This is why I think it’s more useful to talk about “balancing feedback loops”, because the effect can be either good or bad, depending on what you want your system to do.Ī classic example of a balancing feedback loop often used to illustrate the concept is a thermostat: In other words, it acts as a correction or balancing mechanism. Negative feedback is where the output feeds back in and has the opposite effect on the system, so reducing the output that was previously occurring. Negative in this case doesn’t mean “bad” (and remember that “feedback” doesn’t mean giving your opinion “feedback” in systems thinking is where an output of a system or process is fed back into the input flow of that same process, altering it one way or another.)

In this blog I will cover so-called “negative feedback loops”. In my last blog I covered “positive” or “reinforcing” feedback loops, what they are and how they crop up in the FE system all over the place. In Systems Thinking feedback loops are a big deal.