In the Logical Thinking Process parlance a Negative Reinforcing Loop is an amplifying effect of an UnDesirable Effect (UDE) on the cause that generates it. Usually iterative, each time the cause leads to a specific UDE, this latter one reinforces the cause, making things worse. Hence the loop, very likely to end up in a death spiral.
A Negative Reinforcing Loop is something that must be broken up.
Negative Reinforcing Loops examples
Let’s take the example of a business experiencing a significant drop in profitability and fewer sales. In a panic reaction the senior management decides to boost sales with discounts. Sales increase slightly but profit keeps plummeting. Management decides for even more aggressive prices (more discount), sales increase somewhat but overall profit keeps decreasing. Each time the UnDesirable Effect of making less profit reinforces senior management’s decision to offer more discount, thus amplifying the profit loss.
In the case study with company Alpha, they were 3 Negative Reinforcing Loops:
- “our developments are merely copying the leader” reinforcing the fact that the company is a follower. The more the company copies the leader and the more it confirms itself as a follower, and its products as commodities.
- “in this current situation we cannot afford drifting away from our core business” reinforcing the fact that the company does not stand out among its competitors, locking more and more Alpha into this position.
- “our processes are full of wastes and not efficient” combining with “inefficiencies and wastes burning resources without gain” reinforcing the limitation of financial resources, hence making investments for breaking out of the death spiral increasingly difficult.
Alpha company Current Reality Tree
Positive Reinforcing Loops
Their positive counterpart of a Negative Reinforcing Loop is a Positive Reinforcing Loop. These are amplifying effects of a Desired Effect (DE) as they positively influence their cause, like building more confidence with each new success/sales/contract…
Positive Reinforcing Loops are something that must be embedded in a solution every time possible, as they keep improving or amplifying the Desirable Effect.
In what Trees?
Technically Negative Reinforcing Loops are expected to be found only in Current Reality Trees (CRT). They are depicted as arrows with their tail (origin) on the UnDesirable Effect (UDE) and their head pointing to an entity somehow linked to the cause, or directly linked to the cause.
Positive Reinforcing Loops are purposely built in or are a happy additional benefit of the solutions injected in a Current Reality Tree to “cure” it from its negative outcomes. The planned mended Tree is called the Future Reality Tree (FRT), as at the moment of crafting the solution this improved reality still lies in the future. Positive Reinforcing Loops are therefore only expected in Future Reality Trees.
However, even if not expected there, Negative Reinforcing Loops can be found in Future Reality Trees (FRT) if a Negative Branch or a suite of cause-and-effects leads to unintended negative effects, those as undesirable as the ones the solution tries to cure from.
If this is the case, the FRT should be scrutinized again and the ‘faulty’ injections reconsidered or additional injections wisely inserted to prevent the Negative Branch to grow.
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About the author, Chris HOHMANN
Chris HOHMANN 
Question for you Chris – when a CRT is complete, and you are counting up how many UDE’s are connected to each entry point in order to determine root cause – how should negative reinforcing loops be treated? Should they get any additional weight?
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Interesting question, Dave.
If among several uncovered Critical Root Causes priority for improvement is required, I’d go for the most harmful and if a Negative Reinforcing Loop is connected, it will certainly weigh in.
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