Thinking in Systems

Book Review: 4/5 Impact On Me (Book By Donella Meadows)

Read more about the book here.

I rate the impact of this book 4 out of 5 on me. The topic is important and the examples are valuable; I am still not sure I use the ideas fully in my day-to-day, and I may need to re-read the book and identify how to implement it.

How I came to the book

I first heard about Thinking in Systems when interviewing with n8n in 2025. I used to think of myself as a systems thinker or process thinker, but I had never heard of the book or the author before, and it is a prominent book on the topic. I wanted to see how I could apply it as a Product Manager, so I read through it and found it fascinating.

We overthink incentives

One of my main takeaways: we jump to trying to change incentives. There are better ways to solve systematic problems. The book sharpened when to think in terms of incentives versus system structure.

Most people try to change numbers, targets, and incentives. High-leverage points in the book include changing information flows, changing rules, changing goals, and changing mindsets.

Stock and flows

The bathtub analogy stuck with me. Every system has a stock. If you only look at the stock (the water level in the bathtub) and do not know the flows, you will not know how to control the stock. The book applied the same thinking to thermostats: you can segment what you know about a thermostat, and people instinctively adjust for heat loss.

Just-in-time and slack

The just-in-time example stood out. We faced a huge shock to the system during the 2020 pandemic. Just-in-time makes a system more responsive to user needs, but it leaves less slack. I feel the same about my days: when there is so little slack that I need 30 minutes or an hour for something else, my plans for the day stop completing.