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Thinking Clearly · Lesson 3 of 6

When cause and effect hide

In simple systems, cause and effect sit side by side. In complex ones they are far apart, and well-meant fixes backfire. The story of Yellowstone’s elk shows how, and what it asks of anyone managing a business.

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Two kinds of system

  • In a linear system, cause and effect are clear and close together. Turn the tap and water flows. Our intuition works well here.
  • In a complex (non-linear) system, cause and effect are fuzzy. An action today has effects months later, in a different place, through chains nobody planned. Economies, ecosystems, markets and organisations are complex systems.

Our intuition was trained on simple situations. In a complex one, the obvious fix often makes things worse.

Playing god in Yellowstone

Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, covers about 2.2 million acres of the western United States. By the 1880s, hunting had sharply reduced its game, and in 1886 the US Army was sent in to protect the park and its animals.

The managers decided to look after the most valued animals, above all the elk. They fed them in winter and protected them from hunters. It worked: the elk population boomed, to about 35,000 by 1914.

020,00040,000 1897191419231933 Elk protected and fed Hard winter, thenpredators killed off Booms and busts

Then the side effects arrived. Too many elk overgrazed the valleys, stripping young willow and aspen. A severe winter killed thousands of the starving animals. The managers blamed the predators, and set out to kill wolves, cougars and coyotes, which removed the one force that kept the elk moving and their numbers in check. The elk population swung through booms and busts, the vegetation suffered further, and with it beavers, birds and the riverbanks.

Each decision was sensible on its own. Each solved the problem in front of the managers. Together, over decades, they made the park worse, and every fix created the next problem. The writer Alston Chase later described the history as “playing god” in Yellowstone.

Pause and think: what went wrong, as a way of thinking?

  • The managers didn’t care about the park, only about visitor numbers and their own budget
  • They had too little money
  • They treated each problem alone, without tracing the ripple effects
  • They should have done nothing at all

Each intervention was judged by its immediate effect. Nobody mapped the chain of cause and effect: more elk, less vegetation, starving herds, blame on predators, fewer predators, more booms and busts. In a connected system, a local fix has global effects.

The same pattern in business

Replace elk with your own example:

  • A plant pushes every work centre to be busy. Inventory piles up, lead times grow, orders are late, and the response is to expedite, which disrupts the plan further.
  • A company cuts stock to save cash. Shortages rise, sales fall, and emergency purchases cost more than the stock did.
  • A sales team is rewarded for month-end volume. Customers learn to wait for month-end discounts, and the first three weeks of every month go quiet.

In each case the fix works locally, for a while, and the system pushes back. Seeing this needs a way of mapping cause and effect explicitly, so the chain is visible before you act. That is exactly what the Thinking Process tools do.

Check your understanding

Answer all five. Get four right to complete the lesson.

1. In a complex system, cause and effect are…

  • Always close together
  • Often far apart in time and place, through chains nobody planned
  • Impossible to understand
  • The same as in a simple system, only with more steps in between

That’s why intuition fails there.

2. Why did the elk population first boom?

  • Wolves were introduced
  • The park was enlarged
  • Hunting increased
  • The elk were protected and fed

The first fix worked, locally and for a while.

3. What did killing the predators lead to?

  • Elk booms and busts, and more damage to vegetation
  • A stable, healthy park, with more elk for visitors to see
  • Fewer elk forever
  • Nothing

It removed the force that kept the system in balance.

4. The common thread in Yellowstone and the business examples is…

  • Bad intentions
  • Lack of data
  • Local fixes that solve the problem but trigger effects elsewhere
  • Too much planning before acting, which delayed the response for years

A local optimum isn’t a global one.

5. What helps us act well in a complex system?

  • Acting faster
  • Mapping cause and effect explicitly before acting
  • Copying what successful others do in the same situation
  • Avoiding all change

That is the job of the Thinking Process tools.