I applaud this important effort. But the experiences of other cities, large and small, show that working to improve all aspects of our community will probably be self-defeating. In fact, actually letting go of some of our goals would boost our power to reach the ones we value most.

Huh? you might say. Bear with me a few paragraphs—here’s my thinking, strongly influenced by MIT professor Jay Forrester and his “attractiveness principle.”

The Attractiveness Principle

Imagine for a moment that all our goals for Asheville have been met. Suddenly, we have high wages, inexpensive housing, clean air, no traffic congestion, and a stellar Indian restaurant. What would happen next?

People would start moving here even faster than they already are. Some sectors of the economy and community would flourish. But rents would climb, employers could lower wages and still find workers, the roads would fill, and we would eventually return to a balance of things we like and things we don’t.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, no urban center in a mobile society can remain an overall better place to live for long. By one path or another, changes that improve the attractiveness of one city will result in compensating changes that lessen its attractiveness until it is generally as appealing as other places.

Consider how other cities naturally provide “bads” to balance the “goods.” Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Charlotte have traffic and smog and long commutes to balance the higher-paying jobs and big city perks. Rural Vermont, Montana, and Wisconsin have cold winters and few jobs to balance the open space, inexpensive housing, and clean air. From my perspective, Asheville has expensive housing, low wages, and dirty air (i.e., high surface ozone levels) to balance the inspired culture, low traffic congestion, walkable downtown, high-quality art, accessible mountains, incredible views, beautiful rivers, deep heritage, and easy-going pace of life.

This thinking might sound fatalistic, as though no one should try to improve their hometown. But accepting this principle actually could give us more power to shape our future. If we embrace the “unattractiveness” that we can live with, we make space for something else to get better. Sounds odd, but others do it. People in Seattle tolerate (and even advertise) eight months of rain to balance their hot economy. New York City folks deal with each other acting a bit rudely to gain all that is the Big Apple. Portland, OR, citizens accepted higher rents and population densities when they created an urban growth boundary to preserve open space. I heard that people in Jackson Hole, WY, refused to expand their heavily congested highway, accepting delays over sprawl. Some folks even fight against repairing potholes in the road, knowing it will slow traffic.

Difficult Choices

So what kind of imperfection are we willing to live with? Dirty air? No? Then we will need to choose something else. High rent? A slow development permitting process? High taxes? Mediocre schools? Strict land-use laws? Few jobs? Development fees? Choose, or the urban system, like it or not, will choose something for us.

As for me, at the gut level I’d rather not choose. When I look at my infant son and toddler daughter and imagine them raising kids here in Asheville in the 2030s or so, I find myself wanting to tackle all the problems without much thought to the likely side effects. Letting go is easier said than done, even when my rational mind knows it would help.

Then what will it take to actually make these kinds of difficult choices? We need to ask ourselves several difficult questions about the thinking I have laid out here. Does the “attractiveness principle” really apply to us? Are other cities’ experiences relevant? If we conclude that, in the long term, there is no way to “have it all,” then we might explore what we are willing to let go in order to reach the goals that matter most. The ensuing discussion would boost our power to shape our community for ourselves and future generations. Our children will ultimately thank us for our foresight and courage.

Andrew Jones (apjones@alum.mit.edu) and his colleagues at Sustainability Institute (www.sustainabilityinstitute.org) run workshops and consulting projects using systems thinking and system dynamics simulation modeling.

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I believe the systems orientation can be summarized by five “Cs”: curiosity, clarity, compassion, choice, and courage (see “The Five Cs of Systems Thinking”). Curiosity is the willingness to step back when things are not working—particularly when “trying harder” is argued as the only way to proceed—and to consider that we might be trying to solve a problem we do not fully understand. Attacking symptoms head on (“If the problem is declining sales, then the solution must be generating more sales”) and framing problems in terms of proposed solutions (“The problem is figuring out how we can reduce prices”) tend to generate policies that actually make matters worse in the long run. Curiosity, on the other hand, is the desire to inquire more deeply into why something is happening, and the willingness to acknowledge that espoused solutions might not always be right.

The deep inquiry that results from being curious leads to greater clarity. Clarity is the ability to see a situation more accurately and completely. It usually entails learning how better to understand the mental models of others, and to recognize how we might have created or unwittingly contributed to the problem we face. Spending more time up front to determine the cause of the problem usually leads to more lasting solutions, particularly because cause and effect in organizations are not as visibly connected as we would like to believe. Conversely, time wasted solving the wrong problem quickly generates additional problems and does not solve the initial one.

Increased compassion can result from greater clarity. Compassion in this sense is the ability to recognize that we are all part of the same system, that no one individual or function is to blame for our problems, and that all of us collectively need to develop the shared insights and alternatives required to solve them. Compassion points us away from blame and toward responsibility—it helps us see how we often self-inflict our problems, whether through individual thought processes or our group’s policies and actions. The benefit of compassion and responsibility is power: the power to influence or accept that for which we have compassion and to control that for which we are directly responsible. For example, when we understand that part of the pressure placed on our group by senior management occurs because we do not communicate frequently enough with our managers, we can take steps to reduce this pressure by updating them more often.

Choice is the ability to recognize that systems problems are often best addressed through multiple solutions applied in concert. This contrasts with the tendency for managers to polarize around singular solutions (“We need to become either more market-driven or more technology-driven” or “We need to reduce prices or hold the line”). Choice allows us to consider that the solution might be both (e.g., we can be both market- and technology-driven over time if our aim is to satisfy our customers through technological advancements) or even neither (e.g., the solution may instead be to increase prices and reduce product availability). This understanding also helps us recognize that all decisions have consequences. Knowing the potential outcomes, we can anticipate and manage those consequences more effectively.

Courage is the ability to understand that while systems thinking might open up a range of alternatives not previously considered, it does not always yield solutions that are popular or easy to implement. Doing “more of what we’ve always done, only better” or adopting “quick fixes” may seem to work well in the short term, but often makes things worse in the long run. Therefore, it is often important to take strong stands (backed by systemic analysis) in favor of solutions that work in the long term. Courage also supports curiosity and clarity, because it takes courage to admit that we don’t know something, or that we might be at least partly responsible for our current situation.

The systems orientation is ultimately a way of being that points to alternative ways of thinking and acting.

The systems orientation is ultimately a way of being that points to alternative ways of thinking and acting. By becoming systems thinkers, not only will we impact the world around us more effectively, but our own lives will also be changed when we see the world through a systemic lens. We will inquire more deeply into problems, understand our own responsibility more clearly, meet other’s apparent resistance with greater compassion and confidence, be more creative and effective problem solvers, and take a firmer stance in support of our strongest beliefs.

David Peter Stroh is a founding partner of Bridgeway Partners, a founding director of Applied Systems Thinking, and previously a co-founder of Innovation Associates.

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