If you are in a reinforcing feedback system, you may be blind to how small actions can grow into large consequences-for better or for worse. Seeing the system often allows you to influence how it works.

For example, managers frequently fail to appreciate the extent to which their own expectations influence subordinates’ performance. If I see a person as having high potential, I give him special attention to develop that potential. When he flowers, I feel that my original assessment was correct and I help him still further.
Conversely, those I regard as having lower potential languish in disregard and inattntion, perform in a disinterested manner, and further justify, in my mind, the lack of attention I give them.

Pyschologist Robert Merton first identified this phenomenon as the “self-fulfilling prophecy.” It is also known as the “Pygmalion effect,” after the famous George Bernard Shaw play (later to become My Fair Lady). Shaw in turn had taken his title from Pygmalion, a character in Greek and Roman mythology, who believed so strongly in the beauty of the statue he had carved that it came to life.

…In reinforcing processes such as the Pygmalion effect, a small change builds on itself. Whatever movement occurs is amplified, producing more movement in the same direction.
…There’s nothing inherently bad about reinforcing loops. There are…”virtuous” cycles”-processes that reinforce in desired directions.

-Peter M Senge, pg. 80-1, The Fifth Discipline