Connection Circles

Connection circles are a tool for visualising relationships in a story or a system. They help you understand complexity by seeing causes and effects in the system. Connection circles can also help you identify feedback loops – whether reinforcing or balancing. Here’s how to create one –

1. Start with a circle on a piece of paper.

2. Next, identify the key elements of the system you're examining. To identify a key element, make sure it meets any of the following criteria – (1) it's important to changes in the system, (2) it increases or decreases in the system, and (3) it can be described by a noun

3. Write these elements around the circle (don't include more than 10).

4. Look for cause and effect interaction among the key elements of the system. Ask, which elements are directly causing other elements to increase or decrease? Draw an arrow between these elements.

5. Find all of the cause-and-effect relationships; these can be based on data or they can be a hypothesis.

6. Look for elements whose relationships form closed loops; these are feedback loops.

Here’s an example of a Connection Circle that illustrates relationships with key elements.

Here, we see how unhappy customers create more support tickets. More tickets means longer response time which in turn produces even more unhappy customers. We try to ship new features which lower the number of unhappy customers, but they also produce more bugs and those lead to more unhappy customers again.

The completed connection circle makes you better understand a system. This understanding will greatly help you make changes that you need. Connection circles is a great tool for understanding systems. It's about identifying key elements and mapping the relationships between them.