Signals & Levers

“Signals and Levers is already, right there in the title, an incredibly useful idea for our field. When I started into reading this book, my expectations were already high, what with this incredible author team, their systems-informed focus, and this title. But the novel approach to unfolding and contextualizing insights and leading us through systems-informed practices for leading organizations, was a lovely surprise! My initial ‘I am so excited for our field’ only deepened as I read further! This is, in a sense, an observability practice book for organizations, where we use systems tools to understand and make visible, so that we can learn and respond more effectively to the forces shaping outcomes.” – Ruth Malan, creator of Adventures in System Seeing“I have no doubt that Signals and Levers will be considered the definitive entry point into this fantastic body of knowledge.” – Gene Kim, WSJ bestselling author of Vibe Coding, The Phoenix Project, and Wiring the Winning Organization“We have long known that systems thinking is the key to solving complex problems, yet its practical application has remained elusive. As AI’s impact grows rapidly, the need for this book is more urgent than ever. It transforms an abstract discipline into a powerful toolkit for anyone building today. A must read.” – David Anderson, architect and author of The Value Flywheel Effect“After a career spent in tech, wondering why all those dumb things keep happening, Signals and Levers comes along and explains what systems theory is, how it works, and how to apply it. Instead of a simple transactional system of ‘X input delivers Y output,’ this book has helped me understand that complex systems just don’t work that way. Instead, by making structured observations of a system’s signals, one can identify the levers available—the things one can change. And most importantly, the book helps interpret the new signals resulting from the levers pulled. I’ve been using what I learned to understand metabolic changes, political situations, and, of course, why things go crazy in a software factory. The analogies are clear, the illustrations charming, and the end-to-end example visited in each chapter makes it all easy to understand and apply. – Mysti Berry, Principal Technical Writer, (alum Salesforce, Crowdstrike)“This book brilliantly teaches you to see structures and relationships, expose and understand the true constraints, and discover leverage points that allow you to steer toward better. Elisabeth and Joel provide an important warning: ‘Once you learn to see, you won’t be able to unsee.’” – Chris Pipito, CEO & Principal Consultant, Agileworks, LLC“Reading this book can take people into their past, present, and a better future.” – Pradeep Soundararajan, CEO, Moolya & Bugasura“Programmers are rarely taught how to think about complex systems in a systematic way. This book offers tools for doing that—for distinguishing signal from noise, for identifying feedback loops, and most importantly, for communicating with colleagues more effectively.” – Greg Wilson, Third Bit“Our dashboards excel at showing change but leave it to us to identify anomalies. We draw flowcharts and label the boxes but not the arrows. It’s refreshing to read a book that frames system state as the product of decisions that compound over time and gives teams practical tools to make sense of them.” – Noah Sussman, Product Infrastructure Lead, Tassat

Elisabeth Hendrickson is a technology leader with over 30 years of experience and a proven track record for building highly effective leadership teams. She led a geographically distributed organization of approximately 170 engineers, product managers, and designers as VP of R&D at Pivotal. She has also served as VP of Engineering at a Series B startup and held various other technical leadership roles, in addition to hands-on experience as a programmer and tester.

Her book, Explore It!, published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf, remains popular over a decade after its release. Currently, she works with technology leaders to improve collaboration, decision-making, and execution.

Joel Tosi has been delivering software products for over 25 years. Throughout his career, he has experienced frustrations he couldn’t effectively express, managed teams facing visible problems that peers didn’t acknowledge, and witnessed many good intentions lead to less-than-ideal outcomes. Joel has many stories to share.

For the past decade, Joel has focused on making it easier for teams to enjoy their work and innovate. This pursuit has led him to discover new ways to articulate the obstacles hindering teams, enabling everyone to perceive the same reality. Often, the network effect within an organization—the system’s reaction—is what holds teams back. Blindly following processes never resolves these underlying issues.

Joel began by leveraging the techniques from this book to help teams tell their stories. Subsequently, he focused on educating managers and executives on these techniques to foster better joint decision-making, ultimately aiming to eliminate “change theater.”

Joel has been presenting the concepts discussed in this book internationally for over five years and continues to explore new applications of these techniques to enhance work enjoyment. The satisfaction of hearing people say, “Now others can see what I have been feeling,” is a deeply rewarding experience.