System Maps

I finally got my hands on Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows when my wife found a used copy. It’s a great introduction to systems thinking, which is how you understand complex systems. It’s important because we’re surrounded by them—from your body to your company to everything in nature.

As a product builder and systems thinker, I leverage systems thinking to define and understand the underlying structure that enables product development—moving from the conception of an idea to the creation of the work for others to use. When you understand the hidden structures, interconnections, and feedback loops at play, you gain X-ray vision into the skeleton of the process. When something breaks, you not only know how to fix it, but what second-order effects can occur. You see complex structures in new ways, viewing the world through a new lens.

This idea is called System Maps. It lives in the 🦉 Clarity Codex of the Claritorium.

• 🦉 Clarity Codex (Structure): The hidden structure of clarity. Models, language, and frameworks that guide intuition and decision-making.
• 🐍 Clarity Current (Motion): The invisible force of clarity. Roles, rhythms, and relationships that activate and sustain clarity.
• 🦎 Clarity Climate (Environment): The emergent environment of clarity. Behaviors, values, and patterns that make clarity natural, resilient, and scalable.

(You can read more about the Claritorium at claritorium.com.)

A System Map shows the hidden structure of how something works—what flows in, what accumulates, what flows out, and where feedback loops shape behavior.

I just started a new job this past week. One of the first things I noticed was the massive amount of feedback flowing through the company. Feedback is a gift, but you can’t appreciate the gift if you don’t see it, can’t find it, and don’t actually use it. It’s like a room full of hidden treasure.

When there’s more feedback than you can translate, the noise drowns out the signal. The treasure stays hidden. Using a System Map, you can understand:

• What flows in (inputs) and what flows out (outputs) of the system.
• What accumulates (stocks) and is shaped by feedback loops.
• Where to monitor or intervene when things break down.

These are captured in the three pillars of System Maps:

1. Edges: The inputs and outputs.
2. Engine: The stocks, flows, and feedback loops.
3. Echoes: The signals as observable metrics or indicators.

Edges

The first thing I think about with any system are inputs and outputs.

Inputs are what comes in; outputs are what goes out.

These are the Edges of the System Map. And they should be defined by drawing clear boundaries between other surrounding systems.

In a Feedback System Map, what are the inputs and outputs?

→ The input is the feedback itself in its raw form (emails, messages, calls).

→ The output is the impact of acting on the feedback (e.g. business growth).

Feedback was flowing from all over the place, but there wasn’t a centralized repository for the feedback. There also wasn’t a specific process for managing it.

This is how feedback gets lost.

Define the Edges of your System Map and clearly understand what moves in and out.

Engine

The next step is translation. This is the process you run to take the inputs and convert them to the appropriate outputs—the Engine of the System Map.

Feedback Loops (Issue #23) and Feedback Protocol (Issue #42) define ways to generally define and manage feedback, but the Engine of System Maps is more technical. It contains:

• Stocks: Anything that accumulates within the system.
• Flows: Activities or processes that move resources between stocks.
• Loops: Reinforcing and balancing loops that affect the stocks in the system.

Stocks

In Concept Translation (Issue #52), we talked about “stocks” within a software company—things such as raw ideas, prioritized work projects, and tasks for the work. When it comes to the Feedback System Map, specifically, we’ll define the Stocks as:

• Centralized Feedback: All feedback captured and stored in one place.
• Prioritized Feedback: All feedback filtered into a clear priority order.
• Resolved Feedback: All feedback that has been fully resolved.

Now, this is the ideal structure of the Feedback System Map. But, right now, the the feedback isn’t centralized yet, which is the first thing I noticed. Without a clear way to collect the inputs consistently, there isn’t a system.

So let’s focus on Centralized Feedback as the first stock because it’s the first step in capturing the inputs into the Engine of the Feedback System Map.

Flows

As with any engine, you need motion. This is the movement in the System Map that moves resources between the stocks. These are the Flows.

• How we move the raw feedback (the input) into a centralized place.
• How we move the centralized feedback into prioritized order.
• How we act on the prioritized feedback and resolve it.

Here are the three Flows for managing the Stocks:

1. Centralization: Funnel raw inputs from scattered channels into one system of record.
2. Prioritization: Categorize, deduplicate, align with strategy.
3. Resolution: Feed prioritized items into product cycles.

The first milestone is centralizing the feedback. This is the Funnel pillar of Feedback Protocol (Issue #42), and it’s critical before anything else can happen. Without it, chaos ensues.

Loops

The Loops of System Maps are the Feedback Loops (Issue #23) that help shape behavior of the system. If we think about the engine as part of a train, where the Stocks are the train cars and the Flows are the train tracks, then the Loops are the conductors controlling the train.

There are two types of Loops in a System Map:

1. Reinforcing Loops that amplify change to grow.
2. Balancing Loops that limit change to shrink.

Reinforcing Loops

When I’m building software and working with users, I diligently follow up on their feedback. If they find and report a bug, I quickly resolve it and follow up with them. When you close the loop, you create trust and generate more feedback. This is a Reinforcing Loop.

Reinforcing Loop (Trust Express): More Resolved Feedback creates more trust, more willingness to provide feedback, and more Centralized Feedback from stakeholders.

A Reinforcing Loop is a flywheel that creates compound growth.

Balancing Loops

When you collect too much Centralized Feedback, the flow of prioritization can slow, causing a bottleneck in the system. That’s where a Balancing Loop comes in. And this is what I expect to happen once we centralize the massive amount of feedback coming in right now.

Balancing Loop (Overload Brakes): Add friction in the form intake (templates, forms, intake rules), or improve filtering to reduce noise with better prioritization strategies.

You also want to make sure the Prioritized Feedback is being resolved. If the pace of resolution is too slow, then you need to improve efficiency (better process, increased resources), or tighten up prioritization further to reduce the Prioritized Feedback stock. While reduction is an option, you want capacity to resolve critical feedback in a timely manner.

Let’s design another Balancing Loop:

Balancing Loop (Resolution Capacity): The size of the Prioritized Feedback needs to be proportional to the delivery capacity through tighter prioritization.

A Balancing Loop is a governor that reduces overload.

Echoes

Echoes are the signals that tell you if the engine is healthy. Each stock leaves echoes you can measure, and each loop leaves echoes that show if trust is growing or if overload is creeping in.

For this Feedback System Map, these are the signals to track for the Stocks:

• Centralized Feedback (intake health): The volume of feedback; the percentage of feedback captured vs. lost in other channels; the diversity of feedback from sources.
• Prioritized Feedback (processing health): The ratio of prioritized to unprioritized items; average time to prioritize; percentage of feedback tied to strategic initiatives.
• Resolved Feedback (outcome health): The percentage of prioritized items that reach resolution; the average time to resolution; the percentage of items with follow-ups.

Keep an Experimental Mindset (Issue #15) and play around with the metrics you track. Start simple, and expand when you need to increase fidelity in the signal.

And here are the signals to track for the Flows:

• Trust Express (trust growth): Percentage of repeat feedback from unique contributors provides a strong signal that trust is growing and increasing feedback.
• Overload Breaks (flow balance): The ratio of feedback items being resolved each cycle vs. the total collected is a strong signal you’re limiting overload.
• Resolution Capacity (resolution pace): The average time it takes for feedback items to move from being prioritized to being resolved.

Expression

System Maps is the idea; the Feedback System Map is the expression of that idea. Use these principles to create your own System Maps, finding the hidden structure and signals you need to improve any process. A System Map gives you and your team language to create shared understanding. And in that understanding you find clarity.

System Diagram

Below is the Feedback System Map diagram I created to represent these ideas. It’s a simple representation of the concepts presented here to visualize the System Map.