Finding Leverage Points

Creating change through models and maps

You can’t control everything. Heck, you can’t even control most things.

But you can control something.

That something is a leverage point.

Leverage points are places in systems, organic or synthetic, where some effort leads to change—change you can actually influence and direct.

Because most things are out of your control, leverage points are critical areas of agency.

The best way to find one is to get as close to reality as possible. The goal is to see things as they are. Find the truth. Find the pain point. Find the secret—the thing that’s ignored either intentionally or not.

Modeling and mapping are the tools that can help you best understand where the value is.

When you model a complex system and play with its variables and assumptions, you start to isolate the factors that lead to the highest impact.

When you map a system, you get a bird’s-eye view of what’s going on. From this new vantage point, the bottlenecks and opportunities start to reveal themselves.

Maps and models pull you out of the system, giving you a god-like view of what’s really happening.