Balancing Process with Delays

Balancing Process with a Delay: A Sluggish Shower

Consider a “water faucet” feedback loop with antiquated plumbing. There is a significant delay between turning the faucet and feeling the change in the water. In a feedback diagram, cross-hatch lines across an arrow represent that delay.

Arrows with cross-hatch lines don’t tell you how many seconds (or years) the delay will last. You only know it’s long enough to make a difference.

When you follow an arrow with a delay, add the word “eventually” to the story you tell in your mind. “I moved the faucet handle, which eventually changed the water flow.” Or, “I began a new construction project and, eventually, the houses were ready.” You may even want to skip a beat—“one, two”—as you talk through the process.

During that ten seconds after you turn up the heat, the water remains cold. You receive no response to your action; so you perceive that your act has had no effect. You respond by continuing to turn up the heat. When the hot water finally arrives, a 190-degree water gusher erupts from the faucet. You jump out and turn it back; and, after another delay, it’s frigid again. On and on you go, through the balancing loop process. Each cycle of adjustments compensates somewhat for the cycle before.

The more aggressive you are in your behavior—the more drastically you turn the knobs—the longer it will take to reach the right temperature. That’s one of the lessons of balancing loops with delays: that aggressive action often produces exactly the opposite of what is intended. It produces instability and oscillation, instead of moving you more quickly toward your goal.

Delays are no less problematic in reinforcing loops. In the war on terrorism example, each side perceives itself as gaining advantage from expanding its activities because of the delay in the other side’s response. This delay may span from days to months and even years because of the time required to gather resources for the next cycle of attacks. In part it is this temporary perceived advantage that keeps the escalation process going. In this account, the temporary advantage lasts because the response is delayed; it is one possible contributor to escalation.

The relevant timescale depends on the system. A delay of seconds matters in a shower, while a delay of years can matter in construction or policy. Consider when the effect of an action will become visible before treating the lack of an immediate response as evidence that it failed.

Reinforcing feedback, balancing feedback, and delays are all fairly simple. They come into their own as building blocks for the “systems archetypes”—more elaborate structures that recur in our personal and work lives again and again.