Compensating feedback offsets interventions

Those who attempt to function within a dysfunctional system often discover that their interventions are met by equal and opposite compensating feedback from the system. The harder they work to fix the system, the harder the system pushes back against their efforts.

Systems thinking has a name for this phenomenon: “compensating feedback”: when well-intentioned interventions call forth responses from the system that offset the benefits of the intervention. We all know what it feels like to be facing compensating feedback—the harder you push, the harder the system pushes back; the more effort you expend trying to improve matters, the more effort seems to be required.^[1]

This phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that compensating feedback “usually involves a ‘delay,’ a time lag between the short-term benefit and the long-term disbenefit.”^[2] So the ability to recognize that the systems is pushing back to offset the intervention is hindered because the causality is not immediately evident.

#systems