Causal Loop Diagram
Map the feedback loops between the forces in your system — adoption, skill gaps, resistance, leadership attention. Mark each link as reinforcing or balancing. The loops explain why a single well-designed intervention keeps getting eaten by the system around it.
Use when repeated, sensible interventions produce no lasting change and nobody can say why.
Solves: Isolated interventions are defeated by feedback loops nobody has drawn.
- 1
Step 1: List the five to eight variables that matter. Use nouns that can go up or down (10 min).
- 2
Step 2: Draw arrows for causal influence. Label each: same direction (S) or opposite (O) (20 min).
- 3
Step 3: Trace closed loops. Mark each as reinforcing (compounding) or balancing (self-correcting) (15 min).
- 4
Step 4: Find the loop that defeats your current intervention. That loop is where the redesign must land (15 min).
- Variables must be quantities that can rise or fall. 'Training' is not one; 'hours of coaching per team' is.
- A diagram with no closed loops is a flow chart, not a causal loop diagram. Keep going.
- Delays are as important as links. Mark the slow arrows.