Heuristic
Change information flow before adding another control
Sometimes feedback visibility is the missing control.
When it fits
- When failures persist because the people making a decision cannot see the consequences in time.
When to avoid it
- Leverage-point and information-value heuristics are prompts, not guaranteed effect sizes. Test interventions, monitor side effects and stop when evidence changes.
Why it matters
Ask whether decision makers receive timely, relevant outcome data. Before adding approvals, test whether faster or better-targeted information changes behavior.
An example
Showing reconciliation errors to the team before activation may prevent repeats more cheaply than adding a second approval layer.
Check your result
The intervention tests a missing feedback signal before assuming another gate is necessary.
Keep this limit in mind
- Leverage-point and information-value heuristics are prompts, not guaranteed effect sizes. Test interventions, monitor side effects and stop when evidence changes.
Connected ideas
Useful withCheck whether the goal of the system is causing the symptom
Evidence and sources
Provides context
Meadows' leverage-points framework widens intervention search from parameters and buffers toward information flows, rules, goals and paradigms while explicitly cautioning that the list is not a recipe.
The proposed ordering is a systems-thinking heuristic, not a universal causal effect-size ranking.
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System · Places to intervene and concluding caveats