Systems In spite of what you majored in, or what the textbooks say, or what you think you''re an expert at, follow a system wherever it leads. It will be sure to lead across traditional disciplinary lines. -Donella H. Meadows Feedback Loops Listen and incorporate. Feedback loops are everywhere in systems, making them a useful mental model. Think of feedback as the information communicated in response to an action. Whether we realize it or not, we give and receive different forms of feedback every day. Sometimes feedback is more formal, as is the case with performance reviews.

Other times, it is less so. Our body language is a form of feedback for people interacting with us. The tone you use with your kids is feedback for them. A feedback loop is a process in which the output of a system also acts as an input to the system, helping to refine and improve the system over time. It''s like a conversation in which each reply helps to shape the next question and answer, making the discussion better and more focused. Once you start looking for feedback loops, you see them all over the place, giving you insight into why people and systems react the way they do. For example, much of human behavior is driven by incentives. We want to take actions that lead to us getting something good or avoiding something bad on a range of timescales.

The incentives we create for ourselves and other people are a form of feedback, leading to loops that reinforce or discourage certain behaviors. If you get visibly upset whenever someone at work offers you constructive criticism, you''ll incentivize your colleagues to only tell you when you''re doing something well-thereby missing out on chances to improve. The challenge in using this mental model is that the ubiquity of feedback loops can become overwhelming. How do you know which ones to pay attention to? Or which ones to adjust to improve your outcomes? We are constantly offering feedback to others about our feelings, preferences, and values. Others, in turn, communicate feedback on the same things, but we don''t necessarily receive it or interpret it correctly. A critical requirement is learning how to filter feedback. Not all of it is useful. The quicker you learn to identify feedback that helps you progress, the faster you will move toward what you want to achieve.

Learning to communicate feedback in a way that makes it easy for others to receive is a valuable skill to develop. Feedback is crucial to relationships of all kinds. The skill is in giving feedback in a kind and clear way, in hearing it without getting defensive, and in partnering with people who can receive it on a regular basis. If you feel you can''t communicate important thoughts and feelings, you won''t be happy in that relationship or situation long-term. Much of relationship therapy consists of a therapist helping a couple tell each other things they have been afraid to say-when that feedback should have been free-flowing for years. There is a larger implication here about working with the world. The world offers us feedback, but do we listen and incorporate, or do we just keep wanting it to work differently than it does? The technical definition of a feedback loop comes from systems theory. A feedback loop is a process in which the outputs (information) of a system affect that system''s behaviors.

Depending on the complexity of a system, there may be a single source of feedback or multiple, possibly interconnected sources. It helps to first consider feedback in a simple system as we do in the following, but keep in mind, we are part of many large systems that contain many interconnected feedback loops. Feedback loops are a critical model because they are a part of your life whether you are aware of them or not. Understanding how they work helps you be more flexible with the variety of feedback you receive and incorporate, and then you can offer better feedback to others. There are two basic types of feedback loops: balancing and reinforcing, which are also called negative and positive. Balancing feedback loops tend toward equilibrium. Your thermostat and heating system run on a balancing feedback loop. Information about the temperature of the house is communicated to the thermostat, which then adjusts the output of the furnace to maintain your desired temperature.

Reinforcing feedback loops amplify a particular process. They don''t counter change, like your thermostat does. Instead, they keep the change going, as with the popularity of trends in fashion (in which styles become ubiquitous within months, only to disappear soon after) or the loops usually involved in poverty (in which different but related circumstances can compound the problem). Breaking out of reinforcing loops often requires outside intervention or a new change in conditions. Or, as with fashion, they simply burn themselves out after a while. Within complex systems, feedback is rarely immediate. It can take a long time for changes in flows to have a measurable impact on how the system works. This delay complicates establishing cause and effect.

In our lives, problems arise when the feedback for our actions is delayed or indirect, as is often the case. A challenge to improving our decision making is getting accurate feedback on decisions. On one hand, consequences may take a long time to become apparent or may be hard to directly attribute to a particular decision. On the other, we may trap ourselves in maladaptive behaviors when something we do receives positive short-term feedback but has negative long-term consequences. Thus, it''s important to remember immediate feedback isn''t the only feedback. When you eat junk food, there is an instant hit of pleasure as your body responds to fat and sugar. After a little while, though, you receive other feedback from your body that indicates your choice of junk food has negative consequences. And over longer periods, conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure provide more feedback from your body about the effects of your eating habits.

The faster you get useful feedback, the more quickly you can iterate to improve. Yet feedback can cause problems if it''s too fast and too strong, as the system can surge. It''s like when you press the gas or brake too heavily when first learning how to drive. Feedback loops are a useful mental model because all systems have them, and we operate in a world of systems and subsystems. Adam Smith and the Feedback Loop of Reactions You probably know Adam Smith as one of the most influential economists of all time, notable for his notion of the "invisible hand" of the market. But Smith''s first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is a work of philosophy. In it, he describes a different sort of invisible force that guides us: how the approval and disapproval of others, real or imagined, influences our behavior. We are, by nature, selfish.

We value ourselves above all other humans. Smith illustrates his point by suggesting that the news that your little finger must be amputated would likely be more stressing than the news of the deaths of a huge number of strangers overseas. Yet despite our inherent selfishness, the majority of people the majority of the time are cooperative and kind to one another. Smith believed our interactions with others are responsible for our well-established reciprocity. He saw others'' responses to our behavior as feedback guiding how we act in the future. To do something selfish usually warrants a disapproving reaction. To do something selfless usually merits an approving one. The feedback loop of others'' reactions to our actions is the basis of civilization.

Russ Roberts writes in How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, "Smith''s vision of what sustains civilization is the stream of approval and disapproval we all provide when we respond to the conduct of those around us. That stream of approval and disapproval creates feedback loops to encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior." This type of feedback doesn''t just cover formal punishments and prohibitions according to the law where we live. It also covers the ways people respond to behavior that is just considered the norm. If a friend says hello to you on the street and you fail to acknowledge them, you haven''t broken any laws, but they''re likely to respond in a negative fashion. So you adhere to the norm. Smith writes: "When Nature formed man for society, she endowed him with a basic desire to please his brethren and a basic aversion to offending them. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favorable regard and pain in their unfavorable regard.

She made their approval most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake, and their disapproval most humiliating and most offensive." Smith asked readers to imagine a person who grows to adulthood without any interactions with other people. He believed such a person would have no awareness of their character and no notion of the right or wrong way to act. Our desire to be loved and accepted prompts moral behavior relative to the standards of our society. We in turn respond with approval of the same behavior on the part of others. Everyday Loops We can address many of the challenges we face every day by adjusting feedback loops. Figuring out how to change behavior (ours and others''), dealing with inaccurate information, and building trust are ongoing challenges. How to get customers to buy your product and not the competitors''; how to sort through information to find what''s relevant to your decision; how to cooperate effectively with oth.