What is Leverage Points?

Leverage points are places within a complex system where a relatively small, well-placed intervention can produce a large shift in the system’s overall behavior. Donella Meadows organized them into a hierarchy, from shallow leverage points like adjustable parameters and buffers to deep leverage points like the rules, goals, and mindset that generate the system in the first place.

Most interventions target the shallowest, easiest leverage points, such as subsidies, taxes, or standards, because they are politically and practically simple to change, even though Meadows argued the deepest and most durable change comes from shifting a system’s underlying goal or the paradigm out of which that goal arises.