Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Upstream presents a good overview of systems thinking.
Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets
The barriers
- Problem blindness – there is no problem
- A lack of Ownership – no one feels it is their problem to fix
- Tunnelling – I don’t want to deal with this problem right now
Questions
- How will you unite the right people? bring together the right people & data to understand
- How will you change the system? how to change the system without negative impacts
- Where can you find a point of leverage? understand the problem. Saving money is not the goal.
- How will you get early warning of the problem? using data but be careful of false positives
- How will you know you’re succeeding? how could the metrics be games without actual improvement
- How will you avoid doing harm? close the feedback loop, be careful of over confidence
- Who will pay for what does not happen? align incentives so people/budget holder care