System Dynamics
📋 What it is
Systems change over time in patterns — growth, decline, overshoot, oscillation — driven by their loops.
🗣️ Coach says
System DYNAMICS is how systems behave over TIME. Feedback loops and delays create signature patterns: steady growth, sudden collapse, overshoot-and-crash (using a resource faster than it renews), or oscillation (boom and bust). Recognising these patterns lets you predict where a system is heading — and act before a crash.
🧠 Memory hook
System dynamics = behaviour over time: growth · collapse · overshoot-and-crash · boom-bust. Loops + delays drive it.
😂 Giggle
What do you call a delay in a causal system?
Fashionably late effects!
😲 Whoa!
On Easter Island, people used trees faster than they could regrow — a classic "overshoot and collapse" that toppled a whole society, a warning system-thinkers still study today.
✅ Quick check: What is an "overshoot and collapse" pattern?
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
Using a resource faster than it can renew, so the system booms then crashes when the resource runs out.
Overshoot depletes a resource, causing collapse.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
Think of a fad that boomed then crashed — many systems follow that overshoot-and-collapse curve.