to preserve the stabilising function (e.g. through real-time budget visibility) andreak the reinforcing loop (e.g. through better communication, delegation, or trust-building)